The price page says $4,224 a month. Record every room and the same workload bills $11,088 before a single file is stored.
That gap is why a video infrastructure cost breakdown needs more than a rate card. Every video bill has five lines: minutes, egress, relay, recording and storage. Each one already has its own post on this blog. This one does the thing those posts do not: puts all five into one total for one workload, both bought per minute and run yourself.
The workload
One example, used for every line:
Assumption | Value |
|---|---|
Average people in calls at once | 100 |
Call shape | Four-person rooms (25 rooms at a time), everyone sees the other three |
Hours | 8 hours a day, 22 working days a month |
Video | 600 kbps per received stream |
Recording | Optional: every room, as one composite file at 2 Mbps |
Prices | List, as published October 2026; AWS US East for cloud lines |
That is 1,056,000 participant-minutes, 17,600 participant-hours and 4,400 room-hours a month. The same workload runs through every line below.
Line 1: minutes
On per-minute pricing this is the headline: 1,056,000 participant-minutes at $0.004 is $4,224 a month. Why the count is participants rather than meetings, and where it multiplies further, is covered in what each participant-minute actually counts.
If you run the media yourself there is no minute meter. The cost moves into the lines below, and into servers. That trade is where a flat licence would cross over.
Line 2: egress
Every participant receives three streams. At 600 kbps each, that is 0.81 GB per participant-hour, and 14,256 GB a month leaving the media servers. Outbound traffic, not inbound, is what is billed, which is why SFU bandwidth cost grows with viewers, not publishers.
At AWS list rates ($0.09/GB for the first 10 TB, $0.085 for the next 40), that is about $1,260 a month when you run it. On per-minute pricing it is inside the $4,224.
Line 3: TURN
Some participants cannot reach the media server directly and go through a relay, and a relayed stream leaves your infrastructure twice. The only public measurement, 22% of conferences from callstats.io in 2015–16, is an upper bound, not a forecast for traffic that goes through an SFU, so treat this line as a ceiling.
At 22%, the relay carries about 3,140 GB a month. What that costs depends entirely on who runs it:
Who runs the relay | Rate | Monthly cost at the 22% ceiling |
|---|---|---|
Your own TURN servers on AWS | Extra egress at $0.085/GB | ≈ $270 |
$0.05/GB | ≈ $160 | |
Twilio Network Traversal, US/EU | $0.40/GB | ≈ $1,250 |
Twilio Video's per-minute rate | TURN relay included | $0 |
Same traffic, a spread of nearly eight times. Why this line is missing from most self-hosting models is the subject of the self-hosted cost nobody forecasts.
Line 4: recording
Recording is the line that changes the shape of the bill. On Twilio's published rates, recording each participant's tracks costs the same as the call ($0.004 per participant-minute) and composing them into one file adds $0.01 per room-minute:
Recording on a per-minute platform | Arithmetic | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
Track recording (Twilio) | 1,056,000 × $0.004 | $4,224 |
Composition into one file (Twilio) | 264,000 room-minutes × $0.01 | $2,640 |
Alternative: per recorded minute (Daily) | 264,000 × $0.01349 | $3,561 |
With recording, the Twilio-priced workload goes from $4,224 to $11,088 a month, 2.6 times the headline. Run it yourself and recording becomes compute for recording workers instead of a meter, plus the storage below.
Line 5: storage
A composite file at 2 Mbps is 0.9 GB per room-hour, so this workload adds 3,960 GB of recordings every month. Storage is the only line that grows by itself: each month's files sit on top of the last.
Where the files sit | Rate | First month | After 12 months, 12-month retention |
|---|---|---|---|
AWS S3 Standard | $0.023/GB-month | ≈ $91 | ≈ $1,093 a month |
AWS S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | $0.004/GB-month | ≈ $16 | ≈ $190 a month |
Twilio media storage | $0.00167/GB per day | ≈ $198 | ≈ $2,381 a month |
Two choices move this line more than any rate: the retention period, and the storage class. Both are worked through in the bill your retention policy controls. Where the files live is a choice too: Twilio, for example, can write recordings to your own S3 bucket instead of its cloud.
The lines with no rate card
Run the media yourself and two more lines appear that no price page covers: the servers (media servers, TURN, recording workers, all with headroom for peaks) and the people who run them. We have not priced servers here, because instance sizing depends on the media server and the workload. Both lines are worked through in what running it yourself actually costs.
The video infrastructure cost breakdown, in one table
Line | Bought per minute (Twilio list) | Run yourself (AWS list) |
|---|---|---|
Minutes | $4,224 | — |
Egress | Included | ≈ $1,260 |
TURN (22% ceiling) | Included | ≈ $160–$270 (managed or own) |
Recording, every room | $6,864 | Compute for recording workers (not priced) |
Storage, month one → month twelve | ≈ $198 → ≈ $2,381 | ≈ $91 → ≈ $1,093 (S3 Standard) |
Servers and people | Included | Not priced here; see the self-hosted cost post |
Total, month one, with recording | ≈ $11,290 | ≈ $1,510–$1,620 plus servers and people |
Read it carefully, because it is easy to misread. The self-run column is not cheaper; it is incomplete, and the missing lines are the expensive ones. What the table does show is where the money goes in each model: on per-minute pricing, recording more than doubles the bill; when you run it, egress and storage are modest and the open question is the servers and the team.
And the counterweight: drop recording and the per-minute bill is $4,224 with no operations burden at all. For a lot of teams that is the right answer.
The Bottom Line
A video bill is five lines, not one rate. For 100 people in calls all working day, minutes are $4,224 a month at list price; recording every room takes that to about $11,000, and storage then grows every month you keep the files. Run it yourself and the metered lines shrink to about $1,500 to $1,600, while servers and people become the bill. Price all five lines, in both models, before comparing anything.
What's Next
Cost is one half of the decision; control is the other. For how the three paths compare on speed, unit economics and white-label rights, see build, buy or embed.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a video infrastructure cost breakdown include?
Five metered lines: participant-minutes, egress, relay (TURN), recording and storage. If you run the media yourself, add servers and the people who operate them. Per-minute platforms bundle egress and usually relay into the minute rate, but meter recording and storage separately.
How much does recording add to a video bill?
On per-minute platforms, often more than the calls. On Twilio's list prices, recording every participant costs the same as the call, and composing a single file adds $0.01 per room-minute, which takes a $4,224 workload to $11,088 a month before storage.
How much does video egress cost?
It depends on what each participant receives. Three 600 kbps streams per person is 0.81 GB per participant-hour; 100 people for 8 hours a day, 22 days a month is about 14,256 GB, roughly $1,260 at AWS list rates.
How much does a TURN server add to video costs?
A relayed stream leaves your infrastructure twice, so relay adds the relayed share of your egress again. At the 22% upper bound, that is about $160 to $270 a month in this example on managed or self-run relays, and around $1,250 at $0.40/GB.
Why does video recording storage keep getting more expensive?
Because storage accumulates. Each month's recordings are added to those you are still retaining, so with a 12-month policy the twelfth month stores twelve months of files. Retention period and storage class matter more than the per-GB rate.
Is self-hosting video cheaper than per-minute pricing?
The metered lines usually are, but they are not the whole bill. Servers and the engineers who run them are lines no price page covers, and they have to be added before the comparison is fair. Samvyo, based on SFU architecture, is offered with flat licensing and keeps the media path, TURN and recording on infrastructure you control, so the egress and storage lines above become your cloud bill rather than a per-minute meter.
