Pricing
No CPU sizes, no GB math — just credits.
A credit is a minute of our machines working — not a minute of your video. Files you get back cost 10 credits per GB, and downloads are free. Plans start at $0.
Free
$0
Kick the tires, run small jobs.
- 25 credits / mo ≈ 250 thumbnails or 2 transcodes
- 250 MB max input file
- 2 concurrent jobs
- Full API — raw args, recipes, presets, webhooks
Most projects
Build
$15/ month
Apps with video or audio in them.
- 400 credits / mo ≈ 30 ten-min 1080p transcodes or 200 podcast hours
- 2 GB max input file
- 10 concurrent jobs
- Email support
Scale
$49/ month
High volume, running around the clock.
- 1,500 credits / mo ≈ 120 transcodes or 90 hrs of edit proxies
- 6 GB max input file
- 50 concurrent jobs
- Priority email support
Pay yearly and get 2 months free. Run out of credits and jobs simply stop — you never get a bill you weren't expecting. Jobs run in parallel on every plan, so speed isn't something we charge extra for.
Estimate
Not sure which plan? Answer three questions.
A rough estimate, with our assumptions spelled out below.
≈ $0.025 per minute of video
What we assumed: a good-quality 1080p re-encode runs about 2.5× faster than the video plays (720p about 4.5×, 4K about 0.8×), at typical file sizes. Repackaging and pulling out audio are quick. The edit-proxy numbers aren't guesses — they come from a real 78-minute job that used about 21 credits.
Fair questions
Common questions.
- What exactly is a credit?
- A minute of our machines working, counted by the second — plus 10 credits for every GB the job hands back to you.
- So a 10-minute video costs 10 credits?
- No — a credit is a minute of our work, not a minute of your video. Encoding runs faster than the video plays, so a 10-minute 1080p clip takes about 4 minutes of processing. Add roughly 8 credits for the finished file and you're at about 12 all in. A thumbnail off that same video is about 0.1.
- My job finished in 40 seconds — why did it use 2 credits?
- Because we split it across several machines at once. You're paying for the work, not for how long you waited — and we don't charge extra for the speed.
- What happens when a job fails?
-
You don't pay for it. Jobs that come back
failedorrejectedcost nothing — a rejected job never started, and a failed one is on us. - What happens when I run out of credits?
-
Jobs stop rather than costing you money. New ones come back with
LIMIT_EXCEEDED— a normal error your code can handle — until the month resets or you upgrade. - How big can a file be?
- 250 MB on Free, 2 GB on Build, 6 GB on Scale, per file. Size only decides what you can send — it never changes the price, since we charge for the work and what comes back. Need more, talk to us.
- Will I know what a job cost?
-
Always. Every finished job returns its own cost —
cost.totalUsdplus a step-by-step breakdown — in the API response and the webhook.
How billing works
Three rules, and that's all of them.
1 credit = 1 minute of machine time
Not a minute of your video — the two aren't the same. Encoding runs faster than the video plays, so a 10-minute clip takes about 4 minutes of work, not 10. We count by the second.
files out = 10 credits / GB
Charged once, when the job finishes. That's close to what moving those bytes costs us. Files you send in are free.
downloads = free
Grab a finished file once or a thousand times — same price either way. And jobs that fail or get rejected cost nothing.
Real numbers
What things cost.
What actual jobs use, and how many you'd get in a month on Build ($15).
| Job | Credits | On Build ($15/mo) |
|---|---|---|
| Thumbnail from a 2 GB video we read just the part we need — the full 2 GB never moves | ~0.1 all processing | ≈ 4,000 / mo |
| Podcast hour → MP3 re-encoding the audio; keep it as AAC instead and you get ~3× as many | ~2 1.3 processing + 0.6 output | ≈ 200 / mo |
| Make a 500 MB file web-ready just rearranging it so it starts playing instantly — no re-encoding | ~5 0.2 processing + 5 output | ≈ 75 / mo |
| 10-min 1080p transcode 1.5 GB in → 0.8 GB out, done in ~40 s | ~12 4.3 processing + 8 output | ≈ 30 / mo |
| 78-min 1080p → edit proxy measured a real job we ran — finished in about 2 minutes | ~21 16 processing + 5 output | ≈ 19 / mo |
| 10-min 4K → 1080p compress | ~22 13 processing + 9 output | ≈ 18 / mo |
The "measured" row is a real job we ran. The rest are close estimates — and you never have to take our word for it, since every job reports its own cost.
Start on the free tier.
25 credits a month and the full API, no credit card. Move up a plan whenever you outgrow it.