# Transcoder vs passthrough

**URL:** <https://community.wowza.com/t/transcoder-vs-passthrough/49350>\
**Category:** Wowza Video (Formerly Streaming Cloud)\
**Tags:** transcoder\
**Created:** [August 3, 2017, 7:34pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/transcoder-vs-passthrough/49350 "2017-08-03T19:34:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Janus\_Knudsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a183cd/32.png) [@Janus\_Knudsen](https://community.wowza.com/u/Janus_Knudsen)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2017, 7:34pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/transcoder-vs-passthrough/49350/1 "2017-08-03T19:34:50Z")

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Hello

I’ve tried to read the documentation, but I don’t feel that I totally understand the purpose of bitrate and transcoding vs. passthrough.

I believe in examples, for instance…

a Twitch stream. Is that transcoded or is it just passthrough?

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**Author:** ![Alex\_C](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Alex\_C](https://community.wowza.com/u/Alex_C)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2017, 2:42am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/transcoder-vs-passthrough/49350/2 "2017-08-24T02:42:13Z")

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Hello @Janus Knudsen,

Thanks for using the Wowza Forums.

The Transcoding option in Wowza Cloud is there to create an ABR stream, this would allow the viewer to select which quality to playback at. Passthrough is useful if you want the lowest possible latency, and your source stream is already encoded optimally for playback that most of your audience would be watching the stream at.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Alex C.

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**Author:** ![Ernest\_Williams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e8c25b/32.png) [@Ernest\_Williams](https://community.wowza.com/u/Ernest_Williams)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 4:26pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/transcoder-vs-passthrough/49350/3 "2018-11-01T16:26:51Z")

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The charge of $6/hr for Transcoding are you charging $6 per sender or per viewer? For instance if their are two different videos being streamed from my website by two different users using your API and there at 50 viewers watching each video, would I be charged $12/hr or $600/hr?