# Trying to estimate Transcoder pricing, need help **URL:** \ **Category:** Wowza Streaming Engine\ **Created:** [March 3, 2014, 8:23am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/trying-to-estimate-transcoder-pricing-need-help/41166 "2014-03-03T08:23:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Alex\_St](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a4c791/32.png) [@Alex\_St](https://community.wowza.com/u/Alex_St)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 8:23am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/trying-to-estimate-transcoder-pricing-need-help/41166/1 "2014-03-03T08:23:36Z")
Hello everyone, I’m trying to understand the Transcoder pricing structure and how it would apply to my case… The pricing page states that Transcoder is priced based on “streams per month”, and in my case, we have an arbitrary number of user-initiated short-lived sessions (lasting anywhere from 10 min to maybe 2 hours at most). Basically, the end-user might start an event (somewhat similar to the Google “hangout”) and then stop it whenever they please. We don’t know how many events/streams will be running ahead of time, all we know is the average stream duration (above). In this situation, how do we estimate the Transcoder budget? Thanks -awax256 ---
**Author:** ![sal\_jefferson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@sal\_jefferson](https://community.wowza.com/u/sal_jefferson)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 11:31am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/trying-to-estimate-transcoder-pricing-need-help/41166/2 "2014-03-03T11:31:39Z")
The billing for the Transcoder AddOn is calculated by number of channels (streams) Transcoded, not the duration of each Transcoder session. Without knowing how many streams will be Transcoded you will not be able to estimate exactly what the cost will be, but the pricing structure is such that, you can estimate roughly how many Transcodes there will be and get a ballpark figure on the cost. Salvadore ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_Littin1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c89c15/32.png) [@Roger\_Littin1](https://community.wowza.com/u/Roger_Littin1)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2014, 12:54pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/trying-to-estimate-transcoder-pricing-need-help/41166/3 "2014-03-05T12:54:45Z")
Hi, Just to be clear, The costs listed on the pricing page are **per source stream** for the maximum number of concurrent source streams over the month. As the number of concurrent sources increases, **the cost per source** reduces. Using Salvadore’s examples above, if you have 1 - 4 concurrent streams running at any time in the month, you will be billed at **$20 each**. If at some stage during the month, you have 10 concurrent streams running, you will be billed **$20 each for the first 4** and **$18 each for the next 6**. Roger. ---
**Author:** ![sal\_jefferson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@sal\_jefferson](https://community.wowza.com/u/sal_jefferson)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 6:27pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/trying-to-estimate-transcoder-pricing-need-help/41166/4 "2014-03-03T18:27:09Z")
Yes, that is right. Transcoder channels are counted concurrently, not as a sum total. So you could have 400 incoming streams transcoded per month, as long as only 1-4 were incoming at the same time, it would be 20 dollars per billing cycle. But if at some point during the billing cycle 10 streams were incoming at the same time, it would be 38 dollars for that billing cycle. Salvadore ---
**Author:** ![sal\_jefferson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@sal\_jefferson](https://community.wowza.com/u/sal_jefferson)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 6:58pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/trying-to-estimate-transcoder-pricing-need-help/41166/5 "2014-03-03T18:58:44Z")
Sure thing, obviously the more concurrent streams coming in the more cost increases. You can find the billing structure [here](https://www.wowza.com/pricing) for more info on the pricing. Salvadore ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Shueard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/49beb7/32.png) [@Mark\_Shueard](https://community.wowza.com/u/Mark_Shueard)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2014, 8:21am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/trying-to-estimate-transcoder-pricing-need-help/41166/6 "2014-03-04T08:21:57Z")
Salvadore. Your reply does make it sound like it costs for every stream. But if I read it correctly here [http://info.wowza.com/pricing-faq](http://info.wowza.com/pricing-faq) it is actually the maximum at once. So please confirm, if you only ever do one live event at once, that is, one incomming stream at once, then you only pay for one channel ( $20) for that month? ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Shueard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/49beb7/32.png) [@Mark\_Shueard](https://community.wowza.com/u/Mark_Shueard)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2014, 10:19am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/trying-to-estimate-transcoder-pricing-need-help/41166/7 "2014-03-04T10:19:29Z")
Thanks for clearing that up