Why is Total Streamed Minutes Higher Than Total Duration in Session Inspector?

Applies To

• Vonage Video API
• Session Inspector
• Meeting Statistics

Question

Why does the Total Streamed Minutes value in Session Inspector appear significantly higher than the Total Duration of the meeting — sometimes exceeding 2× or more the actual session length, even for a simple 1:1 call?

Answer

This is expected behaviour. Total Streamed Minutes and Total Duration measure two different things and are not directly comparable.

Total Duration is the wall-clock length of the meeting — how long the session ran from start to finish.

Total Streamed Minutes is the combined sum of all published minutes and subscribed minutes across all users in the session.

Formula: Total Streamed Minutes = Total Published Minutes (all users) + Total Subscribed Minutes (all users)

In a typical session, every participant both publishes their own stream and subscribes to other participants' streams simultaneously. This means the minutes accumulate for each stream activity independently — not just once per session.

Example — 1:1 Session (2 users, ~13 minutes):

In this case, Total Streamed Minutes is ~4× the session duration because both users are publishing and subscribing at the same time throughout the call.

Additional Information

• Total Streamed Minutes are not used for billing under the PPM (Participant Minute) model. Billing in PPM is based on participant minutes only. Refer to: How to estimate my Video API Monthly charges in Participant Pricing Model (PPM)? 
• Under the SSM (Subscribed Stream Minutes) model, customers are charged only for subscribed minutes, not published minutes. Refer to: How do I estimate my monthly Video API charges in the SSM pricing model?
• To view the breakdown of published and subscribed minutes per user, expand the User Data section in Inspector and review individual connection details.