Live Captions API pricing rules Live Captions API pricing rules

Live Captions API pricing rules

Yukari Dumburs

Question

How does the Live Captions API pricing work?

Applies To

  • Video API
  • Live Captions API

Answer

Live Captions is charged based on the number of audio streams (or StreamIDs) that publish captions.

  • Pricing is based on the duration of each participant’s audio being sent to a transcription end point. Please visit our website to see the current pricing.
  • Pricing does not depend on the number of participants subscribing to captions
  • Unit of metric - Live Captions Minutes
  • If a participant is subscribed to captions but is not speaking, they will still be charged if their stream is being sent for captioning.

Additional Pricing Clarifications

  • If a Participant is subscribed to captions but not speaking, they will still be charged if their stream is being sent for captioning.
  • Setting publishCaptions=true alone does not start captioning. You must also call the Start Captions (server-side) to initiate captioning. Without this call, there are no captioning costs.
  • If the server-side Start Captions has been called and a Publisher has publishCaptions=true, but no Subscribers have subscribeToCaptions=false for that Publisher's captions, the Publisher's stream will not be sent for captioning. Therefore, no captioning charges will apply for that Publisher's stream.
  • In summary, at least one Subscriber must be subscribed to captions for a Publisher's stream to be sent for captioning and billed accordingly.

See environment-specific documentation:

Not sure which environment you are using? See How to recognize if I’m using Vonage Video API Unified Environment or Vonage Video API OpenTok environment?

 

Case 1

(A) participant in a call 

(A) publishes captions 

(A) subscribes to captions of (A)

  1. E.g. 30 minutes call 
  2. Publish time (A): 01 minutes and Stop time (A): 28 minutes
  3. Total live captions minutes: 27 minutes

Case 2

(A) & (B) are participants in a call 

(A) publishes captions 

(B) publishes captions 

  1. E.g. 30 minutes call 
  2. Publish time (A): 01 minutes and Stop time (A): 28 minutes
  3. Total for (A): 27 minutes 
  4. Publish time (B) : 00 minutes and Stop time (B) : 30 minutes
  5. Total for (B): 30 minutes 
  6. Total live captions minutes for A&B = 27+30 minutes 

 

Case 3

(A), (B) & (C) are participants in a call 

(A) publishes captions 

(B) publishes captions 

(C) does not publish

  1. E.g. 30 minutes call 
  2. Publish time (A): 01 minutes and Stop time (A): 28 minutes
  3. Total for (A): 27 minutes 
  4. Publish time (B): 00 minutes and Stop time (B): 30 minutes
  5. Total for (B): 30 minutes 
  6. (C) does not publish. (C) only subscribes 
  7. Total live captions minutes for A&B&C = 27+30+0 minutes

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