Billing Plans and the API

When creating paid resources like Radio Streams or Transcoders with the API, a billing plan must be specified. Each billing plan is uniquely identified by a short "slug" string.

All resources are billed by the hour. For pricing and more information about billing, see Pricing.

This page lists all possible values for the billing plan field, for each resource type:

Radio Streams

https://api.radiomast.io/v1/radiostreams/radiomast

https://api.radiomast.io/v1/radiostreams/external

Radio Mast-hosted streams have a streaming_plan field that must be one of the following.

Standard streaming plans (MP3, AAC, AAC+, Ogg Vorbis, or Ogg Opus):

  • 100L-64 - 100 listeners / up to 64 kbps
  • 200L-128 - 200 listeners / up to 128 kbps
  • 300L-128 - 300 listeners / up to 128 kbps
  • 400L-128 - 400 listeners / up to 128 kbps
  • 800L-320 - 800 listeners / up to 320 kbps
  • 1600L-320 - 1600 listeners / up to 320 kbps
  • 3200L-320 - 3200 listeners / up to 320 kbps
  • 5000L-320 - 5000 listeners / up to 320 kbps
  • 10KL-320 - 10000 listeners / up to 320 kbps
  • 20KL-320 - 20000 listeners / up to 320 kbps
  • 40KL-320 - 40000 listeners / up to 320 kbps

Lossless (FLAC) streaming plans:

  • lossless-100 - 100 listeners / FLAC
  • lossless-200 - 200 listeners / FLAC
  • lossless-400 - 400 listeners / FLAC
  • lossless-800 - 800 listeners / FLAC
  • lossless-1000 - 1000 listeners / FLAC

Both Radio Mast and External Radio Streams can have Stream Monitoring turned on by setting the plan field nested inside monitoring. Possible values for the monitoring plan are:

  • basic - Stream uptime monitoring
  • silence_detection - Stream uptime monitoring and silence detection
  • null - Monitoring will be disabled

For more information on configuring monitoring via the API, please see Monitoring.

Auto-Scaling Streaming Plan

API users have access to a special "auto-scaling" streaming plan, which can offer cost savings for developers with large numbers of audio streams and highly variable listener counts. The auto-scaling plan has no listener limit and is billed according to the total listener hours (TLH) and bitrate streamed.

The auto-scaling plan can be used by setting the streaming_plan field to auto.

The base price is $0.000075 per listener hour at 64 kbps, and scales linearly based on the bitrate.

Auto-Scaling Pricing Examples:

TLH 32 kbps 64 kbps 128 kbps 192 kbps 320 kbps
1 $0.0000375 $0.000075 $0.00015 $0.000225 $0.000375
100 $0.00375 $0.0075 $0.015 $0.0225 $0.0375
1000 $0.0375 $0.075 $0.15 $0.225 $0.375

The TLH is measured based on the 95th percentile listenership for each hour. A listener hour is defined as a listener playing your stream for an hour.

Developers should consider using auto-scaling when:

  • You don't want to worry about hitting the listener limit, or have streams with highly variable listener counts.
  • You have streams with very low listener counts (less than 100).
  • You would like your streams to be persistent in Radio Mast, but don't broadcast all the time. Auto-scaling can provide cost savings when there are no listeners or the broadcast isn't active.

Developers should consider our standard streaming plans when:

  • Listenership is predictable
  • Your streams are broadcasting live all the time, or most of the time.
  • Your broadcasts are short, and you delete your streams in Radio Mast after the broadcast. (eg. If you won't need historical listener statistics.)

Questions about pricing? Get in touch and we'd be happy to help.