AWS Elemental MediaPackage offers two pricing models: one for live packaging and one for video on demand (VOD) packaging.
Live Packaging
For live channels, you are charged based on the amount of video ingested into the channel (measured in GB) and the amount of content originated and packaged for the channel (measured in GB).
Video On Demand Packaging
With video on demand (VOD) packaging, you are charged based on the amount of video content originated and packaged from the VOD packaging group (measured in GB).
Discounted Pricing
For customers who are willing to make an annual commitment for monthly usage, typically 10 TB/month or higher for packaging and origination usage, Contact Us for discounted pricing options.
You will be charged for each stream AWS Elemental MediaPackage ingests for your live channels, as it receives video from your live encoder. Ingest charges are based on the size and number of those streams, measured in GB. This means you will pay more if you have more input streams on your channel, or if those streams are higher bitrates.
With VOD packaging, you continue to pay your standard rates for content stored in Amazon S3. MediaPackage can help reduce storage costs, as only a single format of an adaptive bitrate (ABR) set is required, which can be distributed in multiple formats with different content protection (DRM) policies applied.
For origination and packaging costs, you are charged for the total volume of video that is delivered to your content delivery network (CDN) measured in GB. We always recommend that you use a CDN like Amazon CloudFront with AWS Elemental MediaPackage, as CloudFront caches video content for more efficient delivery to end viewers. This improves performance, and will lower your costs by reducing the volume of video originated and packaged from MediaPackage.
You will incur additional charges when you serve content from AWS Elemental MediaPackage outside of AWS. If the content output is delivered to a destination over the internet or via a CDN other than Amazon CloudFront, then internet data transfer charges apply.
Pricing
Pricing Example
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Example 1: 2 hour live event
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Example 2: 24/7 Live Linear
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Example 3: VOD Packaging
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Example 1: 2 hour live event
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For a live event stream where AWS Elemental MediaPackage receives content from AWS Elemental MediaLive. MediaPackage ingests content from both MediaLive encoding pipelines so receives two channels.
For a typical ingest of a single live video stream that has 5 bitrates of 5Mbit/s, 2Mbit/s, 1.2Mbit/s, 800Kbit/s, and 500Kbit/s, the rate of GB per hour of streaming would be 4.175 GB.
Total Megabit per second = 5+2+1.2+0.8+0.5 = 9.5 Mbps
Total Gigabits per hour = 9.5 / 1024 *60 *60 = 33.39844 Gb/h
Total Gigabytes per hour = 33.39844 /8 = 4.175 GB/h
The total ingest cost for a 2 hour event in the US East (N. Virginia) Region would be (4.175GB *2 *2 *$0.030) = $0.501
If the stream had an average of 10,000 viewers watching the whole event at an average bitrate of 3 Mbit/s, a total of 26,367.19 GB would be sent to viewers for the event. Assuming a cache/hit ratio of 99% with CDNs, the total origination from AWS Elemental MediaPackage is 263.67 GB.
Total Gigabytes for event = 3 / 1024 *60 *120 *10,000 /8 = 26,367.19 GB
Total Gigabytes originated = 26,367.19 *0.01 = 263.67 GB
The estimated total cost for ingest and origination/packaging for the two hour event in the US East (N. Virginia) Region would be $27.21.
(4.175GB *2 *2 *$0.030 = $0.501) + (263.67GB *$0.050 = $13.184) = $13.685
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Example 2: 24/7 Live Linear
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For a 24/7 live linear channel, using the same 5 bitrates as example 1 the ingest costs can be worked out the same way:
Total Megabit per second = 5+2+1.2+0.8+0.5 = 9.5 Mbps
Total Gigabits per hour = 9.5 / 1024 *60 *60 = 33.39844 Gb/h
Total Gigabytes per hour = 33.39844 /8 = 4.175 GB/h
The total ingest cost per hour in the US East (N. Virginia) Region would be (4.175GB *2 *$0.030) = $0.2505
Viewing numbers for a 24/7 channel are likely to be a lower average than example 1 across a day. This example will estimate an average of 1,000 viewers per hour (This is the average, so peaks within that 24 hours can be over 10,000, but other periods, like overnight can be much lower are under 1,000.)
Over a day, the average bitrate is also likely to be lower than example 1.
This example will estimate 2Mbit/s. That gives a total of 878.91 GB/h.
The cache/hit ratio with the CDNs is also likely to be lower than example 1, so this example will estimate 97.5%. the total origination from AWS Elemental MediaPackage is 21.97 GB/h
Total Gigabytes per hour = 2 /1024 *60 *60 *1,000 /8 = 878.91
Total Gigabytes per hour originated = 878.91 *0.025 = 21.97
The estimated total cost per hour for ingest and origination/packaging for a 24/7 live linear channel in the US East (N. Virginia) Region would be $1.3505
(4.175GB *2 *$0.030 = $0.2505) + (21.97GB *$0.050 = $1.10) = $1.3505
When estimating for more than one channel, the ingest cost would be multiplied by the number of channels. for example, 10 channels would be $4.20. The origination and packaging costs would not be multiplied the same way. The estimates for the average views, average bitrate, and cache/hit ratio across all channels should be used to estimate cost.
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Example 3: VOD Packaging
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For VOD packaging your costs will depend on the volume of video originated and packaged by AWS Elemental MediaPackage. There is no cost for ingest.
If you have a total of 100,000 hours of VOD content watched at an average bitrate of 3Mbps, that would mean a total of 131,835.94 GB delivered by CDN
Total Gigabytes per hour = 3 /1024 *60 *60 /8 = 1.31836
Total Gigabytes delivered by CDN per month = 1.31836 * 100,000 = 131,835.94
For VOD content, cache/hit ratios are usually significantly lower than those for live channels, and can vary a great deal depending the total size of the VOD library, what percentage of the content is popular, how much of the total library is being viewed, and the CDN's cache eviction policy. For this example, we will assume an average cache/hit ratio of 80%. This would make total origination from MediaPackage 26,367.19 GB
Total Gigabytes originated = 131,835.94 GB * 0.20 = 26,367.19 GB
The estimated total cost for VOD Packaging in the US East (N. Virginia) Region would be $1,318.38
26,367.19 * $0.050 = $1,318.38
See this blog post for a more detailed look at the factors that influence the cost of running a live streaming channel on AWS, like video bitrates, number of viewers, average bitrate viewed, and cache/hit ratios when using AWS Elemental MediaLive, AWS Elemental MediaPackage, Amazon CloudFront, and AWS Elemental MediaTailor for monetization.
Additional Charges
For details on AWS service pricing, see the pricing section of the relevant AWS service detail pages.
Data Transfer Pricing
As part of the AWS free tier, AWS customers receive 100 GB of free data transfer out to the internet free each month, aggregated across all AWS Services and Regions (except China and GovCloud). Also, there are no additional charges for data transfer within the same Region.
However, you may still incur additional charges when you serve content outside of AWS. For instance, if the content output is delivered to a destination over the internet or via a CDN other than Amazon CloudFront, then data transfer charges apply.
The pricing below is based on data transferred “in” to and “out” of AWS Elemental MediaPackage in a region other than the one in which the service is deployed.