Compared to per-CCU pricing
How capacity billing differs from the per-CCU and per-minute models used by hosted voice vendors, with the same scenarios priced both ways and an honest list of what Aurix does not do.
Most hosted game-voice services price by head: concurrent users (CCU), monthly active users, or minutes of audio per participant. Aurix Cloud prices by capacity: a flat plan on the shared pool, or dedicated nodes by the hour. This page explains what that changes, where each model wins, and how to migrate.
Note. Competitor prices change and depend on contracts. We do not quote their numbers here; the comparisons below use a generic per-CCU rate as a placeholder (
Rper CCU-hour or per participant-minute) — put your own quote in. The Aurix numbers are from the live catalog.
The two models#
| Per-CCU / per-minute | Capacity (Aurix) | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | concurrent user, MAU, or participant-minute | plan cap (Free/Indie) or node-hour (Cloud) |
| Scales with | how many people talk and for how long | how much server you reserve |
| Idle cost | zero when nobody is on | node-hours while a node runs (shared plans: flat) |
| Peak cost | linear in players — launch night is the most expensive night | flat per node; autoscale adds nodes for hours, not per player |
| Predictability | depends on behaviour you do not control | bounded by a spending limit you set |
| Free tier | usually minutes or MAU per month | 50 concurrent, unlimited minutes |
| Lock-in | proprietary SDK and hosted-only | open-source server, same SDKs self-hosted |
| You operate | nothing | nothing (Cloud) or your machines (BYOC) |
The practical difference: per-CCU bills your success, capacity bills your footprint. A game whose players talk a lot — proximity voice, roleplay, long sessions — pays the most under per-minute and the same as a quiet game under capacity.
Same scenarios, both ways#
Assume the placeholder rate R per participant-hour of voice (per-CCU vendors typically land somewhere between a fraction of a cent and a few cents per CCU-hour at list price; use yours).
Indie co-op shooter — 200 concurrent at peak, 2,000 participant-hours a day#
- Aurix Indie: $19 / month. Period.
- Per-CCU: 60,000 participant-hours × R. At R = $0.01 that is $600; at R = $0.03, $1,800.
Social / VR world — 1,500 concurrent at peak, people stay for hours#
- Aurix Cloud: one M node 24 × 7 = $109.50; traffic and TURN overage ~$30–50; ≈ $150.
- Per-CCU: 1,500 × ~8 h × 30 = 360,000 participant-hours × R → $3,600 at R = $0.01.
Large shard — 4,000 concurrent, two regions, recording on#
- Aurix Cloud: two L nodes = $438; traffic and TURN overage ~$120; recording storage under a dollar; ≈ $560.
- Per-CCU: 4,000 × 10 h × 30 = 1.2 M participant-hours × R → $12,000 at R = $0.01. Recording and transcription are usually extra per minute on top.
Weekend tournament — 300 concurrent, 20 hours total#
- Aurix Cloud: one S node for 20 h = $1.00 (or Indie at $19 if you want it ready all month).
- Per-CCU: 6,000 participant-hours × R → $60 at R = $0.01.
Mobile casual, 30 concurrent, short sessions#
- Aurix Free: $0.
- Per-CCU: often also within a free tier — this is the case where per-minute pricing is fine.
Where per-CCU wins#
- Very spiky, very low average: a few players a few minutes a day. A Free Aurix project covers it anyway, but a per-minute bill would also be close to zero.
- You cannot predict a peak at all and refuse to set any limit. Capacity needs a number from you (the spending limit); per-CCU grows silently.
Features side by side#
What you get on every Aurix plan versus what hosted vendors typically gate behind tiers or add-ons (check their current matrix):
| Capability | Aurix | Typical per-CCU vendor |
|---|---|---|
| Positional / 3D voice | included, server-side range culling, direction, radius-scoped roster | often included, sometimes a tier |
| Server-side mixing and noise suppression | included | varies |
| Recording | available on all paid plans; storage $0.02 / GB-month on Indie and Cloud, included on your infrastructure | per-minute add-on |
| Speech-to-text | $0.006 / min on Indie and Cloud, included on your infrastructure | per-minute add-on |
| Moderation (mute/kick/block, safety transcripts) | included | included or tier |
| Text chat in channels | included | separate product |
| Region choice | per node (Cloud), yours (BYOC) | fixed or enterprise |
| Self-hosting | yes — open-source server, same SDKs | no |
| Spending limit with graceful degradation | yes | no — usage caps or overage |
| Transports | QUIC / WebTransport, WebRTC, WebSocket fallback, native UDP | WebRTC / proprietary |
What Aurix does not do (yet)#
- One global anycast endpoint. Today a project lives in one cell with regions inside it; players connect to the node that holds their channel. Multi-cell geo routing is on the roadmap.
- Console platforms. SDKs cover Unity, Unreal, Godot, Web and a C ABI for anything else; certified console builds are not published by us.
- Managed in every cloud. Dedicated nodes are provisioned in our regions; elsewhere, use your own infrastructure with the control plane.
- Voice AI products beyond transcription (translation, synthetic voices) are not bundled.
Migrating#
The SDKs mirror the concepts you already use:
- Vivox — login → session token; channel URI → channel name/ID;
positionalchannels ↔ Aurixpositional_config;TransmissionMode↔ transmit channel; roster/participant events are 1:1. Token minting moves from your backend's Vivox secret to your backend's Aurix SDK key. - Photon Voice — room ↔ channel; interest groups ↔ several channels per session with per-channel transmit; Recorder/Speaker ↔ capture and per-participant playback in the SDK; Photon's
VoiceConnectionapp settings become an Aurix token. - Agora — channel/token/role ↔ channel grants (
speak,receive,priority); spatial audio extension ↔positional_config; audio profiles ↔audio_profile/ bitrate.
The open-source repository ships migration notes with the exact method names for all three.