Usage & metering
What is measured, when, and how it shows up on the Usage page and the invoice.
Metrics#
| Metric | Unit | Billed on | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
participant_minutes | minutes | never — informational, cost $0 | cell analytics per project |
traffic_gb | GB | Cloud, above 10 TB per node-month (pro rata per node-hour) | cell analytics (media bytes in + out) |
turn_gb | GB | Cloud, above 200 GB per node-month | bytes the cell's TURN server relayed for the project |
node_hours | hours × size | Cloud | node started_at…stopped_at |
node_hours (byoc) | $39 per node-month, accrued hourly | Your infrastructure | registered own nodes while running |
recording_gb_hours | GB·h | Indie, Cloud | bytes of finished recordings the cell stores for the project, per hour |
stt_minutes | minutes | Indie, Cloud | speech-to-text audio |
Shared plans (Free, Indie) and Your infrastructure are never charged for traffic or TURN; the rows still appear so you can see what Cloud nodes would cost.
- TURN is the subset of audio relayed for players who could not reach the node over UDP. A rising TURN share usually means a new player population (mobile, campus or corporate networks), not a bug.
Reading the numbers#
- Participant-minutes are the sum over all sessions of minutes connected, whether or not anyone spoke. 100 players for an hour = 6,000 participant-minutes.
- Traffic is media leaving the node to players (downlinks). Server-mixed channels produce one downlink per listener; forwarded channels one per audible speaker per listener.
- Node-hours are per size; the Usage table shows them as
s,m,lrows so you can see autoscale at work. - Recording GB-hours grow as long as files exist; delete or set retention to stop them.
Cadence#
The control plane meters every five minutes. Each pass writes one row per metric per hour; the running hour is rewritten on every pass, so Overview and Usage move within minutes of players connecting. Once the hour ends its row is final. The watermark only advances over complete hours, so a control-plane restart never loses or double-counts an hour (up to 72 hours of backfill per pass).
Where to see it#
- Overview — month to date, participant-minutes in the current hour, chart by hour (Free) or spend by day (paid).
- Usage — month picker (six months), by metric, by day, by hour, CSV with every hourly row.
- Billing — the organisation total and forecast across projects; invoices on the first of the month.
- API —
GET /v1/projects/{id}/usage?from=…&to=…returns the same rows. Control-plane API
Forecast#
forecast = spent + rate × hours remaining in the month, where rate is the cost of the last complete hour. It drives the spending ladder and the Billing page's "forecast" column; it is recomputed on every pass.