About Async Video Cost
Async video platforms such as Loom, Vidyard, and loom-like internal tools have become standard for sales demos, engineering handoffs, and customer support. Unlike live video, the cost is not per attendee but per minute recorded, streamed, and stored. A 10-person team sending 20 three-minute videos per month creates 600 minutes of content. At $0.05 per minute for streaming and $0.02 per GB for storage, that seems cheap—until you add 50 users, longer tutorials, and 1080p retention over a year. Storage compounds quietly: 0.5 GB per hour of 1080p means 600 minutes is 5 GB, and after 12 months the storage bill can rival the streaming bill. This calculator exposes the full monthly cost picture so teams can choose between plans, set retention policies, and decide when to move heavy content to cheaper object storage.
How It Works
The tool multiplies your user count by videos per user and average duration to find total monthly minutes. It then splits that result into two cost streams: streaming cost (minutes × cost per minute) and storage cost (minutes converted to GB at 0.5 GB per hour, then multiplied by storage cost per GB). The sum is your estimated monthly platform spend. Change any input and you can see exactly where the money goes.
Formula & Calculation Logic
Total minutes = users × videosPerUser × avgDurationMinutes. Streaming cost = totalMinutes × costPerMinute. Storage GB = (totalMinutes / 60) × 0.5. Storage cost = storageGb × storageCostPerGb. Total cost = streaming cost + storage cost. The 0.5 GB per hour assumption reflects typical 1080p H.264 compression; 4K or heavily compressed videos will differ.
Step-by-Step Guide
- Step 1: Enter the number of users who will record or send videos.
- Step 2: Estimate how many videos each user sends per month.
- Step 3: Enter the average length of each video in minutes.
- Step 4: Input your platform's streaming cost per minute and storage cost per GB.
- Step 5: Review streaming, storage, and total monthly cost.
Example Calculations
- Scenario 1: 25 users each send 15 two-minute videos at $0.05/min streaming and $0.02/GB storage. Total minutes = 750; streaming = $37.50; storage = (750/60) × 0.5 × 0.02 = $0.13; total = $37.63.
- Scenario 2: 100 users each send 30 five-minute videos at $0.04/min and $0.025/GB. Total minutes = 15,000; streaming = $600; storage = (15,000/60) × 0.5 × 0.025 = $3.13; total = $603.13.
Common Use Cases
- Forecasting monthly spend for a sales team adopting async video outreach.
- Comparing Loom, Vidyard, and self-hosted video platforms.
- Planning storage retention policies to control long-term costs.
- Budgeting customer-support video libraries that grow over time.
Pro Tips
- Compress videos before upload; lower bitrates can cut storage by 30-50% with little quality loss.
- Set auto-deletion rules for internal videos older than 90 days.
- Negotiate per-minute rates once you exceed 10,000 monthly minutes.
- Move evergreen content to a CDN-backed object store instead of the async platform.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Only counting streaming cost and ignoring accumulating storage.
- Using 4K duration estimates with a 1080p storage assumption.
- Forgetting that every user adds multiplicatively, not additively.
- Not updating the estimate as the team scales past the first plan tier.
Why Use This Tool?
- Reveals the hidden storage component of async video bills.
- Helps finance teams budget accurately as headcount grows.
- Supports vendor comparisons using your actual usage profile.
- Informs retention and compression policies before costs spiral.