Daily pricing

About

Daily is a developer-first platform for real-time voice, video, and AI, built from the ground up on WebRTC. Its core product is a global low-latency Video SDK and WebRTC infrastructure used to embed video calls, audio rooms, live streaming, and recording into applications. Daily is also the company behind Pipecat, the 100% open-source framework for building real-time conversational voice and multimodal AI agents — and Pipecat Cloud, the managed platform for deploying those agents at scale, became generally available in January 2026.

Daily has raised roughly $62M in total funding across five rounds, including a $40M Series B in November 2021 led by Renegade Partners. Third-party trackers estimate annual recurring revenue in the mid-single-digit millions (~$6M per Latka, unverified by the company). The company is privately held and sells almost entirely through a self-serve, pay-as-you-go motion, with sales-led contracts for high-volume and regulated customers.

For the most current information, visit Daily.

Pricing summary : How Daily’s pricing model works

Daily is pure pay-as-you-go — there are no subscription tiers, no per-seat fees, and no monthly minimums for self-serve customers. The headline meter is the participant-minute: every account gets 10,000 free video or audio minutes per month, after which calls cost $0.004 per participant-minute (audio-only is just $0.00099). HD is included at no surcharge.

Everything beyond the call itself is metered à la carte: cloud recording $0.01349/min, audio-only recording $0.005/min, storage $0.003/min, RTMP live streaming $0.015/min, HLS $0.03/min, realtime transcription $0.0059/unmuted-participant-min (post-call $0.0043/recorded-min), plus SIP ($0.003–$0.02/min) and PSTN ($0.018–$0.03/min) telephony. Volume discounts are automatic and published: a graduated schedule drops the per-minute rate from $0.004 to as low as $0.0015 (about 63% off) at 50M+ minutes/month.

Pipecat Cloud runs on a parallel meter — the running-agent-minute. Active agents bill by instance size (agent-1x $0.01/min, agent-2x $0.02, agent-3x $0.03), reserved instances run $0.0005–$0.0015/min, 1:1 WebRTC voice transport is free, and inference (STT/TTS/LLM across 80+ providers) is bring-your-own-key or enterprise-bundled.

What makes this different: Daily commits hard to transparent, automatic usage pricing — the full rate card and every volume-discount tier are published, so a developer can model their bill to the penny without talking to sales. That is rare in WebRTC/CPaaS, where competitors like Twilio and Agora lean on opaque, negotiated enterprise deals.

Pricing by product

Sales motions across products: self-serve PLG for everything (instant signup, no card, 10K free min/mo); sales-led for high-volume custom pricing (Daily customizes for consistent 500K+ participant-min/month), HIPAA-compliant healthcare video, and Pipecat Cloud enterprise integrated billing.

Hidden costs : What Daily users actually pay

The $0.004/min call rate is only the base layer. Real bills are driven by the add-on meters that stack on top of every minute — recording, streaming, and transcription each have their own per-minute charge, so a recorded, transcribed video call can cost several times the raw call rate. Illustrative monthly estimate for a small production app running ~100,000 participant-minutes with recording and realtime transcription on half of them:

Other things to budget for: recording and transcription are the expensive meters — recording at $0.01349/min is more than 3x the call rate, so always-on recording dominates the bill. Telephony (PSTN dial-out up to $0.03/min) and HLS streaming ($0.03/min) are also pricey relative to plain calls. For Pipecat Cloud, the agent-minute is separate from any inference cost — you still pay your STT/TTS/LLM providers (or buy enterprise-bundled inference).

Want to estimate your own Daily bill? Use the Daily pricing calculator to model your costs based on usage patterns.

Pricing evolution : Daily pricing history and changes

Cadence

Tracked range: 2022–present. Core per-minute call rates ($0.004 video / $0.00099 audio) have held steady; the major recent change is the addition of the Pipecat Cloud agent meter. Direct Wayback fetch was blocked, so historical detail relies on Daily’s own pricing-announcement and GA blog posts.

Notable changes

• 2022-06 — Daily retires subscription plans for pure pay-as-you-go: 10,000 free video/audio minutes per month, no card required, automatic volume discounts, no HD surcharge, plus a one-time credit for premium add-ons on card entry.
• 2022-11 — Adds support for 100,000-person interactive live streams, expanding the streaming product.
• 2024–2025 — The open-source Pipecat framework becomes a de-facto standard for real-time voice agents, repositioning Daily as voice-AI infrastructure while the core WebRTC rate card stays flat.
• 2026-01 — Pipecat Cloud reaches general availability: managed deployment for Pipecat agents billed per running-agent-minute ($0.01–$0.03 active, reserved from $0.0005), free 1:1 WebRTC voice transport, and enterprise integrated inference billing.

What’s unique : Daily’s distinctive pricing mechanics

1. Fully published rate card with automatic volume discounts. Daily lists every meter and every discount tier publicly — the call rate steps down through seven graduated bands (0% under 100K min, up to 63% off at 50M+). A developer can model their entire bill without contacting sales, which is rare in the CPaaS/WebRTC category.

2. Two parallel usage meters: participant-minute and agent-minute. The classic Video SDK bills the participant-minute; Pipecat Cloud bills the running-agent-minute by instance size. Daily monetizes both the media plane (calls) and the compute plane (the AI agent runtime) on clean, separate per-minute meters.

3. Open-source framework as the funnel, managed cloud as the meter. Pipecat is 100% open source and free to self-host; Pipecat Cloud sells the managed runtime, reserved capacity, and bundled inference. The free OSS core drives adoption while the hosted agent-minute captures revenue — and inference stays bring-your-own-key, keeping Daily’s meter narrow and honest.

Strengths & weaknesses

Billing UX : Daily billing controls and transparency

• Billing controls — Self-serve signup with no credit card and 10,000 free minutes each month; pay-as-you-go with no contracts or minimums for self-serve. Pipecat Cloud is free to start. High-volume customers can negotiate custom rates above ~500K min/month.
• Usage visibility — Usage and billing dashboards track participant-minutes and add-on consumption; the published rate card and graduated discount table let customers forecast costs precisely. Daily’s blog explicitly frames pricing around simplicity and “fastest time to value.”
• Payment options — Standard card-based self-serve checkout; HD and core features unlocked without upsell. Enterprise customers get invoiced contracts, HIPAA-compliant configurations, and optional integrated inference billing that bundles STT/TTS/LLM into one invoice.

Strategic wins : Why Daily’s pricing decisions worked

1. Killing subscriptions for transparent usage

The 2022 shift to pure pay-as-you-go with a fully published rate card removed friction for developers who hate negotiating CPaaS contracts. Pricing became a feature: you can estimate your bill before signing up. See how AI companies structure pricing.

2. Open source as the top-of-funnel

Open-sourcing Pipecat turned Daily into the default infrastructure choice for real-time voice agents. The free framework drives adoption; Pipecat Cloud monetizes the managed runtime on a clean per-agent-minute meter. Related: outcome-based pricing trends.

3. Picking meters buyers already understand

The participant-minute and agent-minute map directly to what developers can measure and predict, making the meter intuitive — and the automatic volume discounts reward growth without a renegotiation. See choosing the right usage metric.

Areas to improve : Gaps in Daily’s pricing approach

1. Add-on meters can surprise buyers

Recording, transcription, and streaming each carry their own per-minute charge that stacks on the base call rate, so an always-recorded workload can cost several times what the headline $0.004 implies. Clearer worked examples on the pricing page would reduce bill shock.

2. Forecasting spiky real-time workloads

Pure per-minute billing is hard to forecast for bursty consumer apps where concurrency spikes unpredictably. Optional spend caps or budget alerts surfaced more prominently would help teams manage unpredictable months.

3. Best pricing still requires sales

While the self-serve rate card is transparent, the deepest discounts and custom terms require contacting sales above ~500K min/month — so the largest buyers still negotiate, partially undercutting the “no sales needed” promise.

Key takeaways

1. Transparency can be a pricing weapon. Daily publishes its full rate card and every volume-discount tier, letting developers self-serve in a category dominated by opaque negotiated deals.
2. Pure usage suits real-time infrastructure. The participant-minute is a clean, predictable meter that scales with value delivered and needs no seats or subscriptions.
3. Open source is the funnel; the managed runtime is the meter. Pipecat (free, OSS) drives adoption while Pipecat Cloud monetizes the hosted agent-minute.
4. Watch the stacking add-ons. Recording and transcription each have their own per-minute price, so the real bill can run several times the base call rate.
5. Automatic discounts beat renegotiation. Graduated, published volume tiers reward growth without forcing customers back to the sales table for routine scaling.

UBP implications

1. Pure pay-as-you-go works when the meter is legible. Per-participant-minute and per-agent-minute are units buyers already count, which makes a no-subscription model credible. See usage-based pricing strategy.
2. Publish the full rate card, including discounts. Daily’s automatic graduated discounts remove the renegotiation tax and turn transparency into a differentiator versus opaque CPaaS incumbents.
3. Separate meters for media and compute. Splitting the participant-minute (media) from the agent-minute (AI runtime) lets a platform monetize a new value plane cleanly without distorting the original meter. See choosing the right usage metric.

Sources

• Daily pricing hub — live capture (accessed 2026-06-09)
• Daily Video SDK pricing (accessed 2026-06-09)
• Daily WebRTC infrastructure pricing (accessed 2026-06-09)
• Pipecat Cloud pricing (accessed 2026-06-09)
• Daily: announcing our new pricing — pay-as-you-go, June 2022 (accessed 2026-06-09)
• Pipecat Cloud is now generally available (accessed 2026-06-09)
• Daily: announcing our $40M Series B (accessed 2026-06-09)
• Pipecat open-source framework (accessed 2026-06-09)

Bottom line

Daily is a developer-first WebRTC platform that bills purely pay-as-you-go: video/audio calls cost $0.004 per participant-minute after 10,000 free minutes a month, with every add-on (recording $0.01349, RTMP $0.015, transcription $0.0059) metered separately and automatic graduated volume discounts down to $0.0015/min at scale. As the company behind the open-source Pipecat framework, Daily extended the same usage philosophy to voice AI with Pipecat Cloud (GA January 2026), billing per running-agent-minute from $0.01. Its bet — a fully published rate card in an opaque CPaaS category — makes pricing a self-serve feature, though stacking add-on meters mean real bills can run well above the headline rate. Browse the pricing blueprint for more fully-researched company profiles.

Want to compare Daily against other real-time voice and infrastructure companies? Browse the pricing blueprint.

Pricing timeline : Major events on a vertical axis

Each milestone below corresponds to a public pricing change, product launch, or material adjustment. Major events use a filled marker; minor adjustments use a faded one.

Current pay-as-you-go rate card

Jun 2026

Live rate card: video/audio $0.004/participant-min (10K free/mo), audio-only $0.00099, recording $0.01349, RTMP $0.015, HLS $0.03, realtime transcription $0.0059. Graduated volume discounts to $0.0015/min (63% off) at 50M+ min. Pipecat Cloud agents $0.01–$0.03/min active.

Pipecat Cloud GA — per-running-agent billing

Jan 2026

Daily launched Pipecat Cloud into general availability: a managed platform for deploying open-source Pipecat voice agents, billed per running-agent-minute by instance size (agent-1x $0.01/min up to agent-3x $0.03/min), with reserved instances from $0.0005/min and free 1:1 WebRTC voice transport.

Shift to pure pay-as-you-go + 10K free minutes

Jun 2022

Daily retired subscription plans for a usage-based pay-as-you-go model: 10,000 free video or audio minutes per month, no card required, automatic volume discounts that scale with growth, and no surcharge for HD. A one-time credit was offered for premium add-ons on card entry.