Daily Usage Metering, Add-On Fees & Real Spend: 2026 Guide
Daily is a usage-priced video API from $0.004 a participant-minute, after 10,000 free minutes a month. The costs that stack are recording, storage and telephony, each on its own meter. Here is the real spend.
Typical monthly cost
$0 + usage
10,000 free participant-minutes a month, then $0.004 per video minute; flat support tiers start at $250
Hidden fees
Per-minute stack
Recording, storage and telephony each meter separately on top of participant-minutes
Free tier
Real
Every account gets 10,000 free participant-minutes each month
Cost transparency
High
scores 5 of 6 on our transparency checklist
Daily cost, metered by the minute
High· Verified July 15, 2026Daily is a usage-priced video API that costs $0.004 per participant-minute for video and $0.00099 for audio-only as of July 15, 2026, after 10,000 free participant-minutes every account gets each month. There are no per-seat plans; you pay for minutes used, and the rate falls to $0.0015 past 50 million minutes a month. Recording, storage and telephony each carry their own meter on top, and paid support is flat: $250, $1,900 or $3,900 a month. Model the extras, not the base minute alone.
- Free allowance10,000 min/mo
- Video participant-minute$0.004
- Audio-only minute$0.00099
- Recording$0.01349/min
- Volume video rate$0.0015/min
- Advanced Support$250/mo
Daily starts free and then bills $0.004 a participant-minute, so the $16.99 median lowest-paid plan across the 19 video conferencing tools we track does not map to it. It is infrastructure, not a seat.
What Daily's free allowance actually covers
Daily's free tier is a real allowance, not a trial clock. Every account gets 10,000 participant-minutes each month at no cost, with HD video, email and chat support, and one-day retention on metrics and logs. That is enough to build and test a product, and enough to run a small live workload before any bill appears.
The limits are retention and support, not a hard paywall. Logs keep for a day, there is no priority support, and HIPAA eligibility is not on the free plan. The moment your usage clears 10,000 minutes, video bills at $0.004 a participant-minute, which is where real modeling starts. Comparing Daily to a per-seat meeting tool on free plans misses the point, because it is infrastructure priced by the minute. For hosted rivals and their seat prices, the Daily alternatives page sets them out.
How to genuinely lower a Daily bill
Daily runs no promo codes, since it is usage-priced infrastructure, so the savings are engineered rather than negotiated. The base rate is already low, and the biggest lever is not paying for minutes and meters you do not need. Audio-only calls at $0.00099 are a quarter of the video rate, and turning recording off where it adds nothing removes a whole separate meter.
Volume is the built-in discount. The video rate falls from $0.004 to $0.0015 a minute past 50 million minutes a month, and large workloads negotiate committed-use rates below the published card. Daily lists no student or nonprofit program as of July 2026, and compliance runs through its paid support tiers. If your usage is large or growing, the usage tactics below matter more than any promo would.
Volume rates cut the per-minute price
The published video rate drops from $0.004 to $0.0015 a minute past 50 million minutes a month. Large workloads can negotiate committed-use pricing below the card, so scale itself is the main discount on Daily.
Audio-only and no-record are cheaper
Audio-only at $0.00099 is roughly a quarter of the video rate, and skipping recording removes a $0.01349-per-minute meter entirely. Choosing the lightest mode that fits each call is a real, ongoing saving.
Committed-use deals through sales
Beyond the volume tier, a high-usage product can negotiate a committed monthly-minute rate with Daily directly. Promising a floor of usage is the lever that pulls the per-minute price below the public $0.004.
How to keep Daily usage costs low
The Daily bill is engineered, not negotiated, so the levers are in how you build. Because the base rate is low and everything else meters separately, the biggest savings come from choosing the lightest call mode and turning off meters you do not need.
Three moves shape most Daily workloads, and the first two are pure engineering decisions.
Use audio-only where video is not needed
- Target
- Any product
- Argument
- Audio-only at $0.00099 a minute is about a quarter of the $0.004 video rate. For calls that do not need faces, defaulting to audio cuts the core meter by three quarters, which compounds fast across a high-minute product.
Record and store deliberately
- Target
- Recording-heavy workloads
- Argument
- Recording adds $0.01349 a minute plus $0.003 storage, a separate meter that can rival the call cost. Record only what you keep, and prune storage, rather than recording every session by default and paying to store it forever.
Trade a minute floor for a rate
- Target
- High-minute products
- Argument
- Past 50 million minutes the rate drops to $0.0015, and committed-use deals go lower. If your usage is large and predictable, negotiate a committed monthly-minute rate rather than paying the public $0.004 on every minute.
Timing a committed Daily rate
There is no billing season on a usage API, so the timing that matters is your workload becoming predictable. A committed-use rate only helps once your monthly minutes are steady enough to promise a floor, and locking one before that risks paying for volume you do not reach. Build on the free allowance and pay-as-you-go until the pattern is clear.
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Pro tip: Run on the 10,000-minute free allowance and metered rate until a few months show your real minute curve. Commit a volume rate only once that curve is steady, so the floor you promise matches usage you will actually hit.
What is negotiable on Daily and what is not
Daily is usage-priced, so most of the card is fixed and the real negotiation is a committed-use rate at volume. The published per-meter prices hold until your scale earns a custom deal.
Usually negotiable
- Committed-use per-minute rate at volumeHIGH
- Enterprise support and BAA termsMEDIUM
- Monthly-minute floor and overage termsMEDIUM
- Payment terms on a large contractLOW
Rarely negotiable
- The published $0.004 per-minute video rate
- Per-minute recording, storage and telephony rates
- The 10,000-minute free allowance
- HIPAA sitting on the paid support tiers
Daily negotiation email generator
Daily negotiation is a committed-use conversation, where promising a floor of monthly minutes earns a rate below the public card. Give this draft your expected minute volume and which meters you use, and it frames the request around rival costs we track. Take it to Daily's sales team and lead with your monthly-minute volume. That figure, rather than a seat count, is what a committed-use rate is priced against.
negotiated per-minute rate below $0.004 at volume
Hi Daily team, I lead tooling decisions at [Your company], and we are evaluating Daily Team seats for a team of 10-50 people. As part of this evaluation we are also looking at Whereby, which comes in at $10.99/host/mo, and Google Meet at $8.40/user/mo. Can you help us understand the value difference at your current rates? We are ready to commit to an annual term. What is the best rate you can offer on annual billing, and can you cap the renewal price in the contract? We are aiming to sign before the end of this quarter, and budget sign-off is already in place. Could you share a proposal covering the per-seat or per-credit rate, the renewal terms, and any programs we qualify for? Best regards, [Your name] [Your company]
Send it Tuesday to Thursday, and follow up once after 3 business days.
Before you send
- Estimate your monthly participant-minutes first, since that is the unit a committed-use rate is priced on.
- List the meters you actually use, recording, telephony and storage, so the quote reflects real workload.
- Name a rival with a real price. The generator fills Whereby and Google Meet figures in for you.
- Ask for a committed-use per-minute rate below $0.004 tied to a monthly-minute floor, in writing.
- If you need HIPAA, raise it early, since compliance sits on the paid support tiers.
- Send midweek, then give it a few days before a single follow-up.
Daily cost mistakes that catch builders out
Most Daily surprises come from modeling the base rate and forgetting the meters on top. A realistic usage estimate heads off every one of them.
Budgeting from $0.004 alone. Recording, storage and telephony each add a separate meter that can rival the call cost.
Recording everything by default. At $0.01349 a minute plus storage, habitual recording quietly doubles a call's cost.
Using video where audio would do. Audio-only is a quarter of the price, so faces you do not need are wasted minutes.
Assuming free covers production. The 10,000-minute allowance is for building and small workloads, not a live product at scale.
Expecting HIPAA on pay-as-you-go. Compliance attaches to the paid support tiers, so a telehealth product must budget a tier plus the add-on.
Daily alternatives to price against
Daily competes on build cost, so leverage is knowing what a hosted or embeddable rival would run before you commit volume. The three below are pulled from prices we check, covering the video tools a Daily buyer might weigh against building on the API. Prototype against one so the comparison is grounded. The fuller set lives on the Daily alternatives page.
Whereby
embeddable rooms, $9.12/host annual
$10.99/mo
Embeddable browser rooms with an API, the closest match if you were considering Daily mainly to embed video without deep customization.
Cal.com (Cal Video)
$12/user annual, open source
$16/mo
Open-source scheduling with built-in video, a lighter path when you need booked calls rather than a fully custom video pipeline.
Google Meet
$7/mo billed annually
$8.40/mo
A managed meeting seat if you do not actually need to build. The simplest option when engineering time is the real constraint.
Script“We can build on Daily at $0.004 a minute or embed Whereby at $9.12 a host. What committed-use rate can Daily offer against that for our monthly volume?”
Is Daily worth it? A builder's read
Daily is priced the way infrastructure should be: a low base rate, a real free allowance, and meters you only pay when you use. For a product team building custom video rather than buying seats, that model is honest and often cheaper than a per-seat tool stretched into an app. Cost transparency is high, because every meter is published.
The discipline is in the stack. The $0.004 base rate is easy to model; the recording, storage and telephony meters on top are what turn a cheap call into an expensive one. And compliance is not a checkbox, it sits on the paid support tiers, so a regulated product carries that cost from the start.
So default to the lightest call mode, record and store deliberately, and negotiate a committed-use rate only once your minutes are steady. The full meter list is published on the Daily plans page. This guide is about paying for the minutes and meters you actually use, not the ones you left running.
Daily pricing and discount FAQ
How much does Daily cost?
+
Daily is a usage-priced video API, not a per-seat plan. Every account gets 10,000 free participant-minutes a month, then video bills at $0.004 per participant-minute and audio-only at $0.00099. Past 50 million minutes a month the video rate falls to $0.0015. On top of minutes, recording, storage and telephony each meter separately, and paid support is flat at $250, $1,900 or $3,900 a month. So your cost is driven by minutes used and which extra meters you turn on, not a fixed subscription.
How does Daily's free tier work?
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Every Daily account includes 10,000 free participant-minutes each month, with HD video, email and chat support, and one-day retention on metrics and logs. It is a genuine recurring allowance rather than a time-limited trial, so it is enough to build and test a product and even run a small live workload. The limits are retention and support depth, plus no HIPAA eligibility on the free plan. Once your usage clears 10,000 minutes in a month, video bills at $0.004 a participant-minute from there.
What are Daily's hidden costs?
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The base $0.004 minute rate is only part of the bill. Recording is a separate meter at $0.01349 per recorded minute plus $0.003 a minute of storage. Telephony meters too: PSTN dial-in and dial-out run $0.018 to $0.03 a minute, and a SIP call transfer is $0.20 per event. HIPAA compliance attaches to the paid support tiers rather than the free plan. So a product that records everything and bridges to phones can pay far more in meters than in base call minutes, which is the part to model carefully.
How are Daily participant-minutes counted?
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A participant-minute is one person connected for one minute. So a call with two people for 30 minutes uses 60 participant-minutes, and a webinar with 100 viewers for an hour uses 6,000. This is why cost scales with both audience size and call length, not with a seat count. Video minutes bill at $0.004 and audio-only at $0.00099, so a large or long session adds up quickly once you pass the 10,000 free minutes each account gets every month.
Is Daily cheaper than building on a per-seat tool?
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It depends on your workload shape. Daily's usage model means you pay only for the minutes you actually run, which is cheaper than per-seat licensing for products with variable or bursty traffic. A per-seat tool makes more sense when usage is steady and you would otherwise pay for a lot of idle minutes. The honest comparison is to model your real participant-minutes, including recording and telephony, against the seat cost of a hosted rival for the same workload.
Does Daily support HIPAA compliance?
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Yes, but not on the free or pay-as-you-go plan alone. HIPAA compliance, including a signed BAA and end-to-end encryption, is a $500-a-month Healthcare add-on that attaches to the paid support tiers rather than the free usage plan. So a telehealth product cannot become compliant on metered minutes by itself; it needs a paid support tier plus the compliance package. Budget both from the start if you handle protected health information, because retrofitting compliance later is more disruptive than planning for the tier up front.
Can Daily rates be negotiated?
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At volume, yes, through a committed-use deal. The published per-minute and per-meter rates are fixed for ordinary usage, but the video rate already steps down from $0.004 to $0.0015 past 50 million minutes a month. Beyond that, a high-usage product can negotiate a committed monthly-minute rate below the public card by promising a floor of usage. Enterprise support and BAA terms are also on the table. The lever is predictable scale: the more minutes you can commit to, the lower the per-minute rate you can ask for.
What is the cheapest way to build on Daily?
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Default to the lightest call mode that fits: audio-only at $0.00099 is a quarter of the video rate, so use it wherever faces are not needed. Record and store deliberately rather than capturing every session, since recording is a separate $0.01349-a-minute meter. Lean on the 10,000-minute free allowance during development. Once your usage is large and steady, negotiate a committed-use rate below $0.004. Those choices keep a Daily bill tied to the minutes and meters your product truly needs.
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Sources & verification
| Source | What was checked | Last checked |
|---|---|---|
| Daily official pricing | Verified plan prices, renewal rates and credit allowances | July 15, 2026 |
| Daily website | Official vendor website | July 15, 2026 |
| Daily pricing on ComparEdge | Current prices for every plan, with the cost calculator | July 15, 2026 |
Every fact on this Daily pricing page is tied to a named source and a verification date. Freshness-sensitive figures trace to the sources above; verify against the vendor before relying on them.