For years, moving live video production to the cloud has promised a faster, lower cost and more flexible way to produce content.

No dedicated hardware. No permanent control room. No need to build an entire production infrastructure around the handful of days each year when you need maximum capacity.

Yet the way live production technology is sold hasn’t always kept pace.

Complex quotes, long-term commitments and fixed costs can make it difficult to answer what should be a relatively straightforward question:

How much will it cost to produce my live event?

At Grabyo, we think cloud production should be priced like the cloud itself: flexible, scalable and based on what you actually use.

That’s why we’ve made our pricing public.

What does cloud live production cost?

The short answer is: it depends on what you’re producing.

Streaming a single feed to multiple destinations has different requirements to producing a multi-camera sports broadcast with graphics, replay, remote commentators and multiple outputs.

But understanding the starting point shouldn’t require a sales call.

With Grabyo, live streaming starts from $10 per running hour, remote commentary from $20 per hour, and broadcast-grade multi-camera production from $50 per running hour.

Live clipping and editing can also be purchased on demand or as an Always On service, while additional capabilities such as AI-powered vertical tracking and captions can be added depending on the workflow.

You can see the full breakdown on our pricing and packaging page.

The principle behind it is simple:

Pay for the production capability you need, when you need it.

Why traditional live production costs are difficult to scale

Traditional production infrastructure is typically designed around peak requirements.

If your biggest event of the year requires ten concurrent live broadcasts, each with twelve sources, multiple outputs, replay, graphics and a large production team, your infrastructure needs to be capable of handling it.

Even if most of the year it isn’t being used.

That can mean investing in hardware, control rooms and capacity that spends a significant amount of time sitting idle. Scaling up can require additional infrastructure, while launching a new production may mean another round of capex investment.

Cloud production changes that equation.

Instead of asking:

“What infrastructure do we need to own?”

Production teams can ask:

“Which resources do we need for this production?”

When the production starts, those resources are available. When it finishes, they can be spun down in an instant. 

The technology scales with the production. We believe the commercial model should too.

Pay for production hours, not idle hardware

Grabyo’s usage-based pricing is built around running hours.

A production hour is simply an hour in which your Grabyo control room or DVR is live. When you spin them down, the meter stops.

That creates a very different cost model for organisations producing live content.

A sports federation producing a tournament over one weekend doesn’t necessarily need the same commercial model as a broadcaster operating throughout the year. A production company covering ten events shouldn’t have to buy infrastructure based on what it might need for its eleventh.

Instead, the costs follow usage and the needs of the production team.

One platform, different ways to buy

Usage-based pricing doesn’t mean every organisation needs to buy live production technology in exactly the same way.

Predictability matters too.

That’s why Grabyo supports three primary commercial models.

Per Event

For a one-off production, tournament, campaign or short-term project, you can purchase the capacity you need for that event.

This gives teams access to cloud production without needing to build a long-term technology commitment, or license subscription,around a short-term requirement.

Usage Commitment

For organisations producing regularly throughout the year, committing to a bundle of production hours provides greater volume discounts.

This works particularly well for sports leagues, broadcasters, production companies and other organisations where production requirements fluctuate across a season or calendar.

The added benefit of this model is that it scales on-demand, so production teams can add capacity whenever they need it, and only pay for what they use. 

Always On

For continuous workflows, a fixed monthly price can make more commercial sense than usage-based metering. 

Always On provides unlimited live recording per cloud DVR for Grabyo Studio, while Grabyo Live packages can also support continuous production requirements.

Different subscription models. The same underlying platform.

What should you consider when calculating live production costs?

The hourly cost of the production platform is only part of the picture.

When comparing traditional, on-premise and cloud production workflows, it’s worth considering the total cost of producing the content.

That can include:

• Production hardware and infrastructure
• Maintenance and upgrades 
• Reliable access to CPU/GPU for new hardware
• Control room or facility costs
• Travel and accommodation
• Production crew requirements
• Connectivity and distribution
• Storage and recording
• Additional versions and outputs
• Clipping and editing workflows
• Support requirements

This is where cloud production can create value beyond replacing hardware with software.

Remote production can enable operators, commentators and other production staff to work from different locations. A single production can create outputs for multiple platforms. Live content can move directly into clipping and editing workflows without being transferred between separate systems.

The question becomes less about the cost of the software itself and more about how much it costs to create every piece of content around an event.

Scaling output without scaling production costs at the same rate

Audience fragmentation makes this a major consideration for production budgets today. 

A single live event may now need to serve a traditional 16:9 broadcast, streaming platforms, social channels, vertical audiences and potentially different languages or regions.

Historically, creating more versions of a live programme often meant adding more production resources.

Cloud workflows allow much of that infrastructure to be scaled on demand, and spun down when the production is complete. Multiple versions of a broadcast can be produced and streamed from the same control room, adding more commercial value using shared infrastructure and software-based localisation.

With Grabyo, teams can create multiple outputs from the same production environment, clip live moments in real time and add capabilities such as AI-assisted vertical reframing when required.

Instead of building a separate workflow for every destination, production teams can create more from the infrastructure they’re already running.

Making live production pricing easier to understand

Moving production to the cloud shouldn’t mean replacing one complicated commercial model with another.

If cloud technology can be provisioned when it’s needed, scaled according to demand and switched off when it isn’t being used, its pricing should reflect those same principles.

That’s why we’ve made Grabyo’s pricing transparent.

Whether you’re looking to stream a single feed, bring in remote commentators, produce a multi-camera broadcast or create clips from live content, you can now see where the costs start and how the different packages compare before speaking to us.

Because understanding what a production might cost shouldn’t be the final stage of the conversation.

It should be one of the first.

Explore Grabyo pricing and packaging to compare live production, streaming, remote commentary and live clipping options.

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