Pricing & metering

Usage-based, metered per call — the same shape as a modern API platform, with the unit adapted to video. You only pay for what you process.

How metering works

Billed per minute of video processed, or per request for lookups. Rounded up to the nearest second. Processing APIs (Shield, Intelligence, Transcription, Tagging, Model ID) bill per minute of video; lookups (Fingerprint match, §2257) bill per request.

Like token metering, for video

If you’ve billed against the Claude API, the model is familiar: a metered per-unit rate, usage tiers, and committed-use discounts — the unit here is a minute of video instead of a token.

What you’re billed on

Under the hood these are GPU inference jobs, so compute is the real cost — but you’re never billed in raw GPU-seconds. The price is a stable proxy: a minute of video. Each API carries a different per-minute rate because each uses a different amount of GPU (a transcription pass is light; a full intelligence pass is heavy), so compute cost is baked into the rate, not exposed as a meter. Your cost is predictable before you make the call.

Per-call rates

Shieldper min$0.04Included with Ultimate

Scene Intelligenceper min$0.06Full metadata pass

Transcriptionper min$0.02Per language track

Taggingper min$0.01Bulk back-catalog tier

Model IDper min$0.03

Fingerprint · indexper min$0.01One-time per asset

Fingerprint · matchper req$0.002Catalog lookup

§2257 lookupper req$0.001Record status check

Illustrative list prices, pending finance sign-off. Test-mode (jw_test_) keys are intended to be non-billable.

Metering unit — under review

Video-length passes (Shield, Scene Intelligence, Transcription, Model ID) bill per minute. We’re reviewing whether discrete, request-shaped operations — Tagging and Fingerprint · index — should bill per request instead, matching §2257 lookup and Fingerprint · match. Rates here are not final.

Volume tiers

Rates step down automatically as monthly volume grows; the top band is a committed-use annual contract.

0 – 10,000 min / mo

Pay as you go

List price

10,000 – 100,000 min

Automatic volume tier

−20%

100,000+ min

Committed-use, annual

Custom

Included with Ultimate

Every Ultimate scene includes its Shield scan at no extra metered cost. Standalone PAYG is for teams that want a single API against content they host themselves — available on any plan, billed only by usage.

Rate limits ≠ quota

Rate limit — requests per minute (concurrency). Hit it and you get a 429 with Retry-After. See Errors & limits.
Quota / metering — your dollar usage. Prepay with credits + auto-reload, or settle monthly. Set a budget alert so spend never surprises you.

Track usage

Live usage, per-API breakdown, and budget alerts live in Settings → Developers. Every metered call also appears on your monthly invoice, grouped by API and site.