Pricing by feature
This reference lists the cost of each transaction type, Data Persistence storage, file transfer, and Events & Actions tier under PubNub's transaction-based pricing model.
See Pricing overview for when this model fits an application better than Monthly Active Users (MAUs) billing, and for how to move your account onto it.
Transactions
A transaction is one API request to the PubNub network. PubNub splits a request whose payload exceeds 2,048 bytes into 2,048-byte (2 KiB) parts and bills each part as its own transaction.
| Transaction type | Cost per unit | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Replicated transaction | $0.000123 | Any API call, other than one with its own transaction type below, that replicates data to other Points of Presence, for example publishing a message. |
| Edge transaction | $0.000033 | Any API call, other than one with its own transaction type below, that only affects a single region, for example subscribing to a channel. |
| Message Action transaction | $0.000025 | A call to the Message Actions API. |
| Signal transaction | $0.000008 | A call to the Signal API. |
| Function execution | $0.000025 | One execution of a Function. |
For the full breakdown of which API calls fall into each category, see Transaction classification on the PubNub website.
Data Persistence and Files
PubNub bills storage and transfer through Message Persistence, App Context, and Files separately from transactions:
| Item | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Data Persistence | $8/GB/month | Stored data for Message Persistence, App Context, and any other feature that persists data on your keyset. Billed in addition to the transaction that wrote the data. |
| File Transfer | File Transfer costs $0.20/GB, billed on egress (file downloads) only; uploads aren't billed | The first 1 GB of File Transfer egress in a calendar month is free. |
| File Storage | File Storage costs $0.03/GB/month, billed on the average amount of file data stored across the month, sampled hourly rather than at peak | The first 1 GB of File Storage is free. |
Some contracts signed before October 2025 are billed at a flat $0.50/GB for both File Transfer and File Storage instead of the per-GB rates. Check your contract or the billing page in the Admin Portal if you're unsure which applies to your account.
Events & Actions
Events & Actions billing combines a fixed monthly fee per tier with a per-event-ingested rate that drops at higher tiers:
| Intro | Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3 | Tier 4 | Tier 5 | Tier 6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | $50 | $100 | $500 | $1,000 | $2,000 | $4,000 | Custom |
| Price per 1M events ingested | $25 | $25 | $20 | $15 | $10 | $8 | Custom |
Events & Actions calculates the billable count of ingested events by multiplying the messages published to a keyset by the number of active event listeners on that keyset, whether or not an event matches a filter or triggers an action. The Free plan includes a fixed monthly allowance of ingested events at no charge. See Plan comparison for the exact allowance and the listener and action limits per tier.
PubNub automatically upgrades an Events & Actions account to the next tier if it exceeds the current tier's monthly event limit. Changing an Events & Actions tier manually requires 30 days' written notice to PubNub, and the change takes effect the following month.Next steps
- Pricing overview. The MAU model, plan comparison, and when transaction-based pricing fits better.
- Plan comparison. Which features, keysets, retention, and Events & Actions limits each plan includes.
- API limits. The soft and hard limits every API enforces, independent of pricing model.
- Events & Actions. Configure event listeners and actions.