There are four categories of PubNub usage charges:
Replicated Transactions are API calls that result in information replicating across multiple PubNub Points-of-Presence (PoP), such as publishing a message.
Edge Transactions are API calls that interact with a single PubNub PoP, such as receiving a published message via a Subscribe API call.
Functions Executions are counted for each execution of a PubNub Function. Learn more about Functions.
Data Persistence is charged per GB per month for API calls that store data into PubNub, such as Storage & Playback, the Key/Value store, and others. Read More.
To learn more about all Replicated and Edge Transactions, please visit the Transaction Classification Page.
The PubNub free plan includes 1M free transactions per month (comprised of any combination of Replicated, Edge, and Function Executions) and 1 GB free Data Persistence per month.
Example 1
A chat application that serves 100,000 customers per month, each of whom on average use two ten-minute chat sessions, which include 20 messages, averaging 1KB in payload, in each direction between customer and operator.
For each session:
- 1 Edge Transaction to open the session between the client and PubNub
- 20 Edge Transactions for receiving 20 messages (subscribing to messages)
- 20 Replicated Transactions for 20 messages (publishing messages)
- 40KB of Data Persistence for the 40 messages (persisting the data)
- 1 Edge transaction to close the session
- Total: 22 Edge Transactions; 20 Replicated Transactions; 40KB written to Storage & Playback (Data Persistence)
Total cost:
- 100,000 users with two session per month = 200,000 sessions
- Total: 4.4M Edge Transactions, 4M Replicated Transactions, 8GB written to Storage & Playback
- Total Cost:
- Edge: 4.4M * $0.000020= $88
- Replicated: 4M * $0.000075=$300
- Data Persistence: 8GB * $8 = $64
- Grand total: $452/month
Example 2
Taxi dispatch company with 500 cabs that can be hailed through a smartphone. When a user makes a request for a ride the backend will check which drivers are online by using the here_now() call. Once the user is matched with a driver, the cab location is published twice a minute to the user. On average, a ride lasts for 15 minutes.
For each session:
- 1 Edge Transaction per mobile to open the connection to PubNub
- 1 Edge Transaction per ride request to determine online drivers
- 30 Replicated Transactions per ride - publishing Lat/long from cab phone to rider
- 30 Edge Transactions per ride - rider subscribing to lat/long information during the ride.
- 1 edge call per mobile device to close the connection to PubNub
For each ride
- 35 Edge Transactions
- 30 Replicated Transactions
Total cost per ride
- Edge : $0.0007
- Replicated : $0.00225
- Total cost : $0.00295
Technical Details
What are Transactions? How are they measured? ¶
Transactions are API requests that are made to the PubNub network. When you make an API call to PubNub, we count that as a transaction.
Each transaction can consist of up to a 2048 byte payload. Since payloads up to 32KB are supported, larger Transactions are counted as multiple Transactions, where the payload is divided into 2048 bytes buckets.
Transactions may be designated as either Replicated or Edge.
How are Transactions different from messages? ¶
Transactions are API requests made to the PubNub network. This includes messages sent and received using Publish and Subscribe APIs.
What are Replicated Transactions? ¶
What are Edge Transactions? ¶
How are PubNub Webhooks/Callbacks charged? ¶
If you are using PubNub webhooks/callbacks to receive PubNub events on your backend, each webhook call is counted as an Edge Transaction. For instance, if PubNub makes 5 calls to your backend with Presence information, with payload sizes 2KB each, that is counted as 5 Edge calls towards your total Transaction volume.
This is irrespective of the type of webhook you have set - Presence, Delete from History or Push Notification Remove Device Webhooks.
Are there free Transactions? ¶
Where can I find the list of transaction classifications? ¶
Do I get charged for Data Persistence? ¶
There are two kinds of Data Persistence charges:
Cost per Write - In the month you store data, you pay for all the bytes written in that month.
Cost for Retention - All bytes written (and retained) from previous months are tallied and charged in aggregate each month. For customers using Storage TTL settings of 30 days or less for their data, there is no Cost for Retention charge applied.
Use Case Example:
Data Persistence usage with TTL=30 days - If you write 3GB in Month 1, you will be charged 3 GB* $8 = $24 after Month 1. In Month 2, you write 4 GB. After Month 2, you will be charged $32 (4GB * $8GB) for the data written in Month 2, but there is no charge for the data written in Month 1 since it had a TTL (auto-expiration) time set.
Data Persistence usage with no TTL (“forever storage”) - If you write 2GB in Month 1, you will be charged 2 GB* $8 = $16 after Month 1. In Month 2, you write 4 GB. After Month 2, you will be charged $48 (4GB * $8GB) for the data written in Month 2, and $16 for the persistence of the data written in Month 1.