Question
How much does it cost to record a call?
Product
Programmable Voice
Environment
legacy Twilio Console
Answer
You can add recording to your calls in multiple ways with Twilio. Also Twilio stores the recordings for you unless you remove them. Voice recording is billed by the minute and storage over 10,000 minutes per project is billed by the minute, once a month.
A few notes about recording storage:
- Each project gets 10,000 minutes stored for free. Subaccounts do not get additional free storage.
- Each recording minute above 10,000 will be charged $0.0005 per minute, per month. The charge will occur at the end of the month, based on your average storage for that month.
- Recording storage costs are calculated by rounding the duration of each recording up to the next minute. For example, three recordings of five seconds each will count together as three minutes, not 15 seconds.
- To see how many recording minutes are stored in your project, you can view your logs in your dashboard. Your project will only be charged if it averages more than 10,000 minutes for the entire month.
- Volume pricing is available for recording storage.
- Recording storage costs only apply to recordings stored in Twilio Cloud. If you store your recordings in external storage (AWS S3), check with your storage provider in regards to pricing.
Now let's look at an example of how recordings storage will get billed;
- The recording storage cost will be calculated by adding up the daily minutes from subaccounts and parent accounts, and then charging the price per minute to the parent account at the end of the month.
- For improved accuracy, the daily usage metric for each account is calculated by taking the running total of storage minutes at the end of each day and dividing by the number of days in the billing month - this amount gets displayed in the Usage API.
- Each parent account gets 10,000 minutes stored for free. Each recording minute above 10,000 will be charged per minute, per month. Recording storage costs $0.0005 per minute and volume pricing is available.
- Recording storage is rounded up to the next minute. For example, three recordings of five seconds each will count together as three minutes, not 15 seconds.
- To see how much each account is using, you can view your logs in the Twilio Console or use the usage API.
- Recording storage costs only apply to recordings stored in Twilio Cloud. If you store your recordings in external storage (AWS S3), check with your storage provider in regards to pricing.
Let’s look at an example of how the daily usage metrics in the Usage API and final storage are shown and calculated;
Here is an account that stores 1,000 minutes of recordings for every day of September;
- 09/01 storage = 1,000 minutes. Daily running total: 1000/30 = 33.3 minutes
- 09/02 storage = +1,000 minutes. Daily running total: (1000 + 1000) = 2000/30 = 66.6 minutes
- 09/03 storage = +1,000 minutes. Daily running total: (2000+1000) = 3000/30 = 100 minutes
- ...
- 09/29 storage: +1,000 minutes. Daily running total: (28000 + 1000) = 29000/30 = 966.6 minutes
- 09/30 storage: +1,000 minutes. Daily running total: (29000 + 1000) = 30000/30 = 1,000 minutes
Total September Recordings Storage usage: 15,500 minutes
The final bill at the end of the month takes the cumulative minutes from all accounts using recording storage and applies the per minute pricing on single charge to the parent account. Taking the example usage above, the final recording storage bill calculation for September is: 15500-10000= 5500 minutes * $0.0005 = $2.75. If there were two subaccounts each storing 1000 minutes of recordings every day in September, the final recording storage minutes would be 31,000 and total bill would be $10.50 (31000-10000=21000 * $0.0005).
Additional Information
For information on pricing for all of Twilio's services, please see our pricing page.
Notice: Call recording is included with paid Twilio Flex plans at no additional cost. Recording storage fees would still apply, however. For more information, please see How Does Twilio Flex Pricing Work.
Legal implications of call recording
If you choose to record calls, you need to comply with certain laws and regulations, including those regarding obtaining consent to record (such as California’s Invasion of Privacy Act and similar laws in other jurisdictions). Additional information on the legal implications of call recording can be found here.
Notice: Twilio recommends that you consult with your legal counsel to make sure that you are complying with all applicable laws in connection with communications you record or store using Twilio.