Twilio WebRTC vs DIY WebRTC

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

Is WebRTC going to be free for web developers to set up video calls on web pages? why does Twilio having pricing 25c per mins for video calls, is it going to be too expensive for the small guy to mange video calls on web hosting servers?

any advice from anyone deep into WebRTC already?

manpreet 2 years ago

Twilio developer evangelist here.

Your link at the end of your question points to our WebRTC page, which currently talks about the product Twilio Client. Twilio Client briefly is a way that, using WebRTC within browsers and mobile applications you can make phone calls to real phone numbers. This product does not allow you to conduct video calls.

Twilio Client has a cost because of the ability to call out from a browser to a telephone number. The cost is not in the WebRTC portion, but delivering those minutes to the other leg of the call.

Notably, it's not 25 cents ($0.25) a minute, instead it is just a quarter of a cent ($0.0025) a minute.

With regards to video calls with WebRTC, you can now access the public beta of Twilio Video, a platform to make setting up WebRTC calls much easier.

Twilio Video costs for the signalling infrastructure and you can see the prices here. If a WebRTC connection requires a TURN server to relay the media, that also costs per gigabyte of transfer. Usage of the STUN server is free, the costs for the TURN relay are available here.

Please get in touch with me at philnash@twilio.com if you have any other questions about WebRTC.