Video Streaming Bandwidth Calculator
Calculate the bandwidth a video stream needs at each quality level, size an adaptive bitrate ladder, and estimate concurrent viewer capacity and CDN egress cost.
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An adaptive ladder is not optional
Streaming a single high bitrate rendition means every viewer whose connection cannot sustain it experiences buffering rather than lower quality. Adaptive bitrate streaming encodes several renditions and lets the player switch between them as conditions change, so a viewer on a poor connection gets a lower resolution instead of a stalled player. The ladder costs storage and encoding time proportional to the number of rungs, and it is the difference between a stream that works for most people and one that works for people with good connections.
Codec choice halves the bill
H.265 and VP9 achieve roughly the same quality as H.264 at half the bitrate, and AV1 improves on that again by around thirty percent. The trade is decoding support: H.264 plays everywhere, H.265 has patent licensing complications and inconsistent browser support, VP9 and AV1 are royalty free but AV1 needs recent hardware to decode efficiently. Most large services ship several codecs and select by device, which is expensive to encode and cheaper to deliver.
Egress is usually the dominant cost
A thousand concurrent viewers at 5 megabits per second is 5 gigabits per second sustained, which over an hour is 2.25 terabytes. At typical CDN pricing that is a meaningful sum for one hour of one stream, and it scales linearly with both viewers and bitrate. This is why reducing the top rung of the ladder by a small amount, or adopting a more efficient codec, has a much larger effect on cost than any infrastructure optimisation.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What bitrate do I need for 1080p?
Around 4 to 6 Mbit/s with H.264 at 30 fps, or 2 to 3 with H.265 or VP9. Sixty frames per second adds roughly 50 percent. High motion content such as sport needs the upper end and static content such as a presentation needs far less.
How many rungs should a bitrate ladder have?
Four to six covers most audiences. Each rung roughly halves the bitrate of the one above, and the lowest should be low enough to work on a poor mobile connection. More rungs improve the fit at the cost of encoding time and storage.
Which codec should I use?
H.264 for universal compatibility, and a second codec such as H.265, VP9 or AV1 selected by device for the bandwidth saving. AV1 is the most efficient and needs recent hardware to decode without draining a battery.
What is the difference between CBR and VBR?
Constant bitrate holds a fixed rate, which makes bandwidth predictable and wastes bits on easy scenes. Variable bitrate allocates more to complex scenes and less to simple ones, giving better quality for the same average. Live streaming usually uses CBR or capped VBR for predictability.
How much does CDN egress cost?
Typically between 0.02 and 0.09 per gigabyte depending on volume and provider, with regional variation. At scale it is usually the dominant cost of a video service, which is why bitrate efficiency matters more than any server side optimisation.
Privacy & Security
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How to Use
Set your resolution, codec and viewer count to get bitrate requirements and egress estimates.
Disclaimer: This tool is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Results are for educational and utility purposes.
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