Pricing Plan Parameters

ImageKit offers various plans to meet your requirements. In this document, we will examine different plan types and pricing parameters to help you understand which plan suits your requirements and how your billing will change with usage.

ImageKit offers two plan types, as shown on the pricing page. Complete Media Processing + DAM plans - These plans are suitable if You want to optimize, transform, and deliver images, videos, and other assets on your website or app. Your entire team wants a central place to store, manage, collaborate on, and share digital assets in a DAM, along with the ability to deliver optimized content from that DAM on your website and app. DAM-only plan - These plans are suitable if your team wants to use ImageKit only to store, manage, collaborate on, and share digital assets. While assets stored in the DAM do get built-in media optimizations and transformations, the primary use of this plan is only for digital asset management and not for media delivery on websites and apps.

ImageKit has several different pricing parameters. First, we will understand each parameter and then see how it impacts usage and billing on different plans.

1. Bandwidth: This is the total optimized data transfer from your account. For example, if you have a 500KB original image and can optimize it to 30KB with ImageKit, then the bandwidth used for billing is 30KB. If there are 2 million requests for this image on your website, the total bandwidth consumed is 30KB x 2 million = 60GB.

   If the image is cached on the user's device, and the request never comes to ImageKit, it is not counted towards bandwidth consumption. If the image is already processed and cached on ImageKit, it is still counted towards bandwidth consumption.

2. Storage: This is the total size of files you upload to ImageKit's Media Library. If you upload 100 files of 2MB each, your total storage usage is 2 x 100MB = 200MB. Connecting your external storage or server with ImageKit does not count toward storage usage in ImageKit. ImageKit does not charge for internal storage generated by caching image or video transformations. You are only billed for what you upload to the Media Library.

3. Video Processing Units: When you process any video for the first time with ImageKit, then it consumes Video Processing Units. These units are proportional to the output resolution and duration. Repeat delivery of videos does not consume video processing units; it counts only towards bandwidth.

   Read more about how video processing units are consumed.

4. Extension Units: These units are consumed when you use third-party services integrated within ImageKit. Services such as AI tagging using Google and AWS integrations, AI-powered background removal, and more, consume extension units only when you explicitly call these operations via the API or the Media Library.

Read more about how extension units are consumed in here.

5. Users: Any user, including the primary account administrator, with login access to the ImageKit account is considered towards this parameter. You can find the users added to your account here.

   If you use sub-accounts, and the sub-account is set to "Bill to Parent", then the users in that account also count towards the billing against this parameter on the Parent account.

   Users viewing content via Public Links or accessing the content via the CDN-powered media URLs on a website or app do not count towards this parameter.

6. Custom Domain Names: If you use a custom domain name for media delivery with ImageKit, then the number of unique domain names you have count towards this parameter.

7. Purge Cache Requests: This parameter counts the number of cache purge requests you issue for content cached during media delivery.

8. Original Cache Storage: If you utilize the feature to save a copy of the original assets when using ImageKit for media delivery with your external storage, then the storage generated as a result of storing the original assets is billed against this parameter.

Video processing units used depend on the output video codec, duration, and resolution. Every new video transformation or an optimized variant that has never been done before will contribute to video processing units using the below definition. Subsequent views of the same video transformation only count towards bandwidth.

Calculation of units for resolution:

• 1 second of SD video output = 1 unit
• 1 second of HD video output = 2 units
• 1 second of 4K video output = 4 units
• 1 second of 8K video output = 8 units
• 1 second of 16K video output = 16 units

Calculation of units for video codec:

• 1 second of video output in H.264 codec = 1 unit
• 1 second of video output in VP9 codec = 1 unit
• 1 second of video output in AV1 codec = 10 units

VPU (Video Processing Unit) usage = Duration (in seconds) × Resolution (in units) × Video Codec (in units)

Special operations:

• Audio extraction - Using vc-none transformation results in audio output. This operation is equal to processing the input video in SD output resolution for the duration of the output audio.
• Adaptive bitrate streaming - This operation is equal to processing a 30 seconds SD resolution video. In addition, all generated representations are charged based on requested resolutions.
• Get thumbnail - This operation is equal to processing a 30-second SD resolution video.
• Video smart crop - 1 additional VPU per second of output for each smart crop operation requested in the transformation, along with the standard VPU consumption. Refer to the examples given below to learn more.

We define resolutions in terms of total pixel count as the following.

• Automatic format optimization to WebM, VP9 codec and compression on a 30s Full HD video = 2 units x 30s = 60 units
• Using transformation tr=w-300,h-300,f-webm on a 15s full HD video = 1 unit x 15s = 15 units (1 unit is used per second as the output resolution is SD at 300 x 300 pixels)
• Using AV1 codec with WebM format using tr=w-300,h-300,f-webm,vc-av1 on a 15s full HD video = 1 unit for SD x 10 units for AV1 x 15s = 150 units
• Using transformation tr=w-1400,h-700 on a 20s SD video = 2 unit x 20s = 30 units (2 units are used per second as the output resolution is HD at 1400 x 700 pixels)
• If you use smart crop on the base video and on two video layers in the same transformation (base.mp4?tr=fo-auto:l-video,i-overlay1.mp4,fo-auto,w-480,h-360,cm-extract,l-end:l-video,i-overlay2.mp4,fo-face,l-end), and the output is 15s long, then the total VPU consumption will be 75 units. This includes
  • Standard VPU consumption towards HD Encoding = 2 units x 15s = 30 units
  • Additional VPUs towards the smart crop operation = 3 smart crop parameters x 15s = 45 units.
• If you use ABS on a 60s, 16:9 HD video and create 4 representations using the transformation tr=sr-360_480_720_1080, then total video processing unit consumption is 390. This includes
  • Fixed 30 VPUs for Adaptive Bitrate Streaming transformation
  • 1 unit x 60s for 360p = 60 units
  • 1 unit x 60s for 480p = 60 units
  • 2 unit x 60s for 720p = 120 units
  • 2 unit x 60s for 1080p = 120 units

The standard extension units consumption for AI-powered image generation, transformations, and auto description is as follows. We are constantly working to improve AI models and reduce the cost of these transformations. The units consumed may change over time.

Enterprise users may have a custom extension unit matrix available. This can be checked from the subscriptions section of the ImageKit dashboard.

The free plans include some inclusions, as mentioned on the Plans page, sufficient for small teams or low-traffic websites and apps. The plan offers these inclusions every month and is free forever.

On the first day of every calendar month, the usage of Bandwidth, Video Processing Units (VPUs), and Extension Units reset to 0.

If you exceed the free plan inclusions in the middle of a month, the corresponding functionality will stop. You must upgrade to a paid plan to resume using the feature.

The paid plans offer some inclusions for the above pricing parameters, as mentioned on the Plans page in the base pricing. Once you exceed those inclusions, pay-per-use pricing is defined for every component.

If you are on a paid plan, you will be billed the minimum monthly fixed cost, irrespective of your monthly consumption. If the usage of some components exceeds the inclusions, you pay for the additional units you consume in that monthly billing cycle.

If your consumption falls within the free plan inclusions but you are on a paid plan, you must cancel your subscription to switch to the free plan to avoid getting billed.

Please refer to the billing examples on our pricing page under the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section.

If your requirement does not fit one of the paid plans we offer, or if your billing is significantly higher than the base pricing of the paid plan, or if you want to access any of the enterprise plan features, contact our support team to discuss any custom pricing plans.

Enterprise pricing plans can also include access to a dedicated customer success manager and integration support.