Cost model
Signalling goes through gates. Media costs belong to session routes.
Freehop does not charge you
Freehop is open-source software under the Apache-2.0 license. There is no Freehop subscription, per-seat fee or per-minute media charge. The provider prices and estimates on this page describe other services or infrastructure you choose to run; they are not fees charged by Freehop.
Your deployment can still have costs. You may pay to host your application backend and gate, and for any bandwidth or compute used by a gateway or host node that runs on infrastructure you pay for. If the gateway belongs to a participant, that participant contributes the upload. A gate carries sealed signalling only; it does not relay media.
Estimate a separate TURN relay bill
If you use a conventional TURN provider, the provider may charge for relayed traffic. The interactive estimate below compares that hypothetical TURN egress with Freehop's gate signalling traffic. It does not include Freehop software fees (there are none), gate/backend hosting, or the cost of a session gateway that you host yourself.
There is no relay percentage that can predict every product. Public figures are tied to particular services, network mixes and measurement periods, so they are not a reliable default for your app. The calculator's relay-share input is a scenario you set, not an industry benchmark. Measure the routes in your own user and network mix before using the result for a budget.
TURN pricing depends on the provider and plan. Checked on 7 October 2026, Cloudflare lists a 1,000 GB monthly free allowance for Realtime TURN, then $0.05 per GB of egress for standalone TURN; traffic between Realtime TURN and Realtime SFU or Cloudflare Stream WHIP/WHEP is exempt from TURN charges. The calculator lets you enter a rate and an allowance, but does not model every provider's bundle, tax, discount or billing rule. Cloudflare TURN pricing and billing details. This is a Cloudflare service price, not a Freehop price.
Relay bill estimate
Estimate. Every assumption is editable.Average across the hours below.
240 hours is 8 hours a day.
Set this from your own route measurements. The default 0% is only a neutral starting point, not a usage claim.
Freehop's caps: Opus audio 32 kbit/s, video 300 kbit/s per link.
Each person receives the other people's streams.
Sets how many call setups the gates handle.
Enter your provider's rate after any free allowance or bundle.
Cloudflare Realtime TURN currently includes 1,000 GB/month; change this for your provider or plan.
Separate TURN service or server
0GB / month
$0 estimated egress, before other fees
Freehop gate-only path
0GB of media through your gate
$0 TURN egress through the gate
Gates: about 8.4 GB of sealed signalling a month.
This Freehop column assumes the media gateway belongs to a participant and the gate carries signalling only. It excludes hosting your backend or gate. If you run the session host or gateway on infrastructure you pay for, its media bandwidth and compute can still appear on your bill.How this is calculated
What moves over the network?
The arithmetic below uses Freehop's default media bitrates and decimal units (1 GB = 1,000 MB). These are traffic volumes, not prices:
| Item | Data volume |
|---|---|
| One person-hour of relayed audio at 32 kbit/s, delivered by the relay | 14.4 MB |
| One person-hour of relayed audio plus video at 32 + 300 kbit/s | 149.4 MB |
| One call setup through a Freehop gate, per peer pair | about 15 to 35 KB |
Connected pairs move most signalling onto their own data channels. Keepalives, newcomer discovery and recovery still use the gate. In the home-lab network tests, a gate's total for a whole simulated scenario, retries included, was 30 to 210 KB.
Who carries the media?
| Path | Who carries the media | Where bandwidth or compute costs may land |
|---|---|---|
direct | The two endpoints communicate directly | Each participant uses their own connection |
gateway | A desktop participant's gateway | That participant's upload, unless you run the gateway |
relay | A gateway belonging to a session member | The gateway owner's connection or hosting bill |
bridged | A participant that forwards and re-encodes | That participant's upload and CPU |
relay with via: 'turn' (opt-in) | Your application's own TURN relay | Your TURN provider's or server's bandwidth, only for pairs that would otherwise be unreachable |
unreachable | Nobody; no media flows | No media traffic is sent |
The opt-in TURN relay is the only route that leaves the session, and only when you configure it. At Freehop's media caps, packet overhead included, a pair relayed for an hour moves roughly 50 MB through the relay with audio only, or about 330 MB with video; a provider's free tier or a TURN server on a machine you already run can keep that at zero.
Freehop avoids sending media through its gates. It cannot make bandwidth free: if you run the session host or gateway on your own paid server, you pay that server's normal bandwidth and compute costs. Forwarded video is capped at 200 kbit/s, and gateways have per-allocation, per-room and overall quotas.
What you need to run
You can run a gate, or use a public WebTorrent tracker as a room's gate, as the live call on this site does. A gate needs a public HTTPS/WebSocket endpoint and, if you enable STUN, a UDP port. Hosting and traffic for your backend and gate depend on your provider and usage. See Gate service.
Next
Ready to build? The SDK reference starts with the authority and tickets.