Daily

What it is for

Daily is a hosted WebRTC call desk: you open Prebuilt, and Video SDK includes 10,000 free minutes / month. Use it when the job is calls you embed with a public per-minute tile, not when you need a $20 chat seat.

What makes it unique: the cover is the official Daily Prebuilt demo (/daily Prebuilt UI demo, speaker view, https://prebuilt-demo.daily.co/DKEXkcljeAidg1, network stats, Example custom controls) from the docs still — not a pricing card. The panes themselves are ops of Prebuilt. Daily bills participant-minutes, not a chat seat.

Key features

• Prebuilt — an embeddable call UI with participants and network stats (cover still; docs). One room. Cover DKEXkcljeAidg1 and the speaker tile sit here.
• Recording — a cloud file you keep of the call (pricing $0.01349 / recorded minute). A recording, not a live room. Storage sits here.
• Live streaming — an RTMP / HLS outbound you attach (pricing). A stream, not a recording. Broadcast sits here.
• Transcription — a text track you turn on (pricing). A transcript, not a stream. Captions sit here.
• Telephony — a SIP / PSTN leg you add (pricing). A phone hop, not a transcript. Dial sits here.

The SDK join snippet is install. Free minutes / $0.004 tiles are the meter. Pipecat Cloud agent-1x is a sister SKU, not a sixth desk we fold into Prebuilt.

Who it's for

Best fit: realtime / voice-AI teams who will stay on 10,000 free participant-minutes / month while they open a first Prebuilt room, then pay $0.004 per video participant-minute (volume from $0.0015)* once the free bucket is gone.

Pricing

Verified 2026-10-23 (Asia/Shanghai) from daily.co/pricing/video-sdk (the /pricing index is a chooser; this path prints the dollars).

• Free minutes — 10,000 free participant-minutes / month. Sign up free. No extra charge for HD.
• Video calls — $0.004 / participant-minute (volume from $0.0015*). After the free bucket, extra minutes bill at $0.004.
• Audio-only — $0.00099 / participant-minute (volume from $0.00036*). Applied when the session has no video tracks.
• Cloud recording — $0.01349 / recorded minute plus $0.003 / min storage. Audio-only recording $0.005 / min.
• Add-ons — Healthcare (HIPAA + BAA) $500 / month. Advanced Insights $500 / month for 5 seats. Krisp noise cancellation $0.0002 / participant-minute.

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Limitations / costs

• Free minutes are 10,000 / month, then $0.004 / video participant-minute. A busy room is a usage bill, not a seat.
• A video track anywhere in the session bills the video rate. Do not assume audio-only after someone shares a camera.
• A call desk, not a LiveKit SFU you self-host. For LiveKit see LiveKit. For Ably see Ably.

Alternatives

• LiveKit — open-source SFU when you want LiveKit’s rooms, not Daily’s $0.004 Prebuilt.
• Ably — pub/sub + presence when you want Ably’s channels, not Daily’s participant-minute meter.
• Liveblocks — collaborative rooms when you want Liveblocks’ presence, not Daily’s WebRTC participant-minute meter.

Official tutorial

We fetched Daily marketing / docs and YouTube search for official Daily.co watch URLs. Hits were third-party (Telestax, CVE Daily) or a personal @pipecat channel that oEmbed-authored as Marco Trisorio — we do not embed those. Use the written Prebuilt guide plus the Prebuilt still.

Written path: daily.co/pricing/video-sdk.

Website

https://www.daily.co

Repository

https://github.com/daily-co

Source

Catalog row curated for AI Tools Nav. Cover is the official Daily Prebuilt demo from the docs CDN. Dollars checked on daily.co/pricing/video-sdk (10k free minutes; video $0.004/participant-min; recording $0.01349/min; HIPAA $500/mo). No official Daily watch URL on the fetches we used.

Last verified

2026-10-23 (Asia/Shanghai) editorial check.