Pricing
Dacast pricing
Dacast bills a flat monthly plan with a bandwidth allowance, then overage by the gigabyte. Here is what each plan includes, what the add-ons cost, and the auto-renewal to handle before you pay.
Dacast prices the way a broadcast platform does, not the way a marketing tool does. You buy a plan with a bandwidth allowance measured in terabytes and a storage allowance in gigabytes, and the plan you need depends on how much video you stream and how many people watch. The plans are public and there are no startup fees, which makes the base cost easy to read.
The part that catches people is not the sticker. It is the two things the sticker does not show: what a gigabyte of overage costs once a live or viral stream burns the allowance, and the auto-renewal that turns a one-time purchase into a recurring charge. This page lays out the plans, the overage math and the renewal, so the price you plan for is the price you pay.
The plans
Read on Dacast's own live streaming pricing page on 28 September 2026. Rates are billed annually; monthly billing is higher with a three-month minimum charged upfront.
| Plan | Monthly (annual) | Bandwidth | Storage | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $39 | 2.4 TB/yr | 500 GB | Live streaming, 1080p, unlimited viewers, VOD, advanced analytics, 24/7 support |
| Event | $63 | 6 TB upfront | 250 GB | Everything in Starter plus paywall, ad roll, live monitoring, scheduling |
| Scale | $165 | 24 TB/yr | 2 TB | Everything in Event plus unlimited channels, DRM and AES for VOD, 3 seats, phone support |
| Custom | Contact | Custom | Custom | M3U8 links, custom SLAs, migrations, large-scale events |
There is no permanent free plan, only a 14-day trial with no card and 10 GB of bandwidth. The paywall is a paid add-on on Starter (included from Event up), and Multi-CDN and China Live and VOD are add-ons on Event and Scale, quoted on request. Extra team seats are $10 per user a month.
The number that decides your bill: bandwidth and overage
Storage is easy to predict: it is the size of the library you keep online. Bandwidth is the one that moves, and it is measured by the terabyte a year. Every viewer who watches consumes it, so a stream that goes long, gets popular, or runs in high definition burns through an allowance faster than a monthly-viewer count suggests. Dacast's own calculator estimates viewer hours at roughly 750kbps, so a single hour watched at 1080p uses considerably more than that.
What happens when you pass the allowance is a choice you make in advance. Leave overage protection off and your streams simply shut off once the bandwidth is gone. Turn it on and Dacast charges $0.30 per GB over your allotment automatically to the card on file, and storage over your plan bills at $0.15 per GB. Unused bandwidth rolls over month to month and expires twelve months after you get it, which softens the risk for a seasonal broadcaster. The safe way to size a plan is to estimate your real viewer hours at your real bitrate, not your headcount, and to decide the overage setting deliberately rather than discovering it on an invoice.
Before you pay: auto-renewal
The single most common complaint about Dacast is not playback, it is renewal. Annual plans auto-renew by default, and the recurring theme on Trustpilot is buyers charged for a renewal they did not expect and could not get refunded, with Dacast pointing to the fact that all subscriptions are auto-renewed by default. Monthly plans also carry a three-month minimum charged upfront.
None of that makes Dacast a bad platform, and the software is well-reviewed for reliability. It makes the way you buy it matter. Set a calendar reminder before the renewal date, cancel in writing through a support ticket if you are not continuing, and keep the confirmation. Bought with the renewal handled deliberately, Dacast is a predictable cost. Left on autopilot, it is the exact charge the angry reviews describe.
What you are trading off
What works
- Genuinely built for live broadcasting: RTMP and HLS ingest, full 1080p HD, unlimited concurrent viewers, simulcast, VOD-to-live and auto-recorded streams, on a multi-CDN network that most reviewers find reliable
- Real, built-in monetization most video hosts skip: a paywall for pay-per-view and subscriptions, plus pre-, mid- and post-roll advertising, so a broadcaster can charge for content directly rather than bolting on a separate cart
- A complete OTT and security stack: branded apps across devices, a video CMS, DRM and AES encryption for VOD on the Scale plan, token security, and domain and country restriction for gating content
- Established and supported: sixteen-plus years in the market, a Video API and Player API for developers, real-time and advanced analytics, and 24/7 support that reviewers most often praise for fast response
- No startup fees, and unused bandwidth rolls over for twelve months, so an occasional or seasonal broadcaster is not paying for capacity they did not use that month
What to watch
- It is a broadcast platform, not a direct-response VSL player: there is no sound-first smart autoplay, no split test scored on the sale and no revenue attribution, so a paid-traffic sales letter still cannot prove which traffic actually bought from inside Dacast
- Billing is the loudest complaint: annual plans auto-renew by default and reviewers report being refused refunds after a surprise charge, so treat auto-renewal as on and cancel in writing before the renewal date
- Pricing is bandwidth-metered by the terabyte, and live or viral video burns an allowance fast; overage runs $0.30 per GB for bandwidth and $0.15 per GB for storage once you pass the plan, so model your real usage before you commit
- Monthly billing carries a three-month minimum charged upfront, and some higher-value features (the paywall on Starter, multi-CDN, China streaming) are paid add-ons rather than plan inclusions, so the sticker is not the whole bill
- Support is fast to respond but reviewers say it can be shallow on harder problems, and there are regional reports of high latency and unreliable encoding, so pilot from your own region before a critical broadcast
Pricing FAQ
How much does Dacast cost?
What happens if I go over my bandwidth?
Does Dacast auto-renew, and can I get a refund?
What costs extra on top of the plan?
How does Dacast pricing compare with a usage-based pipe?
Sources
From Dacast
Other sources
3 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context.