“Jitsi is free” is true about the software and misleading about running it. The honest answer has four parts: compute, bandwidth, add-ons, and your time.
Compute
Rounded on-demand prices for AWS ap-south-1 (Mumbai) as of August 2026. Other regions and providers differ, and prices change.
| Server | Suits | Approx. / month |
|---|---|---|
| t3.small, 2 vCPU / 2 GB | Testing, up to about 20 participants | $18 |
| t3.medium, 2 vCPU / 4 GB | Most small teams, up to about 50 | $33 |
| t3.large, 2 vCPU / 8 GB | About 100, or recording on the same box | $63 |
| t3.xlarge, 4 vCPU / 16 GB | Local transcription with Vosk | $125 |
Reserved instances or savings plans cut these by roughly a third to a half if the server runs all year.
Bandwidth
Video is the variable cost. Estimate it from usage:
GB per month ≈ meeting hours × participants × average Mbps per participant × 0.45The 0.45 converts Mbps over an hour to gigabytes (3600 seconds ÷ 8 bits ÷ 1000). With 40 meeting hours a month, 8 people and 1.5 Mbps each on average, that is about 40 × 8 × 1.5 × 0.45 ≈ 216 GB of traffic leaving the server.
Cloud providers charge for data leaving their network, AWS per GB after a free allowance, while many VPS providers include several terabytes. Two-person calls go peer to peer and cost nothing on the server.
Add-ons
| Add-on | Extra cost |
|---|---|
| Recording (Jibri) | A dedicated recorder, about $63 to $136 a month, or a bigger shared server |
| Recording storage | S3 storage, a few cents per GB per month |
| Transcription (Vosk) | A 16 GB server, about $125 a month, instead of a 4 GB one |
| Transcription (Google) | Per-minute speech API fees instead of a bigger server |
Your time
This is the cost most comparisons skip. A first production install, including DNS, SSL, firewall, authentication and a working recording path, typically takes an experienced engineer a day or two. Then there are upgrades, certificate renewals, security patches and the occasional “video is black for everyone” incident.
If an engineer costs $50 an hour, one lost day equals years of a small server’s compute bill.
Worked examples
A 10 person team, no recording. One t3.medium, $33, plus about 100 to 200 GB of traffic. Roughly $40 to $55 a month on AWS.
A training company, weekly recorded sessions. A t3.medium for meetings plus a c5.large recorder that runs during sessions, and S3 storage. Roughly $100 to $120 a month.
Telehealth with transcripts. A t3.xlarge for Jitsi with Vosk plus recording. Roughly $125 to $200 a month, with no audio leaving your own account.
Compared with per-user pricing
Hosted services like 8x8’s Jitsi as a Service charge per monthly active user, with extra per-minute fees for recording and transcription. That is simple for small or spiky usage. Once hundreds of people meet every month, self-hosting usually costs less, because the server bill does not grow with each user. See JaaS vs self-hosted Jitsi.
Cutting the time cost
Our platform deploys a correctly sized server into your own AWS account in one click. AWS bills you directly at the prices above; optional features like recording, transcription, branding and JWT are one-time licenses per server. You get self-hosting prices without the setup days.