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[ftf-304] Adding pricing examples#3090

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ftf-304-adding-pricing-examples
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[ftf-304] Adding pricing examples#3090
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ftf-304-adding-pricing-examples

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Description

Adds four worked pricing examples to help customers estimate costs for common use cases:

  • Livestream chat – high-concurrency event chat with batching (Chat)
  • Support chat – 1:1 customer support with consumption vs MAU comparison (Chat)
  • Data broadcast – one-to-many updates with conflation (Pub/Sub)
  • Realtime dashboard – many-to-few device monitoring (Pub/Sub)

Each example includes assumptions, cost summary, message breakdown, and relevant optimisation notes (batching, conflation, etc).

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@JamieAbly JamieAbly requested a review from a team January 9, 2026 09:39
@JamieAbly JamieAbly self-assigned this Jan 9, 2026
@JamieAbly JamieAbly added the review-app Create a Heroku review app label Jan 9, 2026
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@m-hulbert m-hulbert left a comment

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This is really great thanks, Jamie. I've dropped a few comments and suggestions throughout and they are mostly all relevant to all 4 examples rather than me repeating myself 4 times 🙂

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@paddybyers paddybyers left a comment

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I really found these pages confusing when I first read them. The summary costs table at the top has numbers and calculations that have no obvious relationship to the assumptions. Obviously when you scroll down it's clear where the numbers come from, but some hint upfront would help.

### Cost summary
The high-level cost breakdown for this scenario. Messages are billed for both inbound (published to Ably) and outbound (delivered to subscribers) – a single message to 100 subscribers generates 101 billable messages.

| Item | Calculation | Cost |
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The dollar results in this table are rounded to integer dollars so they look wrong. Eg 1.5 x $1 = $2. They shouldn't be rounded

@JamieAbly JamieAbly requested a review from m-hulbert January 21, 2026 16:43
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@GregHolmes GregHolmes force-pushed the ftf-304-adding-pricing-examples branch from 481c7c4 to 3ba3909 Compare March 2, 2026 10:33
@GregHolmes GregHolmes added review-app Create a Heroku review app and removed review-app Create a Heroku review app labels Mar 2, 2026
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Thanks for the PR @JamieAbly, I've made a few comments on what I've read.
My only other question would be, in examples like livestream and support-chat would we not want to include presence into this? That would also factor into the pricing wouldn't it?

- **Monthly active users:** 10,000
- **Live matches:** 50 per month
- **Users per match:** 200
- **Session duration:** 60 minutes average
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In the scenario we talk about 60 minutes duration, but further down https://github.com/ably/docs/pull/3090/changes#diff-e859e6258c98a045869c064bf0e18a076427dd88cd0ba5a262c537e8aa72eb47R34

we talk about 7200s which is 120 mins.

Should these be inline with eachother?


| Item | Calculation | Total |
|-----------------------------|--------------------------------------|----------------|
| Connection minutes | 10,000 users × 4 sessions × 60 mins | 2,400,000 mins |
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The scenario never mentions 4 sessions per user. With 50 matches × 200 users = 10,000 user-match combinations across 10,000 MAU, that's ~1 session per user, not 4. The 40,000 sessions figure in channel minutes has the same issue.



<Aside data-type='further-reading'>
Useful links for exploring this topic in more detail.
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This is used in all of the files, but I'm not sure this line is necessary. The Further-reading Aside will do the explaining of what these bullet points are.

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I actually added this text on request from Mark - happy to remove it or keep it, up to you guys.


| Item | Calculation | Total |
|--------------------------|----------------------------------------|----------------|
| Channel minutes | 105 users × 8 hrs × 22 days × 60 mins | 1,108,800 mins |
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I don't think this is necessarily correct. If you look at pricing: https://ably.com/docs/platform/pricing#per-minute

You'll see The number of users attached to each channel does not influence the channel minutes.

Should this row instead be:

Suggested change
| Channel minutes | 105 users × 8 hrs × 22 days × 60 mins | 1,108,800 mins |
| Channel minutes | 100 channels × 8 hrs × 22 days × 60 mins | 1,056,000 mins |

The final cost would still round to the same $2.00.

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@GregHolmes GregHolmes self-requested a review March 4, 2026 10:37
@GregHolmes GregHolmes force-pushed the ftf-304-adding-pricing-examples branch from 3624d01 to 67bf06d Compare March 4, 2026 10:56
@GregHolmes GregHolmes temporarily deployed to ably-docs-ftf-304-addin-uuhzpd March 4, 2026 10:56 Inactive
…st, and realtime dashboard

Add four worked pricing examples to help customers estimate costs:
- Livestream chat: high-concurrency event chat with server-side batching
- Support chat: 1:1 customer support with consumption-based pricing
- Data broadcast: one-to-many updates with message conflation
- Realtime dashboard: many-to-few device monitoring

Also restructures the existing AI chatbot example to match the new format.
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