--- title: "What Is a Per-Subscriber Fee? Definition and Examples" description: "A per-subscriber fee is what some OTT platforms charge each month for every paying subscriber you have. See how it scales and how to compare it with flat pricing." url: "https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/per-subscriber-fee" markdown_url: "https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/per-subscriber-fee.md" category: "Pricing & billing" updated: "2026-10-05" --- # What is a per-subscriber fee? A per-subscriber fee is an amount a streaming platform vendor charges each month for every paying subscriber on your service, usually on top of a base plan. The total grows in step with your audience. ## How a per-subscriber fee works The vendor counts your active paying subscribers at the end of each month and multiplies by the fee. Fees of around $0.50 to $1 per subscriber are common. Some vendors include a number of subscribers in the base plan and charge only above it. ## What it costs as you grow The fee looks small against a single subscription and large in total. At $1 per subscriber, 1,000 subscribers costs $1,000 a month, 5,000 costs $5,000 and 20,000 costs $20,000, whatever those subscribers pay you. It also weighs most on low-priced plans. A $1 fee is 10% of a $10 plan but a third of a $3 plan, which makes localized pricing in lower-income markets hard to sustain. ## Per-subscriber fee vs flat pricing To compare vendors, work out the total monthly cost at the subscriber count you expect in a year, including delivery, apps and any cut of one-time sales, not the cost on day one. - Per-subscriber: low cost at launch, rising without limit as you grow - Flat tier: a fixed monthly price that includes a set number of active users - Usage-based: you pay for what is delivered, such as CDN traffic and storage ## Per-subscriber fee on RentAnOTT RentAnOTT does not charge per subscriber. Tiers are a flat monthly price with 10,000, 50,000 or 200,000+ monthly active users included; you pay only for usage above your CDN and storage allowance. [See pricing](https://www.rentanott.com/pricing). ## Related terms - [Transaction fee](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/transaction-fee) — A transaction fee is an amount deducted from each individual sale, as a percentage, a fixed sum or both. On a streaming service it can be charged by the payment provider, by an app store and, on some platforms, by the platform vendor itself. - [Revenue share](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/revenue-share) — Revenue share is an arrangement in which income from a streaming service is split by percentage between parties, for example between a service and its platform vendor, an app store, a payment provider or the owner of the content. - [MAU](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/mau) — MAU (monthly active users) is the number of unique users who were active on a service at least once during a month. On a streaming service, active usually means signing in or starting playback. - [ARPU](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/arpu) — ARPU (average revenue per user) is a service's total revenue in a period divided by the number of users in that period. It shows how much each user is worth on average, across subscriptions, advertising and one-time sales. - [Localized pricing](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/localized-pricing) — Localized pricing is setting a different price for the same streaming plan in each country, in the local currency and at a level that matches local incomes and competing services, instead of converting one global price at the exchange rate. - [Managed OTT](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/managed-ott) — A managed OTT platform, also called OTT SaaS, is streaming software that the vendor hosts, operates and updates on your behalf for a recurring fee. You run the content and the business; the vendor runs the technology. - [Egress cost](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/egress-cost) — Egress cost is the charge for data leaving a cloud provider's or CDN's network, billed per gigabyte transferred. For a streaming service it is the cost of delivering video to viewers, and it is usually the largest variable cost of the service. ## Further reading - [RentAnOTT as a Uscreen alternative](https://www.rentanott.com/uscreen-alternative) - [RentAnOTT as a Vimeo OTT alternative](https://www.rentanott.com/vimeo-ott-alternative) - [OTT revenue calculator](https://www.rentanott.com/tools/ott-revenue-calculator) ## Frequently asked questions ### Are free users counted in a per-subscriber fee? Usually only paying subscribers are counted, but definitions differ. Check whether trials, free accounts and subscribers who paused are included. ### Is a per-subscriber fee ever the better option? For a very small service it can be, because cost stays close to zero until subscribers arrive. Find the subscriber count at which a flat plan becomes cheaper and how soon you expect to pass it. ### How is pricing by monthly active users different? A tier that includes a block of active users has a fixed price until you outgrow the block, and it counts people who used the service rather than charging a fee for each paying subscriber. All 163 terms: [Streaming and OTT glossary](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary). ## Book a demo Tell RentAnOTT what you are launching. The team walks through the platform and maps the path to go-live around your catalog, markets and revenue model. Book a demo: https://www.rentanott.com/contact ## More from RentAnOTT - [Home](https://www.rentanott.com/index.md) — What RentAnOTT is, what every plan includes, and how launch works - [Features](https://www.rentanott.com/features.md) — Every core feature and optional add-on - [Pricing](https://www.rentanott.com/pricing.md) — Platform tiers, apps, add-ons, usage rates and example bills in INR and USD - [Free tools](https://www.rentanott.com/tools.md) — OTT app builder and calculators for streaming revenue, bandwidth, bitrate and pricing - [Insights](https://www.rentanott.com/blogs.md) — All streaming business articles - [Glossary](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary.md) — Definitions of streaming and OTT terms - [Book a demo](https://www.rentanott.com/contact.md) — Talk to RentAnOTT about your launch Full site in one file: https://www.rentanott.com/llms-full.txt