> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.orbit.devotel.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Pricing calculator: estimate messaging, RTC, AI, and reseller payouts > Walk the five estimator widgets on Billing → Pricing Calculator — channel cost estimates from your live rate card, the RTC cost simulator, AI and marketplace pricing previews, reseller payout statements, and volume-tier savings — and know which widget answers which question. # Pricing calculator Open **Billing → Pricing Calculator** (`/billing/calculator`) when you need to answer "what would this cost" *before* you send a single message or book a single video room. The page composes five estimator widgets, each a read-only preview — none of them charges your wallet, moves money, or pays anything out. You model a hypothetical configuration, read the projected cost, and discard it. This page is what it composes, in order: 1. **Pricing calculator** (channel cost estimate) — estimated monthly messaging cost from your live rate card. 2. **RTC cost simulator** — projected monthly bill for video/audio rooms at a bundled per-tier rate. 3. **AI & marketplace pricing estimates** — three calculators: AIaaS usage, marketplace rev-share, and pay-per-resolution metering. 4. **Partner / reseller payout statement** — the periodic statement a white-label or referral partner would be owed, itemized by sub-account. 5. **Volume savings** — the effective per-unit price a hypothetical monthly volume earns under your volume-tier ladder. ## 1. The five widgets ### Channel cost estimate (monthly messaging) The top widget estimates a monthly messaging bill from three inputs: * **Channels** — SMS plus the channels whose rates are quoted via sales today (voice, RCS, email, Viber, WhatsApp). SMS is priced live; the rest render "Rate unavailable — contact sales" rather than inventing a number the invoice would disagree with. A channel never gets a fabricated price. * **Monthly volume** — a logarithmic slider from 100 to 1M units. Past 500K/month the widget stops quoting list rates and shows a volume-discount contact card instead, because per-unit list pricing stops being a meaningful estimate at that scale. * **Destination country** — the rendered SMS rate comes from your live per-operator rate card for that country. The estimate takes the cheapest operator rate for the destination, and the price already includes your organization's markup — the number you see is the number the wallet would be charged. The result panel shows the estimated monthly total, a per-channel breakdown (rate × volume), and — only when a real rate resolved — a comparison against the public list price of another CPaaS, so the savings line always pairs two real quotes. A **Share estimate** button encodes the current configuration into a URL you can paste to a teammate; opening it lands them on exactly the same estimate. ### RTC cost simulator The RTC simulator projects a monthly video bill against a **single bundled rate per resolution tier** — audio-only, SD (480p), HD (720p), or Full HD (1080p) — with recording, captions, signaling, and one RTMP destination already included. It exists so the bill has no surprise line items: you model **participants per room**, **minutes per room**, and **rooms per month**, optionally add extra RTMP destinations, recording storage, or a dedicated SFU cluster, then **Run forecast**. The reply breaks the projected total into line items — participant-minutes, a blended per-minute rate, and any extras you added. That same math is available over `POST /pricing/rtc-simulate`, and the static tier card over `GET /pricing/rtc-rate-card`. ### AI & marketplace pricing estimates Three read-only calculators for the AI-agent and marketplace surfaces, each posting the counters you type to its preview endpoint and returning an estimate — nothing is charged: * **AIaaS usage** — AI message count, voice minutes, and resolved outcomes to an estimated total per axis, with no platform or seat fee. * **Agent & tool marketplace rev-share** — for a published listing: invocations, a per-call price, and the platform fee percentage return the gross charge, the Orbit platform fee, and the builder's net payout — including whether the builder is above or below the payout threshold (below threshold rolls over). * **Pay-per-resolution metering** — a count of confirmed AI resolutions at a per-resolution rate returns the metered count and the projected invoice total. Toggling billing off returns the count with a "no charge" badge, so you can model what a resolution pipeline would cost once metering goes live on your account. ### Partner / reseller payout statement The reseller preview answers "what would we owe this partner for the period" — itemized by sub-account. You enter each sub-account's **revenue** and **carrier cost**, the channel, a partner id, the negotiated **revenue-share percentage**, and the statement period. The preview returns a shaped statement: * Gross revenue, cost of goods, and **net margin** — the split always comes out of net margin (revenue minus carrier cost), never gross revenue. * **Partner share** and **platform retained** — and a loss period statements a zero partner share rather than a negative one. * A per-sub-account line table so a large account's payout can be traced per line. The statement only shapes what is *owed* — it computes no transfer, credits no wallet, and pays nothing out. ### Volume savings The volume-savings widget mirrors the volume-tier ladder your account bills against. Pick a channel (SMS, WhatsApp, or voice minutes), type a hypothetical monthly volume, and the preview returns the **effective per-unit price** that volume earns, the projected spend versus the undiscounted rack rate, the projected savings, and the full discount ladder — so you can see which tier a volume commits you to before committing it. ## 2. How to estimate Work top-down, broadly as the page composes: 1. **Estimate per-channel messaging first.** Select your channels, set a monthly volume, and pick the destination country. The SMS leg prices against your live per-operator rate card; unpriced legs show the sales-contact link instead of a made-up rate. Read the grand total plus the per-channel breakdown. 2. **Simulate RTC minutes.** In the RTC simulator, convert your meeting pattern into the three base inputs — participants × minutes per room × rooms per month. The forecast returns participant-minutes and the blended rate, which is the number to compare provider-to-provider. 3. **Add AI usage if you run agents.** The AIaaS and resolution calculators turn your expected agent traffic into a price per axis; the marketplace calculator prices what your *published* listings would pay out. 4. **Apply volume tiers last.** Once you have a total volume, run it through the volume-savings widget to see the effective rate you'd actually pay at that scale — list-rate estimates and tiered rates can diverge meaningfully once you cross a tier boundary. **Currencies:** the messaging widget renders in your account's currency (resolved from your wallet balance; USD otherwise). The RTC totals, AI previews, marketplace preview, and reseller statement are USD-denominated — previews are USD-only on the server side. For how FX and account currencies behave when real money moves, see [wallet currency conversion](/billing/wallet-currency-conversion) and [how billing meters your usage](/concepts/billing-and-wallet). ## 3. When to use which widget The calculators split into three questions: | Question | Widget | Tool | | ---------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | | "What would X units of channel Y cost at list / my rates?" | Channel cost estimate | Dashboard-only | | "What would this room shape cost per month?" | RTC cost simulator | Dashboard + `POST /pricing/rtc-simulate` | | "What would my AI agents / listings / resolutions cost?" | AI & marketplace previews | Dashboard + `/billing/*/preview` endpoints | | "What do we owe partner P for period T?" | Reseller payout statement | Dashboard + `POST /billing/margin-rollup/preview` | | "What effective rate does volume V earn?" | Volume savings | Dashboard + `GET /billing/volume-tier-preview` | **Do not confuse this page with the [what-if pricing simulator](/guides/whatif-pricing-simulator) (Billing → What-if pricing simulator).** They answer opposite questions. The what-if simulator replays **traffic you already sent** through a candidate rate card — the traffic is held fixed, only the rates change — so it back-tests a negotiated sheet against your last 1–90 days. The pricing calculator page **models traffic you haven't sent yet** — a volume, tier, or configuration you're planning. Rule of thumb: validating a rate change → what-if simulator; planning a new workload → pricing calculator. ## 4. Where the numbers come from Every widget here is wired to the same pricing rules the wallet actually bills under — a displayed estimate is never a fabricated number: * The SMS rate in the channel cost estimate comes from your live per-operator rate card (`GET /pricing/mccmnc-rates`), with the markup resolution — per-operator override, your organization's markup, or the platform default — applied exactly the way the send path applies it. That precedence is documented in [pricing and rate resolution](/concepts/pricing-rate-resolution). * The RTC simulator server-side computes against one shared rate card, so the dashboard and the API agree. * Volume savings reads the tier ladder configured on your account — the same ladder billing applies when it rates your usage. Because the resolver is shared, the reconciliation loop is closed: an estimate you ran here can be traced to the same pricing rule a ledger debit carries attribution to. ## 5. Role gating The page follows the same gate as the other billing surfaces: **owner**, **admin**, and **billing** roles see the full calculators including account-derived data (currency, balance-derived formatting). Members outside those roles see a degraded view — for the messaging estimate specifically, the wallet balance read that resolves the display currency is skipped and the widget falls back to USD. The what-if simulator additionally gates on the same three roles because its reply carries your real spend; the calculator page's previews carry only hypothetical counters you typed, so their previews don't expose recorded usage. ## Worked example: plan a 250K-message SMS + video month An operator planning a new customer-support workload walks the page top-down: 1. **Pick channels.** In the channel cost estimate, select **SMS**, drag the volume slider to **250K**, and set the destination to **Germany**. The widget reads your live Germany per-operator rates and returns the estimated monthly SMS cost — say it renders the cheapest operator rate with your markup already applied — plus a savings line versus the other CPaaS's published list price. Copy the **Share estimate** URL into the planning ticket so finance sees the same inputs. 2. **Simulate the RTC minutes.** The support team plans 100 rooms/month of 30 minutes with 5 participants in HD. Enter **HD**, **5** participants, **30** minutes, **100** rooms per month and **Run forecast**: 15,000 participant-minutes at the HD tier rate, with no surprise extras because recording and captions are bundled. 3. **Add the volume tier.** Now that the workload is sized at 250K messages/month, open the volume-savings widget, pick **SMS**, type **250000**, and read the effective per-unit price — if your ladder has a tier boundary below 250K, the volume preview prices the month lower than the list-rate estimate from step 1. 4. **Preview partner payouts.** If this workload flows through a white-label partner, enter the three sub-accounts it serves — revenue and carrier cost per sub-account — set the partner's revenue-share percentage and the statement period, and read the partner share out of net margin. The statement shapes the payout conversation; it pays nothing. At the end of the walk you have a list-rate messaging estimate, a tier-adjusted effective rate, a per-minute RTC bill, and a shaped partner statement — all read-only, all priced on the same rules the wallet bills under, all discardable with a page refresh.