# Realtime dashboard pricing example

This example shows pricing for a healthcare monitoring dashboard sending patient vitals to care coordinators. It uses Ably's per-message and per-minute billing model. The same pattern applies to IoT sensor monitoring, logistics tracking, and infrastructure observability.

## Scenario

- **Patients:** 100 with home monitoring devices
- **Care coordinators:** 5 viewing dashboard
- **Shifts:** 8 hours, 22 days/month
- **Vitals frequency:** Every 10 seconds (6 per minute)

**Total cost: $101.50/month**

---

## Cost breakdown

The following breakdown shows the cost of connections, channels and messages in this scenario.

### How messages are counted

Messages are billed when sent to Ably and when delivered to subscribers. Usage is billed in increments of one million messages, rounded up.

One vitals reading sent to 5 care coordinators = 6 messages (one sent to Ably + 5 delivered to coordinators).

#### Messages generated by this scenario

| Message type           | Calculation                                  | Messages   |
|------------------------|----------------------------------------------|------------|
| Vitals (sent)          | 100 patients × 6/min × 480 mins × 22 days    | 6,336,000  |
| Vitals (delivered)     | 6,336,000 × 5 coordinators                   | 31,680,000 |
| Total messages         | 6,336,000 + 31,680,000                        | **38,016,000** |
| **Total message cost** | **39,000,000 × $2.50/M**                     | **$97.50** |

---

### How connection and channel minutes are counted

Both connection minutes and channel minutes are rounded up per million minutes used.

#### Connection minutes

[Connection minutes](https://ably.com/docs/platform/pricing.md#connections) are billed based on how long users remain connected.

| Item                        | Calculation                          | Total          |
|-----------------------------|--------------------------------------|----------------|
| Connection minutes          | 105 users × 8 hrs × 22 days × 60 mins | 1,108,800 mins |
| **Connection minutes cost** | **2,000,000 mins × $1.00/M**              | **$2.00**      |

#### Channel minutes

[Channel minutes](https://ably.com/docs/platform/pricing.md#channels) are billed based on how long channels are active for.

| Item                     | Calculation                            | Total          |
|--------------------------|----------------------------------------|----------------|
| Channel minutes          | 100 channels × 8 hrs × 22 days × 60 mins  | 1,056,000 mins |
| **Channel minutes cost** | **2,000,000 mins × $1.00/M**                | **$2.00**      |

---

### Total cost

The total monthly cost of this realtime dashboard.

| Item               | Cost             |
|--------------------|------------------|
| Messages           | $97.50           |
| Connection minutes | $2.00            |
| Channel minutes    | $2.00            |
| **Total**          | **$101.50/month** |

<Aside data-type='further-reading'>
Useful links for exploring this topic in more detail.
- [Talk with our sales team](https://ably.com/contact) to get a personalized quote.
- [Using Ably, Experity’s live BI dashboard transforms US urgent healthcare provision](https://ably.com/case-studies/experity)
- [See how doxy.me turned realtime from a liability into a strategic asset](https://ably.com/case-studies/doxyme)
</Aside>


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- [Data broadcast](https://ably.com/docs/platform/pricing/examples/data-broadcast.md): A pricing example that uses Ably Pub/Sub for data broadcast. Example shows how message conflation reduces message costs from ~$1,800 to ~$374/month for 10K users across 50 matches.

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