What does video AI cost in 2026? Indexing, search and storage
On the vendors' own price pages (25 Oct 2026), indexing an hour of video costs from about $0.90 (Memories.ai) to $9 (Azure Video Indexer, advanced), search runs from included in the plan to $15 per 1,000 queries, and most charge for storage. UpRock's price is $0.02 a minute to index ($1.20 an hour), $1 per 1,000 searches and nothing for storage. The catch: video you index joins a public index anyone can search, so it's for public video, not your own footage.
Updated · Read as markdown
The prices, side by side
Each number below is from the vendor's own page on 25 Oct 2026, converted to an hour of video and 1,000 searches where the page gives another unit. They don't all buy the same thing, so the last column says what you get.
| Service | Index, per hour of video | Search, per 1,000 | Storage | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UpRock | $1.20 ($0.02 a minute) | $1 | None | Moments in a shared public index; video you index joins it and anyone can search it |
| Twelve Labs | Included in plan storage: Free 3 GB, Plus $29 a month for 50 GB, Pro $99 for 200 GB | Jockey Search included; Marengo search counts against the plan's allowance, then $4 on Pro overage | Pro overage $0.065 per GB-month | A private index of your uploads, plus analysis ($1.75 an hour with Pegasus 1.6) and embeddings ($2.50 an hour with Marengo 3.0) on overage |
| Twelve Labs on AWS Bedrock | $2.52 (Marengo embeddings at $0.00070 a second) | $0.07 for query embeddings, plus your own vector search | Your own vector database | Embeddings only; you build and host the search |
| Memories.ai | $0.90 ($15 per 1,000 minutes); docs: $0.90 at 0.3 frames a second, $3 at 1 | $0.10 on the pricing page, $8 in the docs | $0.03 per GB-month on the pricing page, $0.02 in the docs | A private index of your video |
| Mixpeek | $3 for scene search; faces and on-screen text $6 each on top | Included in the plan; $2 per million beyond its pool | $1.56 per million vectors plus $0.023 per GB, monthly | A plan at $25 or $250 a month that includes $10 or $100 of processing |
| Cloudglue | $4.80 to $7.50 (a credit pack's price divided by the hours indexed it lists) | 1 credit a search: $10 to $15 | Not listed | Prepaid credit packs from $15 to $600 |
| Azure AI Video Indexer | $2.70 basic, $5.40 standard, $9 advanced (East US) | Not on the price list | Your own Azure Storage account, billed separately | Per-minute indexing analysis of your video |
| AWS Bedrock Data Automation | $3 ($0.050 a minute for video standard output) | None: you store and search the output | Yours | Scene-by-scene descriptions and transcripts as structured data |
| Google Video Intelligence | $6 for label detection ($0.10 a minute after 1,000 free minutes a month); shot detection $3 | None | None: no index is kept | Labels, shots and objects per video, not semantic search |
| Gemini API | No index. One pass over an hour is about 360,000 tokens: $0.27 on Gemini 3.8 Flash, $0.09 on 3.1 Flash-Lite, $0.036 on 2.5 Flash-Lite | None: each question reads the video again | None | Answers about up to 10 videos per request |
The Gemini figures use Google's estimate of about 100 tokens per second of video at the default resolution, and the paid-tier input price. Gemini 3.8 Flash's input price doubles to $1.50 per million tokens on 1 Jan 2027.
A worked example: 100 hours and 100,000 searches a month
Say you index 100 hours of video once (6,000 minutes) and run 100,000 searches a month. Where storage is billed by file size, we assume 2 GB per hour of video, about 1080p at 4.5 Mbit/s, so 200 GB; phone footage is often larger.
| Service | Index 100 hours (once) | 100,000 searches (a month) | Storage, 200 GB (a month) | Also pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UpRock | $120 (6,000 minutes at $0.02) | $100 | $0 | Nothing else |
| Twelve Labs (Pro) | Included | Jockey Search included; Marengo search up to $400 at the overage rate, less the plan's allowance | Included up to 200 GB | $99 a month |
| Twelve Labs on Bedrock | $252 | $7 for query embeddings | Your vector database | Hosting your own search |
| Memories.ai (pricing page) | $90 | $10 | $6 | Nothing listed |
| Memories.ai (docs) | $90 at 0.3 frames a second, $300 at 1 | $800 | $4 | Nothing listed |
| Mixpeek (Scale) | $300, less the plan's $100 pool | Included | $4.60 for files, plus $1.56 per million vectors | $250 a month |
| Cloudglue (Scale pack) | $480 | $1,000 | Not listed | Credits come in packs |
| Azure Video Indexer (standard) | $540 | Not on the price list | Azure Storage, billed separately | Nothing else listed |
| AWS Bedrock Data Automation | $300 | Not included | Yours | Your own search over the output |
| Google Video Intelligence (labels) | $500 (5,000 billable minutes) | No search | None kept | Your own search over the labels |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | $27 for one pass (36 million tokens), plus about $5.40 of output if you ask for 100 tokens of notes per 25 seconds | No search | None | Your own index of its notes |
What the table shows: for 100 hours, indexing is a one-off of tens to hundreds of dollars almost everywhere, and the monthly bill is decided by search and plan fees. A shared index changes the indexing side: a video is indexed once, by whoever needs it first, and every later search reuses those notes, so there's nothing for each customer to store. Be fair to the others too: Memories.ai indexes for less per hour than UpRock, and Twelve Labs' Jockey Search and Mixpeek include searches in the plan fee, so at high search volumes a plan can work out cheaper than paying per search, if your video fits it.
Where the vendors' own pages disagree
- Memories.ai. Its pricing page lists search at $0.10 per 1,000 and storage at $0.03 per GB-month. Its Video Datalake docs list search at $0.008 a call ($8 per 1,000), storage at $0.02, and indexing at $0.05 a minute at 1 frame a second, which they put at about $0.90 an hour at 0.3 frames a second. Both pages are live; we show both.
- Twelve Labs is between price models. Its pricing page says existing customers move to the new plans automatically on 4 Jan 2027, and that indexing for Marengo search and Jockey is covered by the plan's storage, so it publishes no per-hour indexing price for search.
- Azure Video Indexer's pricing page shows "$-" in place of prices without JavaScript, so we used Microsoft's retail prices API for East US.
- Cloudglue's credit table lists 4 credits a minute for several steps; the hours each pack says it indexes work out to about 8 credits a minute, so we used the packs' own figures.
- AWS lists the Twelve Labs rates on Bedrock in worked examples on the pricing page; the rate table itself loads with JavaScript.
What UpRock gives up for the price
- Privacy. Video you index joins the public index, and anyone can search it. Don't index footage you wouldn't publish.
- Your own video. The index covers public posts; in our 25 Oct 2026 searches every result came from YouTube, TikTok or Instagram. For uploads, security footage or internal recordings, use a private index.
- Depth. UpRock returns moments with a transcript excerpt. Twelve Labs (Pegasus, Jockey), Azure Video Indexer, Bedrock Data Automation and Gemini can answer questions about a video or produce structured output from it, and Twelve Labs and Bedrock give you embeddings to keep.
- Price per hour. Memories.ai's listed indexing rate is lower than UpRock's.
- Buying indexing. The $0.02 a minute is for UpRock's indexing API, which is in private beta (6 Nov 2026): email support@uprock.ai for early access; it opens up soon. Searching what's already indexed is open to everyone.
Where UpRock fits: searching public video across platforms by moment, at one price per search, with nothing to store and nothing to host.
How we checked
We read every price on the vendor's own page or API on 25 Oct 2026 and converted units ourselves: per second or per minute to per hour, per call to per 1,000. Plan prices are monthly list prices; Twelve Labs offers 17% off for annual billing. Taxes, free allowances and volume discounts are left out, except Google Video Intelligence's 1,000 free minutes a month, which its price table builds in. UpRock's prices come from its own price list and are prepaid, by card or USDC, or 20% less with UPT ($0.016 a minute to index, $0.80 per 1,000 searches).
FAQ
What's the cheapest way to search video?
It depends on whose video it is. For public video that's already in a shared index, you pay only to search ($1 per 1,000 on UpRock). For your own video, the lowest indexing rate we found was Memories.ai's $0.90 an hour, though its docs list a higher search price than its pricing page. For one question about one video, a model like Gemini costs cents per hour of video and needs no index at all.
Is there an alternative to Twelve Labs pricing?
For a private index of your own uploads, Memories.ai, Mixpeek, Cloudglue and Azure Video Indexer all price per minute or hour instead of by plan storage. For embeddings you host yourself, Twelve Labs' Marengo is also on AWS Bedrock at $0.00070 a second. For public video, UpRock. Twelve Labs' current customers move to its new plans on 4 Jan 2027.
Why do Memories.ai's numbers disagree?
Its pricing page lists search at $0.10 per 1,000 and storage at $0.03 per GB-month; its Video Datalake docs list search at $0.008 a call ($8 per 1,000) and storage at $0.02. Indexing agrees at about $0.90 an hour (the docs' rate at 0.3 frames a second). Ask them which applies before you plan around it.
Is video I index with UpRock private?
No. It joins the public index anyone can search. For your own or confidential footage, use a private index such as Twelve Labs, Memories.ai or Azure Video Indexer.
Does UpRock charge for storage?
No. You pay $0.02 a minute to index and $1 per 1,000 searches, and keeping a video in the index costs nothing. The index holds notes on each video (transcripts, descriptions and timestamps), not copies.
Other use cases to explore
- Pick the right kind of video tool: a decision table across transcripts, single-video models, private indexes and a shared public index.
- Save money with transcripts where they work: which videos a transcript search handles, and what it costs next to visual indexing.
- Estimate your agent's web costs: what crawling and search would cost for your app next to Firecrawl, Tavily, Exa and Parallel.
- The open video index: how the shared index works and what searching and indexing cost.
References
- Twelve Labs, Pricing (plans and included storage), checked 25 Oct 2026
- Twelve Labs, Overage pricing (Pro plan rates), checked 25 Oct 2026
- AWS, Amazon Bedrock pricing (Twelve Labs Marengo and Pegasus examples, Bedrock Data Automation), checked 25 Oct 2026
- Memories.ai, Pricing, checked 25 Oct 2026
- Memories.ai docs, Video Datalake pricing, checked 25 Oct 2026
- Mixpeek, Pricing, checked 25 Oct 2026
- Cloudglue, Pricing, checked 25 Oct 2026
- Azure retail prices API, Azure Video Indexer (East US), checked 25 Oct 2026
- Microsoft Learn, Create an Azure AI Video Indexer account (storage account required), checked 25 Oct 2026
- Google Cloud, Video Intelligence API pricing, checked 25 Oct 2026
- Google, Gemini Developer API pricing, checked 25 Oct 2026
- Google, Gemini API video understanding (tokens per second, limits), checked 25 Oct 2026
- UpRock, the open video index (prices, no storage fees), checked 25 Oct 2026
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