You pay us,or youraudience does.

No — a paid event is free to run. No subscription required. We take 20% (Broadcast) or 25% (Studio) of ticket sales. Monthly plans are for producers running free-to-attend events who need delivery capacity (hours, viewer headroom). Live AI Translation is a separate add-on, off by default.

A paid event's live air time scales with its lowest ticket price. Broadcast: 6 h at a $5 lowest ticket, 12 h at a $10 lowest ticket, 24 h at a $20 lowest ticket, 60 h at a $30+ lowest ticket — the top tier covers a multi-day event, up to 5 days of sessions and 60 live hours in total. Studio: 3 h at a $5 lowest ticket, 6 h at a $10 lowest ticket, 12 h at a $20 lowest ticket, 18 h at a $30+ lowest ticket. Air time is the total live time across all of the event's sessions; replays don't count. We never cut or block a paid stream for air time. Past the allowance the first 15 minutes are free, then overtime is billed by the minute: $9.00 per hour plus $0.07 per peak viewer per hour on Broadcast, $0.30 per peak viewer per hour on Studio. To avoid overtime, raise your lowest ticket; for longer events, talk to sales about Enterprise.

This applies to Broadcast (encoder) events. Standard delivers exactly what your encoder sends — one quality to every viewer, so send about 720p at 3 Mbps with 2-second keyframes. Adaptive re-encodes your stream into six qualities and each viewer's player picks the one their connection can hold, so phones and weak Wi-Fi stall less. Adaptive is included with any paid monthly plan. On a paid event without a plan it's an add-on at $9.00 per hour of live air time, billed by the minute and taken from that event's ticket revenue; free events on the free plan use Standard. You can switch before you go live — it creates a new RTMP URL and stream key, so update your encoder. Studio (webcam) events have no quality choice.

Yes — start a monthly plan and cancel anytime. You keep access through the period you already paid for, so a one-month Broadcast or Studio subscription covers a single event with no future obligation.

Broadcast (OBS/encoder → HLS CDN) delivers your stream at low cost per viewer — scales to large audiences cheaply. Studio (browser webcam → WebRTC CDN) connects every viewer directly as an interactive participant — great for multi-presenter events, Q&A, translated events where per-language audio sync matters. Studio costs more per viewer because WebRTC bandwidth is roughly 6–10× the HLS CDN rate. PPV on Broadcast is 20%; PPV on Studio is 25% because the extra cut covers WebRTC CDN audience delivery so your viewers aren't additionally metered.

For paid (PPV) events, Riverbend Live deducts a platform fee from each ticket sale automatically via Stripe Connect: 20% for Broadcast events (RTMP→HLS CDN) and 25% for Studio events (browser webcam→WebRTC CDN). Stripe also charges its standard 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction — paid by your business, same as any Stripe payment. The platform fee does NOT cover Stripe's processing. Running a paid event costs you nothing upfront — we only earn when you do.

Yes. Upgrades take effect immediately with prorated billing. Downgrades take effect at your next billing cycle.

A concurrent viewer watching an event you've published without a PPV ticket. On Broadcast, viewers over the plan's included cap accrue overage at $0.50/peak viewer — the stream is never cut. Studio includes 50 peak viewers, then meters audience at $0.65/peak viewer rather than capping it.

Live AI Translation is a custom add-on, available on Broadcast or Studio events and quoted per event for your languages, hours and audience — from $39/hour per language. Translated audiences stream over the WebRTC CDN, so translated viewers are metered from viewer #1; that's included in your quote. Talk to us to price your event.

For organizations that want us to run the event end to end — managed production and white-glove launch, satellite acquisition, or a private whitelabel deployment. These are custom-scoped and custom-priced. Talk to sales to get started.

Every producer gets a unique referral link on signup. When someone you refer makes their first transaction, your 12-month earning window starts. You earn 5% of their gross platform revenue (PPV + future subscriptions), paid directly to your Stripe Connect bank account on the same schedule as your own payouts.

No trial — start on Broadcast Free (always free) and upgrade once you need more hours, more viewers, or Studio interactivity. No credit card required to stream your first event.