Video Bitrate, Bandwidth and Storage Estimator
Pick a resolution, frame rate, codec and quality target to get a bitrate, then see it as full-ladder storage, peak egress for a concurrent audience, and a month of CDN traffic — the three numbers a VOD budget starts from.
ABR ladder
Players step down when the network degrades, so real storage is the whole ladder, not the top rendition.
| Rendition | Bitrate | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| 2160p (4K UHD) | — | — |
| 1440p (2K QHD) | — | — |
| 1080p (Full HD) | — | — |
| 720p (HD) | — | — |
| 480p (SD) | — | — |
| 360p | — | — |
Everything is calculated in your browser. No input leaves the page.
The model behind the numbers
Bitrate is not looked up in a table, it is computed from
bits per pixel per frame:
bitrate = width × height × fps × bpp.
H.264 uses 0.10, VP9 0.065, HEVC 0.06, AV1 0.045 — values chosen because at 1080p30 and 2160p30
they land where the published authoring recommendations do (about 6 Mbps for 1080p30 H.264,
about 15 Mbps for 4K HEVC). A formula keeps answering when you ask for 1440p50 or swap the codec;
a table of recommended presets does not.
Storage uses the ladder's combined bitrate rather than the top rendition. Players step down when the network degrades, so every rung has to be encoded and stored — the most commonly missed line in ABR cost: a six-rung ladder usually stores 1.5–1.7× the top rendition alone.
Peak egress assumes every concurrent viewer sits on the top rendition, which is the pessimistic end; real traffic is lower because of step-downs and device mix. Monthly CDN traffic is estimated the same way. Running it once more with the quality target set to bandwidth-first gives you the other end of a sensible range.
Not included: audio (order of 128 kbps for stereo AAC, multiplied per language), subtitles, container overhead (roughly 2–5% for fMP4), and any live time-shift window.