Kinescope logoKinescope vs VdoCipher:
DRM video hosting, billed monthly

VdoCipher protects course video well, but every plan is paid a year upfront and white-label, SDKs and the API start at $399 a year. Kinescope gives you Widevine and FairPlay, per-viewer watermarks and all of that from €10 a month, billed by the GB, with video stored in the EU.

Key differentiators

Pay monthly, not a year upfront

Every VdoCipher plan is prepaid for a year — Starter is $149 for 1,000 GB of bandwidth, Value $399 for 2.5 TB. Kinescope bills monthly from €10, and you pay for the GB your viewers actually use, with no annual contract.

Cheaper per GB as you grow

On VdoCipher, bandwidth beyond the yearly allowance costs $0.11 to $0.07 per GB, depending on the plan. Kinescope delivery starts at €0.03/GB and drops to €0.01/GB with volume, with no yearly allowance to run out of.

White-label, SDKs and API on the first paid plan

VdoCipher’s Starter plan leaves out the white-label player, app SDKs and the upload API; they begin with Value at $399 a year. On Kinescope they are all part of the Super plan from €10 a month, together with DRM.

Data in the EU by default

VdoCipher, a company in Gurgaon, India, stores video on AWS or Google Cloud with no region to choose, and moves EU data under standard contractual clauses. Kinescope stores video in EU data centres by default and is a Dutch company, Kinescope B.V.

Live over RTMPS and SRT, in the same account

VdoCipher takes live streams over RTMP on a separate yearly live plan. Kinescope ingests RTMP, RTMPS and SRT from OBS, vMix or a hardware encoder, records automatically, and keeps lives next to your courses in one account.

A higher uptime target

VdoCipher guarantees 99.94% annual uptime of video playback. Kinescope targets 99.98% every month, backed by a financial SLA on the Mega plan.

Comparison at a glance

Billing
Monthly from €10, pay as you go; no annual contract
Plans prepaid for a year: $149 to $4,999
Delivery price
€0.03/GB down to €0.01/GB with volume
Yearly allowance, then $0.11 to $0.07 per extra GB
DRM (Widevine + FairPlay)
Included from €10/month
On every plan; FairPlay not in the trial
Dynamic watermark
Per viewer
Per viewer, on every plan
Maximum quality
Up to 4K
Up to 4K
White-label, app SDKs, upload API
On Super, from €10/month
From Value, $399/year
Live ingest
RTMP, RTMPS, SRT; same account
RTMP; separate yearly live plan
Where data lives
AWS or Google Cloud, no region choice (Indian company)
Uptime SLA
99.98% monthly target, financial SLA on Mega
99.94% annual, for video playback
Try before you pay
Free plan: 100 min + 200 GB/month, no card
30-day trial: 4 videos, 5 GB

Moving off VdoCipher? Our team brings the library across

We bring your videos over at no cost on the Super and Mega plans. Your VdoCipher embeds stay live until the Kinescope embeds are tested in your LMS or app, so students never hit a broken lesson. Hands-on EN/PT support throughout.

When to choose

Choose Kinescope if you need:

Monthly billing by the GB with no annual prepay, Widevine and FairPlay DRM with per-viewer watermarks, white-label, app SDKs and the full API on the first paid plan, data in the EU by default, live over RTMPS and SRT, and a team that migrates you.

Choose VdoCipher if you need:

Offline downloads with DRM inside your iOS and Android apps, screen-capture blocking in mobile apps through its SDK, viewer heatmaps, or a fixed yearly video budget paid in advance.

Meet Kinescope: DRM video hosting without the annual prepay

DRM from day one

Widevine and FairPlay on every paid plan from €10 a month — no add-on fee and no per-license charge — plus dynamic per-viewer watermarking, signed links and domain restrictions.

API, SDKs and MCP

A REST API, 7 webhook event types, open-source SDKs for iOS, Android, Flutter, React, React Native, Vue and Angular, and an MCP server that lets AI agents search and edit videos and manage live streams.

Our own CDN

Our own infrastructure, not resold AWS or Cloudflare, covering Latin America, the US, Europe and the CIS, with a 99.98% monthly uptime target.

Live streaming

Go live over RTMP, RTMPS or SRT from OBS, vMix or a hardware encoder, keep an automatic recording, and let live-stream webhooks tell your backend when the encoder connects.

A video library for the whole team

Editors upload, organise and publish in the dashboard — projects, folders, playlists, player templates, AI subtitles and chapters — while your code works with the same videos over the API.

One predictable price

Plans from €10 a month with pay-as-you-go usage: delivery from €0.03/GB down to €0.01/GB, storage from €0.03/GB, processing €0.01 per minute once. No per-seat fees and no annual contract.

Trusted by more than 9,500 clients in 84 countries and counting.

Try Kinescope free — 100 minutes + 200 GB/month, no card required

FAQ

Can’t find the answer you need? Check out our Help Center.

If you want the same protection without paying a year upfront, Kinescope. Both include Widevine and FairPlay DRM and per-viewer watermarks. The differences are around them: Kinescope bills monthly from €10 by the GB used, includes the white-label player, app SDKs and the full API on its first paid plan, stores video in the EU by default and takes live streams over RTMP, RTMPS and SRT. See video hosting for online courses.

VdoCipher’s DRM plans are prepaid for one year: Starter $149 (1,000 GB of bandwidth and 100 GB of storage), Value $399 (2.5 TB and 200 GB), Express $699 (5 TB and 400 GB), Pro $1,599 (15 TB and 1 TB) and Premium $4,999 (50 TB and 2 TB). Extra bandwidth costs $0.11 to $0.07 per GB and extra storage $0.75 per GB, and storage counts each quality you stream, “2–5 times of what you upload” (vdocipher.com, November 2026). Kinescope bills monthly from €10: delivery from €0.03/GB down to €0.01/GB, storage from €0.03/GB and €0.01 per minute of processing, once — see pricing.

No, it has a 30-day free trial with 4 videos and 5 GB of bandwidth, without FairPlay DRM (vdocipher.com). Kinescope has a free plan with no time limit: 100 minutes of video and 200 GB of traffic a month, no card required; DRM starts on Super from €10 a month.

VdoCipher Media Solutions is based in Gurgaon, India. Its terms say video is stored on AWS S3 or Google Cloud Platform, data may be processed outside your country, and transfers from the EEA and UK rely on standard contractual clauses, with a DPA on request (vdocipher.com/page/terms). Kinescope stores video in EU data centres by default and is a Dutch company — see GDPR-compliant video hosting.