Category: Hosting & Delivery

As of October 2026, Zoom Webinars costs $89 a month, or $800 a year ($66.67 a month), per license for up to 300 attendees, and $129 a month or $1,000 a year for 500 attendees. Simulive (pre-recorded sessions) needs Webinars Plus, which starts at $99 a month or $990 a year for 100 attendees and costs $3,490 a year at 500 attendees.

Zoom’s pricing page opens on the 500-attendee tier and puts the other sizes behind an attendee menu, so below you’ll find every published attendee tier, what Webinars Plus adds, and how Zoom compares with other platforms in our Webinar Platform Index.

Zoom webinar pricing: key facts

Prices are US list prices per license (Zoom quotes them per user per month), before tax. Zoom has no free webinar plan.

Webinars vs Webinars Plus vs Events

Webinars is Zoom’s standard broadcast product: chat, reactions, polls and Q&A, custom backgrounds, cloud and local recordings with AI smart chapters, registration and engagement reports, and a basic event landing page. Zoom’s comparison table marks HubSpot, Salesforce and Marketo integrations as included on all three plans. Sessions can run up to 30 hours, with up to 1,000 video panelists.

Webinars Plus adds pre-recorded sessions (simulive), a private backstage for speakers, pro layouts and scenes, an advanced landing page builder with AI-generated text and images, AI tools that turn recordings into content, and richer analytics. Zoom’s FAQ describes the same feature set under the name Zoom Sessions.

Events adds multi-session and multi-day events with up to 15 simultaneous tracks, a lobby, networking, sponsor tools and hybrid features. For a single-track B2B webinar program, it is more than you need.

Zoom webinar pricing by attendee tier

These figures come from the pricing data behind Zoom’s own pricing page, where you pick the attendee size. Zoom says its products support up to 100,000 attendees. It also sells pay-per-attendee licenses for Webinars Plus and Events, which give you “a set number of attendee slots to use across all your events in a 12-month period,” but it doesn’t list those prices on the page.

Annual vs monthly billing

For Webinars, yearly billing is the better deal at every tier. At 300 attendees, 12 monthly payments come to $1,068, against $800 billed yearly. At 500 attendees it is $1,548 against $1,000, a $548 difference. Zoom also sells one-month Webinars plans at the monthly price, which can suit a one-off event.

Webinars Plus and Events offer monthly billing only at the 100-attendee tier. Above that, the published prices are yearly.

What simulive needs

Simulive is Zoom’s name for playing a pre-recorded session as if it were live, with the option to switch to a live Q&A at the end. According to Zoom’s support documentation, you need:

• A Pro, Business, Enterprise or Education account.
• A Webinars Plus or Events license (subscription or pay-per-attendee).
• A saved recording in the Zoom cloud to play.
• If someone schedules simulive webinars for you, both of you need a webinar license and a Webinars Plus or Events license.

The standard Webinars license doesn’t include it: Zoom’s comparison table marks pre-recorded sessions as not included. The jump is steep. At 500 attendees, moving from Webinars to Webinars Plus takes you from $1,000 to $3,490 a year. If you only need replays, the cloud recordings on the standard plan may be enough. Our live vs evergreen webinars guide covers when pre-recorded delivery is worth paying for.

Hidden costs and limits

• Licenses follow the scheduler. Zoom prices webinars per user per month. The person who schedules a webinar needs a paid Zoom license plus the webinar add-on, while an alternative host only needs a paid Zoom license on the same account (Zoom support). Budget one webinar add-on for each person who schedules webinars.
• A Zoom account comes first. Zoom’s getting-started guide lists the requirement as “a licensed user with the Webinar add-on.” Every webinar plan card on Zoom’s pricing page says “Zoom Workplace Pro Required”, and Workplace Pro costs $14.16 a month billed annually or $16.99 billed monthly per user (checked October 9, 2026). Add it to your budget if the host doesn’t already have a paid Workplace plan.
• Panelists are separate. Zoom’s support guide says panelists don’t count toward your attendee maximum. Attendees do, and the number who can join is set by your plan size.
• Nonprofit discount. Zoom offers verified nonprofits 50% off Zoom Webinars.
• Pay-per-attendee prices are unpublished. Ask for a quote if your audience is large but infrequent.

What Zoom Webinars costs at a realistic team size

Take a B2B marketing team running two webinars a month with one host and up to 400 live attendees. The 500-attendee Webinars license at $1,000 a year covers it, plus Zoom Workplace Pro (about $170 a year) if the host doesn’t already have it. Add a second host who runs their own sessions and the platform line becomes $2,000 a year. Move both to Webinars Plus for simulive and it becomes $6,980 a year. Put those numbers next to promotion, staff time and follow-up in our webinar cost per lead model.

How Zoom Webinars compares

Here is Zoom’s 500-attendee license next to similar plans from our Webinar Platform Index, each re-checked on the vendor’s pricing page.

GoTo’s Elevate plan is the sharpest contrast: 1,000 participants and recordings run as live events for $1,236 a year, against $6,790 a year for Webinars Plus at 1,000 attendees. Zoom’s advantage is CRM, with HubSpot, Salesforce and Marketo marked included on every plan. Livestorm charges per unique attendee per session rather than per host, which suits teams with many presenters and modest audiences. For the wider choice, see our Zoom vs Teams vs webinar platforms guide.

Bottom line

For a team running regular live webinars under 500 attendees, the standard Webinars license billed yearly ($800 for 300 attendees, $1,000 for 500, plus Zoom Workplace Pro) is fair value, especially if you need HubSpot, Salesforce or Marketo sync.

Pay for Webinars Plus only if simulive, the backstage or the advanced landing pages will change your results, because it costs about three and a half times as much at 500 attendees. If pre-recorded delivery is the main need, price GoTo Webinar Elevate and WebinarJam before you commit.

Related: Zoom Events vs Zoom Webinars: Which One Do You Need? and Simulive Webinar: How It Works and Which Platforms Run It.

FAQ

Is there a free Zoom webinar plan?

No. Every webinar plan on Zoom’s pricing page is paid. The cheapest is Webinars for 300 attendees at $89 a month, or $800 a year billed yearly.

How much is Zoom Webinars for 1,000 attendees?

$340 a month, or $3,400 a year billed yearly. Webinars Plus at 1,000 attendees is $6,790 a year.

Does Zoom Webinars include simulive?

No. Simulive needs a Webinars Plus or Events license, a Pro, Business, Enterprise or Education account, and a saved cloud recording.

Do panelists count toward the attendee limit?

No. Zoom’s support guide says panelists don’t count toward the webinar’s attendee maximum; they are limited by your meeting capacity. Zoom’s comparison table allows up to 1,000 video panelists.

Sources

• Zoom: Webinars and Events pricing
• Zoom: Webinars product page
• Zoom Support: Getting started with Zoom Webinars
• Zoom Support: Zoom Webinars and simulive webinars comparison
• GoTo Webinar: plans and pricing
• WebinarJam: pricing
• Livestorm: pricing

Prices checked against the vendors’ own pages on October 7, 2026.

As of October 2026, StreamYard pricing runs from a free plan to $35.99 a month for Core and $68.99 a month for Advanced, billed yearly ($44.99 and $88.99 if you pay monthly). Advanced is the only individual plan with On-Air webinars, capped at 100 viewers per stream, and StreamYard points companies to its Business plan, which now lists at $249 a month billed yearly ($299 if you pay monthly) for 2 seats, with On-Air webinars for 1,000+ viewers.

Below is every plan StreamYard lists, what its webinar features really require, and how the cost compares with other tools in our Webinar Platform Index.

StreamYard pricing: key facts

See StreamYard’s current plans →

Core, Advanced and Business come with a 7-day free trial. StreamYard’s two refund statements don’t match: the pricing page FAQ promises a 7-day money-back guarantee on your first charge only, while its Refund Policy (last updated September 22, 2026) allows requests within 20 days of a monthly or weekly charge and 60 days of a yearly one. Ask StreamYard to confirm which applies, in writing, before you buy. It bills in US dollars or Indian rupees.

What each StreamYard plan includes

Free covers the browser studio with 6 people on screen, 1 seat and 2 hours a month of local recordings. Your streams carry the StreamYard logo, and the pricing page lists “streaming limits” and “limited storage” without stating the exact caps.

Core removes the logo and adds Full HD (1080p), multistreaming to 3 destinations, 10 on-screen participants, custom RTMP destinations, overlays and backgrounds, pre-recorded streams up to 2 hours, cloud recording, AI clips and 50 hours of permanent storage. It does not include On-Air webinars.

Advanced adds 4K local recordings, 8 multistream destinations, an extra camera, 15 backstage participants, pre-recorded streams up to 4 hours, custom fonts, downloadable transcripts and On-Air webinars for 100 viewers.

Business is the plan for companies and teams. StreamYard’s Business page lists granular roles and permissions, centralized billing, 24 hours of recording per stream, 10 concurrent streams, 30+ spaces, 15 backstage participants, 10 multistream destinations, priority support and a 99.9% uptime SLA. Its help center says the plan includes 2 seats, and that single sign-on (SSO), Workspaces and extra On-Air attendees are paid add-ons.

The webinar catch: On-Air is on Advanced, and Advanced is for individuals

StreamYard On-Air is its webinar product: a hosted watch page you can embed on your site, optional registration (name and email), reminder emails, live chat and an “available on-demand” setting so registrants can watch after the live session. Among the individual plans, it appears only on Advanced.

The pricing page states that Core and Advanced “are for individual use only.” StreamYard’s Plan Usage Policy defines that as personal use, or individuals using StreamYard for their work, such as freelancers and their collaborators. Business plans are for “professional, commercial, and collaborative use” by small businesses or large organizations.

StreamYard enforces this. Since December 2025 it has moved qualifying accounts to the Business plan at their next renewal, with email notices 30 and 15 days before. The pricing page also describes an Enterprise plan for large organizations, citing companies with $50 million or more in annual revenue as an example, and says those companies are not eligible for Business.

For a B2B marketing team, that means $68.99 is not really your price. If you run webinars for your employer, budget for Business.

Hidden limits to check before you buy

• 100 On-Air viewers per stream on Advanced. Viewers on social destinations are unlimited on all plans, but registration only happens on the On-Air page.
• Basic registrant data. Registration collects name and email, and you can download the list as a CSV file. StreamYard does not publish a native HubSpot, Salesforce or Marketo integration for On-Air, so plan on exports.
• Pre-recorded stream length. Up to 2 hours on Core and 4 hours on Advanced.
• Prices can move. The pricing page says prices “may vary depending on promotional campaigns, seasonal deals, renewal terms, and custom offers.”
• An outdated figure. StreamYard’s On-Air page still says “Plans start at $49 per month.” Go by the pricing page: Advanced, the only individual plan with On-Air, is $68.99 a month billed yearly.

What StreamYard costs at a realistic team size

A freelance host or solo consultant running their own webinars fits Advanced: $827.88 a year billed yearly, or $1,067.88 a year if you pay monthly.

A three-person marketing team at a company does not fit Advanced. It needs Business, which lists at $249 a month billed yearly: 2 seats are included, a third seat is added from your billing page at a price StreamYard shows only in your account, and you may need add-ons for SSO or for more On-Air viewers. Get the full quote in writing, then set it next to the other budget lines in our webinar cost per lead breakdown. StreamYard also offers discounts to non-profits and educational institutions on request.

StreamYard vs other webinar tools at a similar price

Here is StreamYard Advanced next to three platforms at a similar entry price, each re-checked on the vendor’s own pricing page. Our Webinar Platform Index has 18 platforms side by side.

Zoom’s webinar and event plans also require a paid Zoom Workplace Pro license: $14.16 a month billed annually, or $16.99 monthly, per user (checked October 9, 2026).

At almost the same price, Zoom gives you three times the audience and the main marketing automation connectors, but none of StreamYard’s studio production or multistreaming. Vimeo states its cap as registrations per event, which is tighter than it looks. Riverside works differently: people can keep registering past its limit, and the cap applies when they join, so once the live room is full, later arrivals see an “event is full” screen (Riverside help center, checked October 9, 2026). If your webinars feed a sales pipeline, the CRM column matters more than the price column; our Zoom vs Teams vs webinar platforms guide explains why.

Who StreamYard fits

• Solo creators, consultants and freelancers who stream to social channels and want a simple registration page on the side: Advanced.
• Company teams that want StreamYard’s studio, multistreaming and production quality: Business, from $249 a month billed yearly.
• Teams that need registrants to flow into HubSpot, Salesforce or Marketo automatically, or that run a recurring on-demand program: a dedicated webinar platform is usually the better fit. Our on-demand replay funnel playbook shows what that program needs.

Bottom line

If you are an individual, StreamYard Advanced at $68.99 a month billed yearly is a fair price for a strong live studio plus basic webinars for 100 viewers. If you only stream to social channels and don’t need registration, Core at $35.99 a month billed yearly is enough.

If you are buying for a company, ignore the individual prices. StreamYard’s own policy puts you on Business, so get that price in writing and compare it with dedicated webinar tools before you sign.

See StreamYard’s current plans →

FAQ

Is StreamYard free?

Yes. The Free plan costs $0 and includes the studio, 6 on-screen participants and 2 hours a month of local recordings, with the StreamYard logo on your streams. It does not include On-Air webinars.

How much does StreamYard Business cost?

$249 a month billed yearly, or $299 billed monthly, as of October 9, 2026. That includes 2 seats (up to 1,000 can be added), On-Air webinars for 1,000+ viewers and a 7-day free trial. The price of each extra seat shows in your account’s billing section, and larger organizations are pointed to Enterprise, which is sold by StreamYard’s sales team.

Can my company use StreamYard Advanced for webinars?

Not under StreamYard’s rules. Core and Advanced are for individual use only, and StreamYard moves accounts it classifies as business use to the Business plan at renewal.

How many people can watch a StreamYard webinar?

Advanced includes 100 On-Air viewers per stream. Business lists On-Air webinars for 1,000+ viewers, and extra On-Air attendees are sold as an add-on. Viewers on social platforms are unlimited on all plans.

Sources

• StreamYard: Plans and Pricing
• StreamYard: Business
• StreamYard: On-Air webinars
• StreamYard Help Center: Plan Usage Policy
• StreamYard Help Center: Update to our Business plan
• Zoom: Webinars and Events pricing
• Vimeo: pricing
• Riverside: pricing

Prices checked against the vendors’ own pages on October 7, 2026.

It comes up in every planning cycle, usually from whoever signs the software invoices: “We already pay for Teams — why are we buying another webinar tool?” After producing more than a thousand B2B webinars, my answer may surprise you. Sometimes you shouldn’t.

But if the webinar exists to generate pipeline, the math changes fast. Almost every page ranking for this comparison was written by a vendor with a horse in the race. I don’t sell any of these tools and there are no affiliate links here — this is the same breakdown I give teams when they ask me which way to go, including the add-on costs the vendor pages skip.

Comparing prices? For current entry-plan prices, attendee limits and CRM integrations across 18 platforms, checked daily against each vendor’s own pages, see the Webinar Platform Index.

The quick verdict

• Internal training, all-hands, customer onboarding. Use what you already pay for. Teams if you’re a Microsoft shop, Zoom otherwise. Buying a dedicated platform for internal sessions is burning budget.
• Occasional marketing webinars — a quarterly thought-leadership session. Zoom Webinars plus your existing email tool is workable. Clunky, but workable.
• A real pipeline program — monthly or more, with follow-up tied to revenue. A dedicated webinar platform pays for itself, usually within a quarter. The registration pages, reminder automation, engagement data, and CRM sync you’d otherwise bolt on are the product.

That’s the whole decision in three bullets. The rest of this guide is the evidence.

Side-by-side: what each option actually gives you

“Dedicated platforms” here means the Livestorm, Demio, and Contrast class at the low-to-mid end and the Goldcast and ON24 class at the enterprise end. They differ plenty from each other, but as a category they bundle the same things Zoom and Teams leave out.

Prices are approximate and at the time of writing — every one of these vendors reshuffles packaging yearly.

Where Zoom and Teams genuinely win

Ubiquity is a real feature. Your IT team has already approved Zoom or Teams, which means no security review, no procurement cycle, no new vendor risk assessment. Dedicated-platform purchases can stall in security review for weeks, and if your first webinar is next month, that alone can decide it.

Attendees know the interface too. The join rate difference is small but real: familiar platforms cut the no-shows that come from “I couldn’t get in.”

On the Zoom vs Teams question specifically: Zoom is the better webinar product for external audiences — practice sessions, Q&A moderation, panelist controls, and reliable delivery to thousands. Teams wins when the audience is internal and lives in Outlook, because the invite, the calendar, and the recording all land where people already work. Running an external lead-gen webinar on Teams is the weakest option on this page — guest-access friction and tenant login prompts will cost you attendees before you’ve said a word.

What dedicated webinar platforms actually bundle

The pitch for webinar software built for lead generation isn’t better video. It’s everything around the video.

• Registration pages that convert. Branded templates you can A/B test, instead of a beige Zoom form. A decent dedicated-platform page should convert better than the stock forms, and registration is where the whole funnel starts.
• Reminder sequences built in. A proper four-email reminder sequence is the single cheapest way to lift live attendance. Zoom gives you one or two generic nudges; dedicated platforms give you the full sequence without touching your email tool.
• Engagement data worth scoring. Who answered the poll, who stayed past minute 40, who downloaded the resource. That’s the raw material for a webinar lead scoring model — and it’s the difference between sales calling everyone and sales calling the right twenty people.
• Native CRM sync. Registrations and attendance land in HubSpot or Salesforce automatically, on the contact record, same day. No CSV exports, no Zapier chains that silently break in week three.
• Browser-based attendance. No download, no client update prompt at 10:58am. For cold audiences this matters more than any production feature.

The real cost math — add-ons included

Vendor comparisons quote sticker prices. The honest comparison is total stack cost. Here’s what a “cheap” Zoom pipeline program actually looks like: the webinar license (~$80–100/mo), a landing page builder because the stock pages undersell you, email platform capacity for the reminder sequences, a Zapier plan to move registrants into the CRM, and — the line nobody budgets — three to four hours of someone’s time per event stitching exports together and chasing sync failures.

Run one webinar a quarter and that overhead is tolerable. Run one a month and you’re spending more in tooling fragments and labor than a mid-tier dedicated platform costs — while collecting worse data. The break-even in my experience sits right around monthly cadence. Below it, stay on Zoom. At or above it, the dedicated platform is usually the cheaper option once you count everything.

For current list prices and attendee caps, see the pricing guides for StreamYard, Zoom Webinars, GoTo Webinar, ON24, Demio, Livestorm and BigMarker.

Honest downsides, all three

Zoom: the marketing layer is thin and has been for years. Registration pages look dated, branding control is limited, reporting is CSV wrangling, and each additional host needs another webinar license. Fine as a delivery engine, weak as a demand-gen system.

Teams: the external attendee experience is the worst of the three — login prompts, guest-access quirks, and production controls that trail Zoom’s by a wide margin. If your audience is prospects rather than employees, Teams is the wrong tool, full stop.

Dedicated platforms: they cost real money, they add a vendor to your security review, and your audience meets an unfamiliar interface. Streaming latency on some browser-based platforms makes live Q&A feel slightly delayed. And your registration history lives in their database — leaving later is a migration project, not a cancellation.

How to decide in one afternoon

Answer three questions. First, who’s the audience — internal or prospects? Internal ends the conversation: use Teams or Zoom. Second, what’s the cadence? Quarterly or less, Zoom Webinars is defensible; monthly or more, price out two dedicated platforms against your real stack cost from the section above. Third, what happens after the event? If the answer involves sales follow-up and revenue attribution, you need the engagement data — see our webinar follow-up playbook for what that pipeline motion actually requires from your tooling.

Format matters too. If you’re planning an always-on funnel rather than live events, the platform question changes shape entirely — that trade-off is covered in live vs evergreen webinars. And nothing you buy exempts you from rehearsal: whichever platform wins, run the tech check and dry-run checklist before your first event on it. New platform, new failure modes.

Related: Microsoft Teams Webinar: Setup, Licenses and Limits (2026) and Zoom Events vs Zoom Webinars: Which One Do You Need?.

Frequently asked questions

Is Zoom or Microsoft Teams better for webinars?

Zoom, for any external audience — better production controls, better attendee experience, fewer login problems. Teams is the right call only when the audience is internal and your company already lives in Microsoft 365.

Do I really need a dedicated webinar platform?

Only if webinars are a pipeline channel. The test is cadence and follow-up: monthly-or-more events with sales follow-up justify a dedicated platform. Occasional sessions don’t — Zoom plus your email tool covers it.

What is the best webinar platform for B2B lead generation?

There’s no single answer, and anyone who gives you one is selling something. For small-to-mid teams, the Livestorm and Demio class covers registration and reminders at a reasonable cost, though native CRM sync usually sits on a higher tier (Demio Premium, and Enterprise on Livestorm’s pricing page). At enterprise scale with heavy Salesforce requirements, the Goldcast and ON24 class earns its price. The best platform is the one whose CRM connector matches your stack — evaluate that first, features second.

How much does a webinar platform cost?

At the time of writing: Zoom Webinars runs roughly $80–100 a month per license on top of Meetings. Mid-tier dedicated platforms land around $80–300+ a month depending on attendee caps. Enterprise platforms are quote-only and commonly reach five figures a year. Budget the add-ons too — email, landing pages, and integration middleware are where Zoom’s apparent price advantage quietly disappears.

Choosing the platform is the easy half — filling it with the right audience is the rest. This is lesson-one material from our courses — see what’s coming, or get the free lessons by email as they ship.