Audio-only Calls

How-to Guide - Set up voice-only communication with cost savings

In many use cases, you only need real-time audio, without any video streaming. If your use case falls into this category, then you can benefit greatly from using audio_only rooms in Fishjam.

Why Should I Care?

Audio-only rooms are heavily discounted compared to normal rooms. As described in more detail on the pricing page, Fishjam rooms are priced based on the total connection time of peers in them. Audio-only rooms come at a 75% discount. For example, if you have a normal room with 2 peers connected for 30 minutes, then the total cost of the room will be equal to the cost of 60 minutes. If the same room were audio-only, then the final cost of the room will only be equal to 15 minutes.

How Do I Use It?

Using this feature is as easy as setting the roomType field to audio_only when creating a room using our Server SDKs

Typescript

const createdRoom = await fishjamClient.createRoom({ roomType: 'audio_only' });

Python

options = RoomOptions(room_type="audio_only")
created_room = fishjam_client.create_room(options)

Now, you can connect peers normally to the room as described in our React Native and React docs.

info

The React Native and React SDKs will log a warning in the console if any attempt to add video to an audio-only room is made. This aims to assist in debugging, as adding video to an audio-only room does nothing and is most likely a mistake.

Screen sharing

If you attempt to screen share when connected to an audio_only room, then only the audio will actually be sent to the other peers.