---
title: "What a fleet dash cam costs to run each month"
url: https://fleetsight.app/blog/what-a-fleet-dash-cam-costs-to-run/
description: "A camera that does not stream costs about €0.12–0.23 a month in cellular and under half a cent in storage. Here is the whole bill, line by line."
---

# What a fleet dash cam costs to run each month

21 September 2026

A camera that does not stream costs about €0.12–0.23 a month in cellular and under half a cent in storage. Here is the whole bill, line by line.

The short answer

A camera that uploads events and clips on request, not continuous video, costs €0.12–0.23 a vehicle a month in cellular and under €0.004 in storage. One that streams everything spends about 6 GB a month — €9–18 in cellular alone, which is why a subscription camera is quoted at $25–100.

Everybody quotes the camera. Almost nobody quotes the twelve months after it, which is where a video product either keeps its margin or quietly loses it. This is our own bill, measured on our own architecture, published because an integrator pricing a contract deserves a number rather than a shrug.

## The one decision that sets the bill

No video crosses the SIM on its own. Telemetry, events and one still frame per event go up continuously; a clip goes up when a human asks for it, for the window they asked for; live view runs for the minutes somebody is watching and is never stored. Everything else the camera recorded stays on its card, where storage costs nothing.

That is not a detail of implementation, it is the whole economic model. A gigabyte lifted over 4G costs €1.50–3. A gigabyte held for a month in European object storage costs about €0.0065. The ratio is 200–400 to one, so the architecture that uploads everything spends roughly 6 GB per vehicle per month — €9–18 in cellular alone, before anyone has watched anything. That is the reason a subscription camera is quoted at $25–100 a month.

## What actually crosses the SIM

One vehicle, two channels, a position every ten seconds for eight driving hours a day, ten AI events a day:

| What goes up | When | Per month | Cellular |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Telemetry, ~120 B a position with overhead | continuously | 12 MB | €0.02–0.04 |
| The event itself: type, confidence, position | immediately | 0.3 MB | ~€0 |
| One 80 KB frame per event | immediately | 24 MB | €0.04–0.07 |
| Ten clips pulled on request, sub-stream (4 MB each) | on a button | 40 MB | €0.06–0.12 |
| **A normal month** | | **~76 MB** | **€0.12–0.23** |
| The same ten clips, but pulled as main stream (20 MB) | on a button | 236 MB | €0.35–0.71 |
| One incident window off the card, 200 MB, once a quarter | on request | +67 MB | €0.10–0.20, or €0 on Wi-Fi |

Three things follow from that table, and none of them are about storage.

**The most expensive line is the one a person triggers.** The platform does not decide the bill; the operator pulling clips does. So the cost has to be visible to them at the moment they choose: which stream, how long a window, which channel.

**Event frames are the heaviest thing that goes up by itself** — twice the weight of all telemetry. Sending an 80 KB 720p preview instead of a 200 KB 1080p one saves more than any storage tuning ever will.

**Sub-stream versus main stream is a five-fold difference** on the same event. Pull the sub-stream by default; promote to main stream only for the clip that is going somewhere — an insurer, a lawyer, a disciplinary meeting.

## What the storage side costs

Only what was lifted is stored: the frames and the clips someone asked for, kept 90 days.

| What is stored | Per vehicle | €/month |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Event frames, 24 MB × 3 months | 72 MB | €0.0006 |
| Pulled clips, 40 MB × 3 months | 120 MB | €0.001 |
| Telemetry in Postgres, 137 B a row | 35 MB | €0.0015 |
| **Total** | ~0.23 GB | **under €0.004** |

Two things worth noticing. First, **the telemetry in the database costs about as much as all the video** — 35 MB of positions on block storage (~€0.044/GB) outprices 120 MB of clips in object storage (€0.0065–0.0087/GB), because block storage is five to seven times dearer per gigabyte. Second, **there is nothing to save on storage pricing.** The gap between the most and least expensive provider is fractions of a cent per vehicle; pick a provider on jurisdiction, object lock and predictable egress instead.

## The settings that actually move the number

These live on the camera, not on the server:

- **Two streams recorded to the card.** The sub-stream is what gets pulled first.
- **H.265 where the model supports it** — twice the hours on the card, half the weight of every retrieval. In our range EH26, EH21, EH24, EH03T-V2, EH80, MR01 and ES803 do; DR03 is listed as H.264 only.
- **A key frame every second**, so a twenty-second request cuts to twenty seconds rather than the nearest minute.
- **15 fps instead of 25.** Enough to review an event, one and a half times more hours on the card.
- **720p preview frames, not 1080p.** The single heaviest automatic line on the bill.
- **Audio off unless the customer has a legal basis** for recording cabin conversation.
- **A trigger allow-list.** Not every AI detection deserves a cloud event: smoking and no-seatbelt are answerable from the frame; a collision is not.

## The card is the cold tier, and it is free

128 GB on board is roughly 35 hours of two channels at main stream, and about twice that for one channel. That is free storage and it should carry the archive. Bigger card, longer window on the day something goes wrong — for about €15 of memory rather than a recurring cloud line.

## What this means when you price a contract

Hardware at [€145–189 depending on volume](https://fleetsight.app/integrators/), a platform that costs you nothing, and a running cost per vehicle of roughly:

- **€0.12–0.23 a month** in cellular on a disciplined month,
- **under €0.004 a month** in storage,
- plus whatever your own SIM plan’s floor is, which is usually the real constraint.

Against a subscription product at $25–100 per vehicle per month, the arithmetic over three years is not close, and we [wrote it out against Samsara’s own list price](https://fleetsight.app/compare/samsara/). The honest caveat: those subscriptions buy a coaching programme, a support desk and a mature product. What they do not buy is a different cost of carrying bytes.

## On this page

- The one decision that sets the bill
- What actually crosses the SIM
- What the storage side costs
- The settings that actually move the number
- The card is the cold tier, and it is free
- What this means when you price a contract

Questions this post answers

## Asked and answered

### ### What does a fleet dash cam cost to run per vehicle per month?

€0.12–0.23 in cellular and under €0.004 in storage, for two channels, a position every ten seconds over eight driving hours, ten AI events a day and ten clips pulled on request as sub-stream. That is about 76 MB a month. Pulling the same ten clips as main stream instead takes it to €0.35–0.71.

### ### Why is a subscription dash cam quoted at $25–100 a month?

Because it uploads continuously. A gigabyte over 4G costs €1.50–3 against about €0.0065 to hold a gigabyte for a month in European object storage — a ratio of 200–400 to one. An always-streaming camera spends roughly 6 GB a vehicle a month, €9–18 in cellular, before anyone has watched anything.

### ### Which settings actually move the bill?

The ones on the camera. Two streams recorded to the card so the sub-stream is pulled first; H.265 where the model supports it; a key frame every second; 15 fps instead of 25; 720p preview frames rather than 1080p, which is the heaviest automatic line; audio off without a legal basis; and a trigger allow-list so not every detection becomes a cloud event.

## More from the blog

21 September 2026 · Hardware

### How many camera channels does the vehicle need?

One, two, three, four or eight channels: what each one is actually for, what it costs in card hours and fitting time, and which model fits which vehicle.

[How many camera channels does the vehicle need?](https://fleetsight.app/blog/how-many-camera-channels/)

21 September 2026 · Installation

### What a fleet dash cam fitting involves, and what it costs

The seven steps of a fleet camera installation, how long a vehicle takes, what moves the price, and the step people skip that becomes a support ticket.

[What a fleet dash cam fitting involves, and what it costs](https://fleetsight.app/blog/what-a-dash-cam-fitting-involves/)

21 September 2026 · Markets

### Where fleet dash cams actually sell, by the numbers

Brazil, South Africa and Britain search for these cameras. Mexico and Nigeria do not — they buy through people. What that means for a distributor.

[Where fleet dash cams actually sell, by the numbers](https://fleetsight.app/blog/where-fleet-dash-cams-sell/)

Price list and two demo cameras

## Put one in a vehicle before you decide.

Tell us the platform you run, the vehicles you fit and roughly how many cameras a year. You get the current price list, the certificate list for the models you care about, and two demo cameras configured for your platform before they ship — at your own trade price, credited against your first order.

Or write to [fleetsight@theassettrack.com](mailto:fleetsight@theassettrack.com)