Red5 Cloud FAQ: Plans, Protocols, and Troubleshooting

Answers to the most common questions about Red5 Cloud — plans, protocols, regions, auto-scaling, WHIP/WHEP, PubNub, TrueTime Meetings, and getting support.

Find answers to the most common questions about Red5 Cloud below. If you don’t see what you’re looking for, open a ticket on the Red5 Pro Support Portal or ask the community on Slack.

What is the difference between Red5 Cloud and Red5 Pro?

Red5 Pro is a self-managed streaming engine that you deploy and operate on your own servers — either on-premises or in your own cloud account. You control everything: provisioning, scaling, monitoring, and maintenance.

Red5 Cloud is a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) built on the same Red5 Pro engine. Red5 manages the infrastructure for you, so you can focus on your application and content rather than servers. You get the same core streaming capabilities through a web console, without any operational overhead.

Choose Red5 Pro when you need full infrastructure control or must run in a private environment. Choose Red5 Cloud when you want to move fast, scale automatically, and skip the infrastructure work.

Is there a free trial?

Yes. When you create a Red5 Cloud account you receive a free 30-day trial that includes 50 GB of streaming bandwidth. No credit card is required to sign up. After your trial ends, you can continue with the Pay-As-You-Grow plan, which also includes 50 GB of free streaming per month, or upgrade to a paid plan.

What subscription plans are available?

Red5 Cloud offers several plans to fit different use cases and scale requirements:

• Pay-As-You-Grow (PAYG) — A usage-based plan with no monthly commitment. Your first 50 GB of streaming per month is free; usage beyond that is billed per GB. No credit card is required to sign up.
• Growth — A fixed monthly plan with a higher included bandwidth allowance and access to additional features such as Red5 Analytics and Metrics.
• Enterprise — Custom pricing for organizations with high-volume requirements, SLA guarantees, and dedicated support.

You can upgrade or change your plan at any time from the Red5 Cloud Management Console. You can also subscribe through AWS Marketplace.

What streaming protocols does Red5 Cloud support?

Red5 Cloud supports the following protocols for ingest and delivery:

Protocol	Use case
WebRTC (WHIP/WHEP)	Sub-500ms interactive streaming; browser publishing and playback
RTMP / RTMPS	Encoder ingest from tools such as OBS, vMix, or hardware encoders
SRT	Low-latency contribution over unreliable networks
Zixi	Managed contribution with error correction
RTSP	IP camera and device ingest
HLS	Scalable delivery for broad audience reach

You can mix protocols within the same node group — for example, ingest via RTMP and deliver to viewers over WebRTC or HLS.

What are the WHIP and WHEP endpoints?

WHIP (WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol) and WHEP (WebRTC-HTTP Egress Protocol) are standardized HTTP-based signaling endpoints for WebRTC streaming.

• WHIP is used by your publisher to send a stream into Red5 Cloud.
• WHEP is used by your viewer or player to subscribe to a stream from Red5 Cloud.

You can find your WHIP and WHEP endpoint URLs in the Dev Resources section of the Red5 Cloud Management Console. The endpoints follow the pattern:

https://<stream-manager-host>/whip/endpoint/<stream-name>
https://<stream-manager-host>/whep/endpoint/<stream-name>

Replace <stream-manager-host> with your Stream Manager URL and <stream-name> with your stream name.

What regions is Red5 Cloud available in?

Red5 Cloud operates across 10 regions worldwide:

• North America — United States East (Ashburn, VA), United States West (San Jose, CA), Canada East (Toronto), Mexico Central (Querétaro)
• South America — Brazil South (São Paulo)
• Europe — Europe Central (Frankfurt), Europe West (London)
• Middle East — Middle East West (Jeddah)
• Asia / Pacific — Singapore, Australia East (Sydney)

You choose a default region when you create your account. You can add node groups in additional regions at any time.

What is a node group?

A node group (formerly called a deployment) is an isolated set of streaming infrastructure dedicated to your account in a specific region. It contains one or more nodes — Origin, Edge, Relay, Transcoder, Mixer, or Video Packager — that Red5 Cloud manages and scales on your behalf.

Each node group has its own configuration for auto-scaling limits, transcoding settings, authentication, storage, and webhooks. You can run multiple node groups simultaneously, for example to serve different regions or isolate different streaming workflows.

How does auto-scaling work?

Stream Manager 2.0 continuously monitors the load on your node group and automatically adds or removes nodes based on your configured thresholds. Scaling can be triggered by:

• Publisher and subscriber connection counts
• CPU load and memory usage (available from v1.9.0)
• Bandwidth consumption (Stream Manager scales based on load and usage as of v1.13.0)

When demand increases, Stream Manager provisions new nodes and routes traffic to them. When demand decreases, it terminates idle nodes to keep your costs in check. You set the minimum and maximum node counts in your node group settings — Stream Manager operates within those bounds.

How do I enable transcoding?

Transcoding converts your incoming stream into multiple resolutions and bitrates for adaptive bitrate (ABR) playback. To enable it:

1. Open Node Group settings

   In the Red5 Cloud Management Console, go to Node Groups and select the node group you want to configure.

2. Enable ABR Transcoding

   In the node group settings, toggle ABR Transcoding on. You can hover over the information icon next to the setting for a description of each option.

3. Save and apply

   Save your changes. Stream Manager will provision a Transcoder node for that group on the next scaling cycle.

Transcoding is available on Startup, Growth, and Enterprise plans. Check your plan details in Account Settings if the option is not visible.

What is the maximum number of participants in TrueTime Meetings?

TrueTime Meetings is a full-featured video conference solution built on Red5 Cloud. The participant limit depends on the node group capacity you configure and the instance sizes you select. For specific limits and recommended configurations for your expected concurrent participant count, open a ticket on the Red5 Pro Support Portal.

How do I find my Stream Manager URL and credentials?

Your Stream Manager URL and API credentials are available in the Dev Resources section of the Red5 Cloud Management Console.

1. Navigate to Dev Resources

   Log in to the Management Console and click Dev Resources in the left navigation.

2. Locate your Stream Manager details

   Your Stream Manager URL, admin username, and password are displayed on this page. You can copy each value directly from the UI.

Treat your Stream Manager credentials as secrets. Anyone with these credentials can access your Stream Manager API and manage your streams and node groups.

How are PubNub keys provisioned?

PubNub is fully integrated with Red5 Cloud accounts starting from v1.12.0. When your account is provisioned, Red5 Cloud automatically generates and stores a set of PubNub keys for you.

To access your PubNub keys:

1. Open Dev Resources

   In the Management Console, click Dev Resources in the left navigation.

2. Copy your PubNub keys

   Your Publish Key and Subscribe Key are displayed in the PubNub section. Copy them for use in your application.

These keys are scoped to your Red5 Cloud account and work with TrueTime Meetings and any custom PubNub integration you build on top of Red5 Cloud.

Where can I get support?

Red5 Cloud offers several support channels:

Support Portal

Submit a ticket, track its progress, and browse the FAQ library. This is the recommended channel for technical issues.

Email support

Reach the support team directly at [e-mail]. Email is linked to the Support Portal.

Community Slack

Connect with other developers and the Red5 team for real-time discussion, quick tips, and collaborative problem-solving.

Documentation

The full Red5 Cloud documentation covers setup, configuration, and common workflows.