Limits & Quotas
Compare Automation API duration, resolution, frame budgets, concurrency, and minute billing across plans.
Your subscription tier determines the resource limits applied to your Automation API requests.
Plan comparison
| Limit | Free | Starter | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maximum video duration | 3 minutes | 5 minutes | 10 minutes |
| Maximum output resolution | 720p HD | 1080p Full HD | 1080p Full HD |
| Maximum frame budget | 921,600 pixels | 2,073,600 pixels | 2,073,600 pixels |
| Concurrent jobs | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Daily job starts | 10 jobs / day | 100 jobs / day | 500 jobs / day |
| Monthly included minutes | 5 minutes | 30 minutes | 60 minutes |
Upgrading your plan immediately raises all duration, resolution, concurrency, and daily ceilings for your account.
Video duration
Every video submitted to the API is measured after it is fetched or uploaded. A video exceeding your plan’s maximum duration is refused and the job fails with source-too-long:
- Free: Up to 3 minutes (180 seconds).
- Starter: Up to 5 minutes (300 seconds).
- Pro: Up to 10 minutes (600 seconds).
No minutes are charged for a video rejected for duration. If your workflow requires longer durations, contact support to discuss custom enterprise limits.
Output resolution & frame budget
Rather than restricting width or height independently, resolution limits are defined as a total pixel budget per frame. This allows you to render videos in any aspect ratio without artificial letterboxing or cropping:
| Frame dimensions | Aspect ratio | Total pixels | Free (720p) | Starter & Pro (1080p) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 Vertical (Reels / Shorts / TikTok) | 2,073,600 | ✗ | ✓ |
| 720 × 1280 | 9:16 Vertical | 921,600 | ✓ | ✓ |
| 1920 × 1080 | 16:9 Landscape | 2,073,600 | ✗ | ✓ |
| 1280 × 720 | 16:9 Landscape | 921,600 | ✓ | ✓ |
| 1080 × 1350 | 4:5 Feed Portrait | 1,458,000 | ✗ | ✓ |
| 720 × 900 | 4:5 Feed Portrait | 648,000 | ✓ | ✓ |
| 1080 × 1080 | 1:1 Square | 1,166,400 | ✗ | ✓ |
| 960 × 960 | 1:1 Square | 921,600 | ✓ | ✓ |
Scaling rules
- Automatic downscaling: If you leave
resolutionomitted and the source video exceeds your plan’s frame budget (for example, submitting a 4K video on a paid plan), tscaps scales the video down to fit within your budget (1920 × 1080) while preserving the original aspect ratio. - No upscaling: Asking for a
resolutionlarger than your input video will fail the job withoutput-larger-than-source. Tscaps does not artificially upscale lower-resolution videos.
Concurrency and queueing
- Free plans can run 1 job at a time.
- Starter plans can run up to 2 jobs concurrently.
- Pro plans can run up to 3 jobs concurrently.
If you submit new jobs while all concurrent slots are busy, the extra jobs remain in the queued status and begin processing automatically as earlier jobs finish.
Automation minutes and billing
API jobs consume automation minutes based on the duration of the input video:
- 1 minute of input video consumes 1 automation minute. A 45-second video consumes 45 seconds of automation minutes.
- Quality does not change the cost. Selecting
low,medium, orhighquality adjusts encoding bitrate but does not change the minutes charged. - Zero-cost failure guarantee: Minutes are only charged for jobs that successfully deliver a finished video. If a job fails or is cancelled, all held minutes are immediately refunded to your balance.
- Rollover packs: Additional minute packs purchased via the dashboard never expire and are consumed only after your monthly plan minutes are exhausted.
You can check your account limits and manage your minute balance in the developer dashboard.