You get Mux Robots! You get Mux Robots! Everyone gets Mux Robots!
There aren't many times in life that I get to channel my inner daytime talk show host, but today is one of them. So, with much fanfare, we're excited to announce that all Mux Video self-service customers now get 100,000 free units of Mux Robots (our built-in AI workflows) every month, including our Free plan users.
Wait. What are units again?
Mux Robots units are simply a predictable way to represent the resources used to run each workflow. They're generally calculated based on the length of the video and complexity of the workflow. They don't map 1:1 to the value of any particular AI model, because Mux Robots runs on a variety of models. You can see how many units each Mux Robots workflow consumes in our guide.
Let's say you're on our Mux Free plan and you have 10 videos, of varying length, but in total your library is about 60 minutes of content. With 100,000 free units you can:
- Translate captions into 2 different languages (consuming 62,000 units)
- Get summaries and tags for your videos (6,800 units)
- Generate chapters for videos, which is especially useful for longform content (6,000 units)
- And generate engagement insights to see how your viewers are consuming your content (20,000 units)
With all that, you're still only using 94,800 units.
Alternatively, let's say the 10 videos in your library are 45-minute webinars or classes. That's 450 minutes of content. With 100,000 units you can:
- Summarize those videos (18,500 units)
- Generate chapters (25,500 units)
- Generate engagement insights (20,000 units)
- And edit captions, making sure your free auto-generated captions through Mux Video don't accidentally confuse innocuous words in your content with profanity (18,500 units)
This comes out to well under your 100,000-unit free monthly units, at 82,500.
These are just some examples of what you can do, so let your imagination run wild.
For customers on our PAYG or Pre-pay plans, any usage over the 100,000 monthly units is billed at our normal usage rates. Learn more about those rates in our guide.
Using Mux Robots on the Free plan
If you're on our Free plan, there are a few things for you to know:
Before you begin using Mux Robots, an admin on your account will need to enable it by hopping into the dashboard. Please note: if you want to use Mux Robots via the API, you'll have to create new API keys to include Mux Robots.
The 100,000 units is a monthly cap. If you're close to your cap and you're trying to run a job that will put you over, it won't go through. If you're not sure how many units a job will use or how many units you have left, hop into the Mux dashboard. You'll be able to see your balance and the estimated unit usage of a job on the job setup page.
Not sure what to do first with Mux Robots?
Here are a few ideas on how you can get started.
Create a Directive to protect your brand identity
With a company name like Mux, auto-generated captions have a fun time writing out our name. The number of times I've personally had to manually download, edit, and reupload captions so we're not "Monks" or "mucks" or (the absolute thorn in our co-founder Matt's side) "MUX" is countless.
But now, with Mux Robots, we can create a Directive so that with every new video upload, it will run an Edit Captions workflow, address these errors, and automatically replace the caption file.
That whole setup just costs us 500 units (or $0.005) per job.
Translate captions for accessible reach
Not all your viewers will understand the primary language of your content. With Translate Captions, you can easily add captions in different languages to your videos. And with Mux Robots Directives, you can make this a workflow that runs on every upload so you can set it and forget it.
A 3-minute video would use 1,600 units per language (or $0.016).
Talk to your friendly agent for ideas
If you're unsure what best fits your use case, you can always ask your agent. Here's a prompt to help you get started with Mux Robots.
I want to add AI-powered video workflows to my app using the Mux Robots API (summarize, chapters, moderation, captions/translation, key moments, thumbnails, and more).
Read https://www.mux.com/docs/guides/robots.md first. Then ask me questions about my product to figure out which workflows are the best fit. Check across: audience/language needs, content structure (long-form vs. short), trust & safety (user-submitted content?), discovery/metadata, and presentation (thumbnails/highlights). Ask about any I haven't mentioned.
Once we've narrowed it down, read the linked guides (append .md to any URL) and help me integrate — ask what stack I'm using first. Use the docs as source of truth for endpoints and output shapes.Looking to have more fun with Mux Robots? Our team has a ton of examples, from how we use a question about feet to help with moderation, to how Dylan turned hours of old VHS tapes into a digital archive for his family, to tips on the best way to generate titles and descriptions for your videos.
Mux Robots not only unlocks context for your videos but also sparks the creativity to get you building. And now with 100,000 free monthly units, you have a kickstart to get you well on your way.
