Total listening hours calculator

What TLH actually counts

Total listening hours is the sum, across every listener, of how long each of them listened. One listener for one hour is one TLH. Ten listeners for six hours is sixty.

Your own broadcast hours never enter the calculation. A station on air 24/7 with nobody listening uses zero, which is exactly why hosts bill on it: it is a direct proxy for the bandwidth they will deliver.

Concurrent listeners are a different limit

A plan advertising "500 listeners" means 500 at the same moment. A station with 40 concurrent at breakfast and 5 overnight might be heard by two thousand different people in a month and never approach that cap.

Concurrency limits your peak. TLH limits your total. Stations usually hit the hours limit first, because sessions get longer as a station matures — one listener who leaves you on all afternoon is worth six who dip in.

Sizing a plan honestly

Take the genuine average concurrent listeners across the whole week, multiply by roughly 720 hours in a month, and add about 30% for growth and for the monitoring traffic you have not thought of. A station averaging 15 concurrent needs about 14,000 TLH; one averaging 40 needs about 37,000.

What happens when you run out

• Overage billing — the stream stays up and you get an invoice.
• Throttling — new listeners are refused while existing ones continue. The one to check for, because your own player is already connected and sounds fine.
• Suspension — the stream stops.
• Downgrade — quality drops to stretch what is left.

RadioHost Studio warns at 80% of the allowance, which is early enough to act on while there is still a month to act in.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate total listening hours?

Multiply average concurrent listeners by hours on air per day by days in the month. Fifteen concurrent listeners on a 24/7 station over 30 days is 15 × 24 × 30 = 10,800 TLH.

Is 20,000 listening hours a lot?

It supports roughly 27 concurrent listeners around the clock for a month. Comfortable for a station finding its audience; tight for an established one with long listening sessions.

Do listening hours reset every month?

On almost every plan, yes — the allowance is monthly and unused hours do not carry over. Check whether the month runs on the calendar or on your billing date; the difference matters when you are close to the cap.

Do uptime monitors count towards my listening hours?

Yes. Anything that holds a connection to the stream consumes hours, including aggregator health checks, uptime monitors and autoplaying website embeds. It is the cheapest place to find savings because none of it is a real listener.