Per-seat economics punish the review.
You used to pay $30/seat just for executives to watch a 2-minute cut once a week. Guests are not seats. The engine is what you pay for.
Why Creator Bay
You keep the cut, the silicon, and the client relationship. They keep the per-seat ledger.
You used to pay $30/seat just for executives to watch a 2-minute cut once a week. Guests are not seats. The engine is what you pay for.
Proxies finish while you make coffee. The dailies never leave the building. Egress is always $0.
Marker sync is a first-class contract. Premiere, Final Cut, and Avid use the same local scripts. No partner program required.
Whisper and vision tagging run on your silicon. The search index is Postgres via Hyperdrive, not a vendor's training set.
Creator Bay is a player, a timeline, and a comment. Spacebar, draw, send. Directors actually finish reviews.
| Feature | Frame.io V4 | Creator Bay |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Expensive per-seat + storage add-ons | Flat / self-hosted + zero-egress R2 |
| Client access | Complex navigation, login friction | Instant review links, unlimited reviewers |
| Processing | Slow cloud queues, costly GPU passes | Instant local processing, $0 egress |
| Ecosystem | Adobe lock-in, dropped Resolve features | NLE-agnostic via open APIs |
| AI privacy | Cloud media tagging on unreleased cuts | 100% private local transcription & vision |