UniFi Protect cost and UniFi Protect subscription fees for a 4 or 15 camera business

UniFi Protect costs nothing as software. Ubiquiti charges no license, no per camera fee and no monthly subscription for Protect or for remote access through its Site Manager, so the whole cost is hardware you buy once: a console to record on, hard drives and cameras. A four camera kit is $699, and fifteen new cameras on a UNVR come to about $2,800 to $4,000 before a PoE switch and installation.

Every price below is read from Ubiquiti's US store, and the rules come from Ubiquiti's own help center articles on camera limits, third party cameras and the AI Port. Drive prices move often (the store itself warns that supplier increases change them), so treat the drive lines as the number to re-check. We sell person and vehicle detection that runs on cameras a business already records, so the last sections say where UniFi is the better buy and where it is not.

Is there a UniFi Protect subscription

No. This is the main reason businesses shortlist UniFi against cloud camera systems that bill $6 to $30 a camera a month. Ubiquiti describes remote access through unifi.ui.com as license free, the Protect app is free, and recording, playback and smart detections on UniFi cameras run on the console you own.

There are paid items around Protect, and none of them is required to record:

So the honest phrase is "no recurring fee you are forced to pay". A business that wants monitoring agents, enterprise identity or a longer warranty adds those by choice, and the cloud copy of footage costs whatever your own storage provider charges.

What the console costs

The console is the recorder. Ubiquiti publishes a recommended camera count for each, by resolution, and that count is what decides which one a business buys. The two Cloud Gateways and the Dream Router run your network as well, which makes them cheap but small; the UNVR line is recording only.

Drives are sold separately: a 16TB Enterprise drive is $699 and a 4TB Basic drive $159 on the US store, and the 8TB and 24TB Enterprise drives were sold out when we checked. Note that the $129 Cloud Gateway Ultra cannot run Protect at all, which surprises people who bought it for the network first.

Four cameras, priced

For a small office or shop, the cheapest complete route is the UNVR Instant Kit at $699: the recorder with six PoE ports, four G5 Turret Ultra cameras and a 1TB drive. Because the recorder powers the cameras, there is no switch to buy. The 1TB drive is the weak point. Four 2K cameras recording around the clock fill it in days, so most installers swap in the $159 4TB drive, which brings the kit to about $858.

UniFi cameras get person, vehicle and animal detection on the console with no add-on, so for a small business starting from nothing, $858 once is hard to beat. That is the honest answer, and we would not sell our Watch tier ($288 a year for four cameras) to someone in that position.

Fifteen cameras, priced three ways

Fifteen cameras is the size where the choice of console and camera line changes the total most. Prices are US store prices for hardware only; the PoE switch, cabling and labor are the same in every row that replaces cameras, and are left out.

Read it plainly. If you are replacing the cameras anyway, a UNVR with G5 cameras is the cheapest route here over five years, by a wide margin, and it records. The detection layer only wins when replacing the recorder is the expensive part: when the current NVR or VMS is tied into access control, a retention policy or other sites, or when the labor of moving fifteen cameras costs more than the hardware.

Keeping the cameras you already own

Protect has adopted third party cameras over ONVIF since version 5.0.33. Ubiquiti's help center lists what they get: live view and playback, PTZ, audio, and motion events, which have to be set up on the camera itself. It adds that other advanced features are not supported, so a Hikvision, Axis or Hanwha camera in Protect gets no person or vehicle detection from the console.

The AI Port fixes that, one unit per one 4K, two 2K or three HD third party cameras, and our UniFi AI Port price per camera post works through those limits. The catch is in the fine print: the AI Port tops out at 4K at 30 frames a second and does not take wide multi sensor cameras, and a multi sensor camera adopted over ONVIF only gives Protect one of its streams. A fleet of fifteen 4K cameras needs fifteen AI Ports, $2,985, on top of the console and drive. The UniFi Protect third party cameras page puts that next to the other two ways to get person alerts on ONVIF cameras.

Some shops also put the camera grid on a TV at the front counter. If that screen has to carry menus or offers between camera views, that is a job for digital signage software that runs the screens you already own, not for the recorder.

When UniFi is the wrong purchase

Most businesses that price UniFi Protect are not unhappy with recording. They are unhappy with alerts: the NVR that came with the cameras pushes a notification for every headlight, shadow and spider web, and UniFi's smart detections look like the cure. Moving to UniFi does cure that, but the price of the cure is a new recorder, a migration of every camera and, often, a second system to learn while the old one still holds the footage you are required to keep.

If the recorder works, you can keep it. MotionDetection reads the RTSP sub stream of each camera your current NVR or VMS already records, labels every real motion event as a person, vehicle, animal or package, and alerts only on the classes you choose, by email, webhook or Slack. Nothing gets re-cabled and continuous video never leaves your network. You can run the demo on a clip before creating an account, our person detection camera software page shows what the alerts look like, and every tier is on the video analytics software price page.

If you are weighing UniFi against other platforms that keep third party cameras, the video management software guide compares license models, and the Synology Surveillance Station license and QNAP QVR Pro license pages price the NAS route the same way this post prices UniFi.

Questions buyers ask

Does UniFi Protect cost money?

The software does not. UniFi Protect, its app and remote access through Ubiquiti's Site Manager have no license or monthly fee. You pay once for a console that runs Protect (from $199 for the UNVR Instant), the hard drives and the cameras. Optional extras such as UI Care, the AI Key and AI Ports are one time purchases too.

Is there a monthly fee for UniFi Protect?

No monthly fee is required. Recording, playback, alerts and remote viewing run on the console you own. The recurring costs that can appear are optional: cloud storage at your own provider for Off-Site Archiving, UniFi Identity Enterprise at $5 a user a month, or a professional monitoring service, which Ubiquiti has announced but not priced.

How much does a UniFi camera system cost for a small business?

A four camera system starts at $699 for the UNVR Instant Kit, which includes the recorder, four G5 Turret Ultra cameras and a 1TB drive. With a 4TB drive for longer retention it is about $858. Fifteen cameras on a UNVR with a 16TB drive cost about $2,793 with G5 Bullet cameras or $3,983 with G6 Bullet cameras, plus a PoE switch.

Can UniFi Protect use third party cameras?

Yes. Since version 5.0.33, Protect adopts ONVIF cameras and gives them live view, playback, PTZ, audio and the camera's own motion events. Smart detections such as person and vehicle need a $199 AI Port per one 4K, two 2K or three HD cameras. Multi sensor cameras only provide one stream to Protect.

How many cameras can a UniFi NVR handle?

Ubiquiti recommends up to 60 HD, 30 2K or 18 4K cameras on the $299 UNVR, and up to 70, 35 or 24 on the $499 UNVR Pro. The UNVR Instant handles 15 HD, 8 2K or 6 4K cameras, and the UNVR G2 Pro 100, 70 or 50. These are recommended limits; mixed resolutions and heavy playback lower them.

Can I get person alerts on my cameras without switching to UniFi?

Yes. A detection layer can read the RTSP sub stream of each camera your existing recorder already pulls and classify every motion event before it alerts. MotionDetection does this from $49 a month for four cameras, or $888 a year for fifteen, with no new recorder, no re-cabling and no cloud archive of your video.