True, video chat is very expensive especially with the extreme bandwidth costs of the big cloud providers. I built something similar as OP and chose a mesh sol

True, video chat is very expensive especially with the extreme bandwidth costs of the big cloud providers. I built something similar as OP and chose a mesh solution for this reason even though it's inferior. It appears that only big video chat companies like Zoom or Skype can afford to have a generous free tier, subsidized by their business offerings.