LiveKit Real-Time Audio/Video API
Open-source WebRTC platform with a dedicated AI Agents framework for building voice and video AI agents, integrating with LLMs, STT, and TTS providers including the OpenAI Realtime API.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
JWT tokens are short-lived and room-scoped, following security best practices. DTLS-SRTP encrypts all media in transit. HIPAA-eligible on Cloud with BAA. Open-source codebase is publicly auditable.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You are building a voice or video AI agent and need fine-grained control over the media pipeline, LLM integration, and the ability to self-host.
Avoid When
You need a simple managed voice API without infrastructure concerns, or real-time media is not part of the use case.
Use Cases
- • Building voice AI agents that participate in real-time audio calls with users
- • Integrating OpenAI Realtime API into voice-enabled agent workflows
- • Creating AI-powered meeting bots that join and interact in video conferences
- • Building customer support voice agents with full-duplex audio
- • Self-hosting real-time media infrastructure for compliance or latency requirements
Not For
- • Text-only or batch AI workflows where real-time media is not required
- • Simple push notification or async messaging (use a messaging API instead)
- • Teams without infrastructure experience who need a fully managed turn-key solution
Interface
Authentication
Access tokens are short-lived JWTs signed with an API key/secret pair. Tokens encode room-level permissions and participant identity. Agents use server-side SDKs to generate tokens programmatically.
Pricing
Self-hosting is fully free under Apache 2.0 license. LiveKit Cloud offers a managed option. Egress (recording/streaming) billed separately on Cloud.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Voice agent turn-taking logic requires careful tuning of end-of-speech detection thresholds
- ⚠ Self-hosted deployments require TURN server configuration for NAT traversal in production
- ⚠ OpenAI Realtime API integration adds additional latency compared to local STT/TTS pipelines
- ⚠ Agent framework is Python-only; Node.js agents SDK has a narrower feature set
- ⚠ Egress (recording) requires a separate egress service that must be deployed and managed
- ⚠ LLM inference costs are separate from LiveKit platform costs and can dominate total cost
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.