New check

Comparison

LiveKit vs Agora

LiveKit and Agora both land on Depends.

LiveKit

Depends

Confidence: Medium

Buy if you have engineers building voice or video AI at real scale and want open-source control.

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Agora

Depends

Confidence: Medium

Buy if you have developers embedding real-time voice, video, or voice AI agents into your own product.

Read the full report

LiveKit versus Agora
Compare	LiveKit	Agora
Verdict	Depends	Depends
Best for	Teams building voice AI agents	App teams embedding voice/video
Who it's not for	Non-technical founders wanting a finished voice product	Non-technical teams wanting a ready-made app
Privacy	SOC2 certified with a trust center and disclosure program; a few component vulnerabilities disclosed and remediated.¹⁰	One 2021 CVE disclosed in the Agora Video SDK; vendor maintains a public security page.
Support quality	No support evidence found	No evidence on support quality
Public sentiment	Developers praise LiveKit's flexibility and scale, while most friction centers on setup complexity and choosing between similar voice-AI platforms.^⁵	Sources consistently describe Agora as developer APIs/SDKs for embedding real-time voice, video, and chat, but the evidence contains little direct user feedback.¹⁶
Biggest gotcha	Cloud bills per minute across agent sessions, inference credits, and telephony . costs spike with usage^²	Usage-based minutes: costs scale unpredictably as your traffic grows¹⁶

Pick LiveKit when

Teams building voice AI agents
Video conferencing and livestreaming apps
Robotics and physical-AI startups
Engineering orgs wanting open-source control

When LiveKit is not a fit

Non-technical founders wanting a finished voice product
Teams wanting plug-and-play voice bots . Vapi/Retell are managed
Small projects where per-minute cloud bills outpace value
Buyers needing review depth before committing . G2 shows 1 review

Pick Agora when

App teams embedding voice/video
Voice AI agent builders
Live social and event apps
Developers needing <200ms latency

When Agora is not a fit

Non-technical teams wanting a ready-made app
Anyone needing simple chatbot support . use Tidio or Gorgias
Buyers wanting flat monthly SaaS billing
Small teams with no developer resources

Sources

LiveKit Raises $100M, Valued at $1Btechcrunch.com
news
LiveKit Pricinglivekit.com
official
LiveKit homepagelivekit.com
official
LiveKit on G2g2.com
review
LiveKit vs Pipecat (Reddit)reddit.com
review
Lost between LiveKit Cloud vs Vapi vs Retell (Reddit)reddit.com
review
LiveKit Agents vs Callspherecallsphere.ai
review
LiveKit AI Agents 2026 Playbookforasoft.com
review
WebRTC.ventures LiveKit partnershipwebrtc.ventures
official
LiveKit server image vulnerabilities (community)community.livekit.io
security
livekit-client vulnerability AIKIDO-2025-10122intel.aikido.dev
security
LiveKit Data Processing Addendum (SOC2)livekit.com
security
Pipecat vs LiveKit lock-in trade-offschannel.tel
review
What is LiveKit and how does it workgetstream.io
official
Agora official site . Real-Time Engagement & Conversational AI Platformagora.io
official
Agora: Details, Reviews, Pricing, & Featurescheckthat.ai
review