Adding real-time video and audio to an app sounds straightforward, but quickly becomes complex once you factor in latency, device support, scaling, and operational overhead. Most teams turn to a video SDK rather than building this infrastructure from scratch.
If you’re evaluating SDKs, Daily.co and Stream are two commonly considered options. This post breaks down how they compare across performance, developer experience, and pricing.
Comparison Overview: Daily.co vs. Stream
Both Daily.co and Stream provide APIs and SDKs for embedding real-time video and audio into applications. While they overlap on core capabilities, they differ in infrastructure approach, product focus, and how much they abstract away for developers.
At a glance:
| Stream Video | Daily.co | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Product-ready in-app video & audio | Flexible real-time video SDK |
| Core use cases | In-app calling, live streaming, audio rooms | Meetings, webinars, live events, embedded RTC |
| UI approach | SDK + fully customizable UI components | SDK + optional Prebuilt UI |
| Infrastructure model | Global edge network with SFU architecture | Global Mesh Network |
| Time to first call | Low with UI components; flexible for custom builds | Low (especially with Prebuilt) |
| AI & real-time extensibility | Platform and ecosystem for AI-driven real-time experiences | Media-level access for custom AI workflows |
Stream Video: Overview
Stream Video is designed for building production-ready, in-app video and audio experiences with minimal custom infrastructure.
Key capabilities:
- In-app video calling, live streaming, and/or audio rooms
- Fully supported features like ringing, CallKit integration, backstage modes, and participant preview
- Designed to work seamlessly with Stream Chat for combined chat + video experiences
Developer experience:
- Prebuilt, fully customizable UI components for React, React Native, iOS, Android, Javascript, Unity, and Flutter
- APIs and components designed to reduce edge-case handling in production
- Optimized for apps where video is a core feature
Architecture & performance:
- Global edge network with SFU-based media routing
- Adaptive streaming and per-subscriber optimization to balance quality and bandwidth
AI & real-time extensibility:
- Platform-level APIs and components designed to support AI-driven real-time products
- Extensibility focused at the application layer (users, calls, permissions, state)
- Often used as a foundation for voice- and vision-based real-time agents (with Vision Agents) built on top of video and audio infrastructure
- Designed to integrate AI features into production, user-facing apps rather than experimental pipelines
Daily.co: Overview
Daily.co provides a general-purpose video SDK designed for teams that want fine-grained control over real-time media experiences.
Key capabilities:
- Real-time video and audio calling
- Screen sharing and recording
- Interactive live streaming (e.g. webinars, events)
- Real-time transcription and subtitles
- Call quality metrics and analytics
- Webhooks and callbacks for workflow automation
Architecture & performance:
- Built on Daily’s Global Mesh Network
- Designed to route traffic close to end users for low-latency media delivery
- Supports scaling from small group calls to large interactive sessions
AI & real-time extensibility:
- Built-in media features such as real-time transcription, noise processing, and background effects
- Direct access to raw audio and video tracks for custom AI and ML pipelines
- Provides infrastructure for real-time AI voice and multimodal agents, including support for Pipecat
- Well-suited for experimental, media-centric, or AI-first workflows
- Commonly used as infrastructure for custom transcription, analysis, or agent-style applications
UI & integration:
- Offers Daily Prebuilt UI for faster time-to-market
- SDK-first approach for teams building fully custom interfaces
- Suitable for teams that want flexibility across a wide range of real-time video use cases
Key Takeaway:
Stream Video is designed for building user-facing, in-app video experiences at scale. It prioritizes production-ready components, predictable costs, and operational simplicity across platforms.
Daily.co is optimized for infrastructure-level control. It’s often chosen for AI agents, latency-sensitive workflows, or applications that require direct access to media streams.
Below, we will compare Daily.co and Stream in terms of video quality, ease of integration, customization, support, developer experience, and pricing.
Video Quality and Performance
Daily.co and Stream take different approaches to media delivery, scaling, and optimization.
At a glance:
| Stream Video | Daily.co | |
|---|---|---|
| Media routing model | SFU-based global edge network | Global Mesh Network |
| Adaptive video | Dynascale (per-subscriber optimization) | Adaptive codec delivery |
| Large-scale benchmarks | 1080p @ 30 FPS, up to 100k participants | Not publicly benchmarked at this scale |
| Reported latency | Low-latency, edge-optimized | \<13 ms median first-hop latency |
| Mobile video optimization | Adaptive bitrate + codec selection | HEVC + H.264 simultaneous encodes (iOS) |
Stream Video
Key capabilities:
- Adaptive bitrate streaming with support for high-resolution video (up to 4K)
- Dynascale, which dynamically adjusts:
- Resolution
- Codec
- Frame rate (FPS)
- Bandwidth usage
- Redundant audio support (RED) and full OPUS DTX support for resilient audio delivery
How Dynascale works:
- Video quality is optimized per subscriber based on what’s actually visible on screen
- Smaller video tiles automatically receive lower-bandwidth streams
- Active or prominent speakers receive higher-resolution streams
- Codec selection adapts to device and network conditions
Infrastructure:
- Global edge network with SFU-based media routing
- Designed to minimize latency while optimizing bandwidth at scale
Benchmarks:
- Sustained 1080p video at 30 FPS
- Up to 100,000 concurrent participants in a single call
- 0% packet loss
- \~4 ms jitter, even under heavy global traffic
Daily.co
Key performance characteristics:
- Infrastructure built on Daily’s Global Mesh Network (a server-side mesh of interconnected SFUs, not client peer-to-peer)
- Media routed between Daily’s edge servers over a managed backbone, rather than end-to-end over the public internet
- Reported median first-hop latency under 13 ms
- 75+ points of presence globally to route traffic close to end users
Mobile optimizations:
- Adaptive codec delivery across devices
- On iOS, simultaneous HEVC (H.265) and H.264 encodes
- Designed to improve video quality and power efficiency on real-world mobile networks
Key Takeaway:
Stream Video prioritizes stability, scalability, and consistent video delivery across devices and network conditions, making it well-suited for large, user-facing applications. Daily.co focuses on minimizing latency for highly interactive or AI-driven use cases where tight media control is required.
In the next section, we’ll look at how these architectural choices affect ease of integration, customization, and overall developer experience.
Developer Experience
Daily.co and Stream differ in how much they abstract away for developers.
At a glance:
| Daily.co | Stream Video | |
|---|---|---|
| Integration model | SDK-first primitives | SDK + production-ready components |
| Prebuilt UI | Optional Prebuilt UI | Fully customizable UI components |
| Time to first call | Fast with Prebuilt | Fast with UI components |
| Production features | Implement as needed | Available out of the box |
| Developer tooling | Analytics, logs, webhooks | Structured APIs, moderation ops tooling |
| Chat support | External integration | Native Stream Chat integration |
Daily.co
- SDK-first approach designed for flexibility
- Optional Prebuilt UI for quick setup with ready-to-use chat interface and features
- Developer tooling includes:
- Detailed call and network analytics
- Real-time event logging
- Webhooks and callbacks for backend workflows
- Well-suited for teams that want highly customized real-time experiences beyond the Prebuilt experience
Stream Video
- UI components tightly integrated with the Video API
- Out-of-the-box support for common production needs:
- Ringing and incoming call flows
- CallKit integration (iOS)
- Background audio handling
- Backstage and participant preview
- Developer tooling focused on operating video at scale:
- Structured APIs for calls, users, and permissions
- Built-in moderation and user management
- Monitoring and analytics designed for production reliability
- Designed to work seamlessly with our Chat API using a single provider and token
Key Takeaway:
Daily.co prioritizes flexible primitives, while Stream focuses on reducing production complexity for in-app video experiences. While Daily.co offers the easiest solution (Prebuilt) and the most flexible solution (Raw SDK), it lacks the middle-ground (UI Kit) maturity that Stream possesses.
In the next section, we’ll look at how this all comes together through pricing and scalability.
Pricing and Scalability
Pricing models at a glance:
| Daily.co | Stream Video | |
|---|---|---|
| Video & audio calls | $0.0015 per participant-minute | $0.00075 per participant minute (SD) |
| Recording | $0.01349 per recorded minute | $0.003 per recorded minute |
| Transcription | Included options | $8.00 per 1,000 call minutes |
| RTMP streaming | $0.015 per encoded minute | $0.015 per encoded minute |
To illustrate how pricing scales in practice, consider the following classroom scenario:
Assumptions:
- 5 participants per session
- 60-minute sessions
- 300 sessions per month
- Video + audio calls
- Recording enabled
Monthly usage:
- Participant minutes: 5 × 60 × 300 \= 90,000
- Recorded minutes: 60 × 300 \= 18,000
Daily.co — estimated monthly cost
- Video & audio calls: 90,000 participant minutes × $0.0015 \= $135
- Cloud recording: 18,000 recorded minutes × $0.01349 \= $243
- Total ≈ $377 / month
Stream Video — estimated monthly cost
- Video & audio calls: 90,000 participant minutes x $0.00075 \= $67.50
- Recording: 18,000 call minutes × $0.003 \= $54
- Total ≈ $122 / month
Exact totals depend on video resolution and enabled add-ons, but Stream’s flexible pricing plans are designed to keep per-minute costs predictable as usage grows.
Conclusion
Choosing a video SDK comes down to how much control you want, how quickly you need to ship, and how your product is expected to scale over time.
Daily.co and Stream both offer capable real-time video platforms, but they prioritize different tradeoffs around infrastructure, abstraction, and developer experience.
Stream Video is designed for teams building in-app video as a core product feature, with an emphasis on production-ready components, predictable scaling, and operational simplicity. Its APIs, UI components, and tooling are intended to reduce the amount of custom infrastructure required to support real-world video use cases in production.
If you want to explore how Stream Video fits your application, you can get started for free and evaluate it alongside your existing stack.