Both Stream and Agora support real-time communication, video, messaging, and interactive features, but they operate at different layers of the stack.
Stream provides APIs and SDKs for real-time chat, video, feeds, and moderation, with prebuilt UI components for each.
Agora is a real-time engagement and conversational AI platform that gives teams low-level control over how audio, video, and AI voice interactions are delivered at scale.
Choosing between them comes down to what you want to own.
This guide breaks down Stream and Agora so you can make the right call for your product.
Stream vs. Agora at a Glance
| Category | Stream | Agora |
|---|---|---|
| Core focus | Chat, video & audio, activity feeds, AI moderation; plus Voice Agents, AI chatbot integration, and Vision Agents (open-source) | Voice AI, avatars, conversational IoT, and real-time video/audio infrastructure |
| Abstraction level | High (application-layer APIs, SDKs, and UI components) | Low to mid (media-layer control, transport, and conversational AI engine) |
| Chat and messaging | Channels, threads, reactions, read receipts, typing indicators, persistent history | Core messaging features; less depth out of the box |
| Activity feeds | Yes, standalone product with ranking, aggregation, and fanout | No |
| AI moderation | Yes, standalone product; also included from Starter tier and above | Beta (Agora Chat Content Moderation 2.0, powered by ActiveFence) |
| Conversational AI / voice agents | Yes (Voice Agents, Vision Agents) | Yes (Conversational AI Engine, Convo AI Device Kit, OpenAI Realtime API integration) |
| Video: HD per 1,000 participant minutes | $1.50 | $3.99 |
| Video: free tier | $100/month credit (~66,000 HD minutes) | 10,000 standard minutes/month |
| Chat: free tier | 1,000 MAU | 500 MAU |
| Chat: entry paid plan | $399/month (10,000 MAU, billed annually) | $349/month (5,000 MAU) |
| Prebuilt UI components | Extensive, customizable | Limited; UI kits and no-code App Builder available |
| Dynascale / adaptive quality | Yes (automatic per-participant resolution scaling) | Manual configuration required |
| SDKs | React, iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, Angular, Unity, Unreal | iOS, Android, Web, React Native, Flutter, Electron, Unity, IoT |
| Compliance | SOC2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, CCPA, GDPR | SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA |
| Uptime SLA | 99.999% (Enterprise) | 99.999% |
| Best for | Chat, feeds, video, and moderation with less to build from scratch | Custom media pipelines, large-scale broadcast, and conversational AI agents |
What Is Agora?
Agora has been in the real-time communications space for over a decade, and now positions itself as an engagement and conversational AI platform.
Its product suite covers two main areas:
- Core real-time infrastructure: video calling, voice calling, interactive live streaming, broadcast streaming, chat, signaling, interactive whiteboard, and IoT
- Conversational AI: the Conversational AI Engine (connecting any LLM to real-time voice), Convo AI Device Kit for IoT deployments, OpenAI Realtime API integration, and TEN - an open-source multimodal AI framework
Agora is a strong fit for teams where media delivery or voice AI is the core engineering challenge: live streaming platforms, virtual classrooms, in-game communication, large-scale broadcasts, conversational AI agents, and IoT devices.
What Is Stream?
Stream provides APIs, SDKs, and UI components for building real-time product features: chat, activity feeds, video, and AI moderation. It also offers Voice Agents and Vision Agents, an open-source framework for real-time voice and video AI applications.
Stream is typically found in products where real-time features are part of a broader experience:
- Social apps with feeds, messaging, and in-app interaction
- Marketplaces with buyer-seller chat and activity updates
- Collaboration tools that combine messaging and video
- Community platforms with live interaction layered into ongoing conversations
- Healthcare, gaming, fintech, and sports platforms that require compliance and scale
Stream is a strong fit for teams shipping a product that includes real-time features rather than building the infrastructure behind them.
Architecture
The main architectural difference is how much each platform handles for you.
Stream Architecture
Stream operates at the application layer.
It handles:
- Chat and feed state management
- Video call lifecycle (participants, roles, permissions)
- Real-time synchronization across clients
- Fanout, message persistence, and read state
- Moderation rules and enforcement
This means teams ship features rather than build supporting infrastructure. The systems required to run chat or video in production (state management, fanout, notification routing, moderation pipelines) are built into the platform.
Agora Architecture
Agora operates primarily at the media and conversational AI layer.
Its core infrastructure handles:
- Audio and video transport
- Encoding and decoding
- Network routing and optimization
- Voice AI pipeline (STT, LLM, TTS) via the Conversational AI Engine
For its media products, everything above that layer (call lifecycle management, participant permissions, chat, moderation, and UI) needs to be implemented separately. That gives teams maximum control over media delivery but shifts significant system ownership to your engineering team.
The Conversational AI Engine is a more self-contained product, designed to plug an LLM into a real-time voice session without building the audio pipeline from scratch.
In short: With Agora, you assemble the system. With Stream, more of the system ships with the platform.
Video Capabilities
Both platforms support video, but they offer different things to different teams.
Stream Video
Stream Video is a production-ready application-layer product. It includes:
| Feature | Stream |
|---|---|
| 1:1 and group video calls | Yes |
| Livestreaming | Yes (distinct production-ready product) |
| Screen sharing and recording | Yes |
| Audio rooms | Yes |
| Voice calling | Yes |
| Voice Agents (real-time AI on calls) | Yes |
| Call state management | Built-in (participants, roles, lifecycle) |
| Built-in permissions and moderation | Yes |
| Prebuilt UI components | Yes (fully customizable) |
| Adaptive quality (Dynascale) | Yes (automatic per-participant) |
| Integration with chat and feeds | Native |
| Noise cancellation | Available add-on ($0.30 / 1,000 min) |
| Transcription / closed captions | Available add-on ($8.00 / 1,000 call min) |
Infrastructure at scale: Stream Video runs on a globally distributed SFU network, with:
- 225 Gbps peak traffic
- 100,000 concurrent participants with 0 API failures and 0 crashes
- 30 FPS frame rate stability under full load
- 0% packet loss
- 4ms jitter
Dynascale automatically adjusts resolution, codec, and frame rate per participant in real time. If a participant's feed is a small thumbnail, their bitrate drops automatically; when they become the active speaker, quality scales back up instantly.
Agora Video
Agora provides:
| Feature | Agora |
|---|---|
| Real-time video and audio | Yes |
| Broadcast at large scale | Yes |
| Interactive live streaming | Yes |
| Fine-grained bitrate and encoding control | Yes |
| Conversational AI Engine (LLM + voice) | Yes |
| Convo AI Device Kit (IoT) | Yes |
| OpenAI Realtime API integration | Yes |
| TEN Framework (open-source, multimodal AI) | Yes |
| Interactive whiteboard | Yes |
| 3D spatial audio | Yes |
| Real-time translation | Yes |
| Call state management | Must be built separately |
| Permissions and moderation | Must be built separately (Chat moderation in beta via ActiveFence) |
| Prebuilt UI | Limited (UI kits; no-code App Builder available) |
| Adaptive quality | Manual configuration |
| Chat integration | Yes, separate product |
Agora's strength is in media delivery performance and flexibility. Teams that need to control exactly how streams are encoded, routed, and consumed will find more knobs to turn here.
The tradeoff is that the application layer around that media infrastructure has to be designed and maintained by your team.
In short: Stream ships video as a complete feature. Agora ships the infrastructure to build one.
Messaging
Stream Chat
Stream Chat is a full-featured, native system. It includes:
- 1:1 and group channels
- Threads and replies
- Message reactions
- Read receipts and typing indicators
- Offline support and push notifications
- Message search
- Unlimited message retention (paid plans)
- Advanced moderation and filtering (Starter and above)
- Message translation
- Multi-tenancy (Elevate tier and above)
Chat integrates natively with Stream Video, so a user can transition from a conversation into a call and back again without context switching between services.
Agora Chat
Agora Chat (built on Agora's acquisition of Easemob) is a separate product with its own pricing, SDK, and integration path.
It covers core messaging functionality, but it is not the same integrated product as the rest of Agora's platform. Teams building on Agora who also need chat have to evaluate, contract, and integrate it independently.
In short: If chat is part of your product, Stream ships it as a fully integrated feature. With Agora, chat is an add-on that requires separate evaluation and integration work.
Activity Feeds
Stream offers Activity Feeds as a standalone product, with support for:
- Timeline and notification feeds
- Ranking and aggregation
- Fanout at scale (supporting billions of feed updates)
- Follow graphs
- Real-time updates
Agora does not offer an activity feeds product.
In short: If your product includes social feeds, notification streams, or engagement features, this is a Stream-only capability in this comparison.
Moderation
Stream Moderation
Stream offers AI Moderation as both a built-in feature (included from the Starter tier) and as a standalone product that can be purchased and integrated into the same dashboard.
It covers:
- AI-powered text moderation using NLP and LLMs
- Image moderation
- Video content detection
- Customizable rule-based policies
- Human-in-the-loop review workflows
- Real-time enforcement across chat and video
Agora Moderation
Agora recently launched Agora Chat Content Moderation 2.0 (currently in beta), powered by ActiveFence, covering text and image moderation within Agora Chat.
Outside of that, content moderation for video and broader application-level enforcement still needs to be implemented via external services or custom pipelines.
In short: Stream ships moderation as part of the platform. With Agora, it's something you source and build yourself.
Compliance and Infrastructure
| Capability | Stream | Agora |
|---|---|---|
| SOC2 | Yes | Yes |
| ISO 27001 | Yes | Yes |
| HIPAA | Yes (Elevate tier and above) | Yes |
| GDPR | Yes | Yes |
| CCPA | Yes | Yes |
| Uptime SLA | 99.999% (Enterprise) | 99.999% |
| Dedicated servers | Yes (Enterprise) | Available |
| On-premise deployment | No | Available |
| Global edge network | Yes (SFU distributed globally) | Yes |
| Peak traffic proven | 225 Gbps | Not publicly benchmarked |
SDK and Platform Support
| Platform | Stream | Agora |
|---|---|---|
| React / Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| Flutter | Yes | Yes |
| React Native | Yes | Yes |
| Angular | Yes | No (web SDK available) |
| Unity | Yes | Yes |
| Unreal Engine | Yes | No |
| JavaScript (low-level) | Yes | Yes |
| Electron / Desktop | No (via web SDK) | Yes |
| IoT | No | Yes |
Pricing
Stream and Agora both price chat and video separately. The main difference is in the rates and how usage is measured.
| Stream | Agora | |
|---|---|---|
| Chat: free tier | 1,000 MAU | 500 MAU |
| Chat: entry paid plan | $399/month (10,000 MAU) | $349/month (5,000 MAU) |
| Video free tier | $100/month credit (~66,000 HD minutes) | 10,000 standard minutes/month |
| Video: audio only | $0.30 / 1,000 participant minutes | ~$0.99 / 1,000 standard minutes |
| Video: HD (720p) | $1.50 / 1,000 participant minutes | $3.99 / 1,000 participant minutes |
| Video: Full HD (1080p) | $3.00 / 1,000 participant minutes | $8.99 / 1,000 participant minutes |
| Video: enterprise | Volume discounts from 1M minutes | Prepaid packages and custom contracts |
| Adaptive resolution | Automatic (Dynascale) - inactive participants billed at lower rate | Manual configuration - all participants billed at full rate |
| Pricing model | Usage-based tiers with monthly free credit | Pay-as-you-go; standard minutes system converts usage by resolution |
Side-by-Side Cost Example
To illustrate the difference concretely: a 10-minute group video session with 1,000 concurrent participants at 720p HD.
| Stream | Agora | |
|---|---|---|
| Total participant minutes | 10,000 | 10,000 |
| Per 1,000 participant minutes (HD) | $1.50 | $3.99 |
| Estimated session cost | ~$15 | ~$39.90 |
| Inactive participant handling | Automatic downscaling via Dynascale (lower cost) | Billed at full rate |
| Chat included | Yes (within platform) | Separate product, separate cost |
| Adaptive resolution | Automatic | Manual configuration |
At scale, the difference compounds. For a product with 1 million HD video participant minutes per month, Stream costs approximately $1,500 versus approximately $3,990 for Agora, before factoring in Dynascale savings on Stream's side or the additional cost of Agora Chat if messaging is part of the product.
What You Build Yourself
Here's what each platform handles for you, and what you still have to build.
Building with Stream
Stream handles the application layer directly.
Teams implementing Stream get:
- Chat channels, threads, reactions, read receipts, and persistence out of the box
- Video call state management (participants, roles, lifecycle) built in
- Permissions, moderation rules, and enforcement without custom pipelines
- Prebuilt, customizable UI components across all major platforms
- Real-time synchronization across clients managed by the platform
- Activity feeds with fanout and aggregation ready to use
- A single dashboard and API surface for chat, video, feeds, and moderation
Typical time to production: Days to weeks for most use cases.
Building with Agora
Agora covers the media layer.
Teams implementing Agora need to build or source separately:
- Call lifecycle management (when calls start, end, who joins)
- Participant roles and permissions logic
- A full chat system (either Agora Chat or another provider)
- Moderation pipelines (third-party or custom)
- UI components and interaction design
- Push notifications
- State synchronization across clients
- Feed and engagement systems
Typical time to production: Longer, with more ongoing system ownership as the product scales.
This is not a criticism of Agora. For teams building products where video delivery is the primary engineering challenge, owning the application layer is the right tradeoff. But for teams where video is one feature among several, Stream's application-layer approach significantly reduces scope.
How to Choose Between Stream and Agora?
Choose Stream if:
- You are building a product that combines chat, video, and real-time interaction in the same user flows
- You want to ship production-ready features quickly without building supporting infrastructure
- You need activity feeds, social engagement features, or notification streams
- Moderation is a requirement and you want it integrated into the same platform
- Your product targets gaming, healthcare, fintech, or social use cases where compliance and complete feature coverage matter
- You want predictable, lower per-minute video pricing with automatic cost optimization
Choose Agora if:
- You need fine-grained control over bitrate, codec, encoding, and network behavior
- You are building large-scale broadcast or interactive live streaming systems where media delivery performance is the primary engineering concern
- You are building conversational AI agents or voice-first interfaces and want a purpose-built engine that connects LLMs to real-time voice
- You are deploying to IoT or embedded devices via the Convo AI Device Kit or IoT SDK
- Your team has the resources to build and maintain the application layer around Agora's media infrastructure
Summary
Stream and Agora have both evolved significantly, and today they overlap more than a surface-level comparison suggests.
Agora is investing heavily in conversational AI infrastructure, making it a strong fit for teams where the AI voice pipeline or media delivery itself is the engineering focus.
Stream is investing in the same AI layer (Voice Agents, Vision Agents) but within a broader platform that also handles chat, feeds, moderation, and UI, making it a better fit for teams shipping multiple real-time features together.
The right choice depends on what your team is optimizing for: control over the media and AI layer, or a broader platform that reduces how much you have to build and maintain.