LiveKit

Real-time video and audio power everything from telehealth platforms to collaborative workspaces. As demand for low-latency, interactive experiences grows, so does the need for infrastructure to support them. LiveKit is one of the tools developers employ to build these types of applications.

If you're deciding between LiveKit and other real-time video solutions, it's worth understanding how it compares to fully managed platforms like Stream. This guide on LiveKit alternatives breaks down the trade-offs to help you choose the best fit for your use case.

What is LiveKit?

LiveKit is an open-source platform for building real-time video and audio apps using WebRTC. It supports both self-hosted and cloud-managed deployments, giving you flexibility in how you run your real-time infrastructure.

With features like selective forwarding, client SDKs, and end-to-end encryption, LiveKit is built for teams that want control over performance, compliance, and customization.

How Does LiveKit Work?

At its core, LiveKit uses WebRTC to enable low-latency, peer-to-peer, or server-routed communication.

Its architecture includes:

• SFU (Selective Forwarding Unit): Routes media streams directly from publishers to multiple subscribers without decoding or re-encoding, keeping latency low.
• LiveKit Server: Manages rooms, media tracks, signaling, and client sessions.
• Client SDKs: Available for JavaScript, Swift, Android, Flutter, React Native, Unity, Unity WebGL, Node.js, Rust, Python, and Go, helping you get up and running quickly across platforms.

LiveKit handles the heavy lifting of real-time communication, including signaling, media routing, and room state.

Deployment Models

You can deploy LiveKit in two ways:

• Self-hosted: Run everything on your own infrastructure for maximum control. Useful for teams with strict compliance needs or custom scaling strategies.
• LiveKit Cloud: A fully managed service. Ideal for faster setup, reduced maintenance, and automatic scaling.

Security and Scalability

LiveKit includes built-in features to keep real-time communication secure and performant:

• End-to-end media encryption: Audio and video streams are encrypted from sender to receiver, ensuring that media cannot be accessed or intercepted by unauthorized parties, even by the server itself.
• Fine-grained control over audio/video tracks: Developers can programmatically mute, unmute, pause, or disable individual tracks. This enables dynamic control over participant streams, useful for content moderation, bandwidth optimization, or user-specific settings.
• Horizontal scaling powered by Redis and Kubernetes: LiveKit is designed to scale across multiple nodes, using Redis for distributed state management and Kubernetes for container orchestration. This allows you to grow capacity as user demand increases, while maintaining low latency and system stability.

Main Use Cases

LiveKit is designed for interactive, media-rich applications. 

Common use cases include:

• Telehealth apps for remote consultations
• Virtual classrooms with live video
• Interactive live events and broadcast tools
• Multiplayer games with voice chat
• Team collaboration and video conferencing platforms

LiveKit now also focuses on AI-driven applications. This includes support for building voice, video, and multimodal AI use cases, such as real-time voice agents, AI assistants in virtual classrooms, or intelligent workflows in telephony systems.

Because LiveKit is open-source and supports self-hosting, it's well-suited for teams that need full control over data handling, integration layers, and custom media logic.

How Much Does LiveKit Cost?

LiveKit offers four pricing models that scale with your application's usage and stage.

Build: $0/month

• 100 concurrent participants
• 5,000 connection minutes
• 50 GB bandwidth
• 1,000 telephony minutes

Ship: $50/month

• 1,000 concurrent participants
• 150,000 connection minutes
• 250 GB bandwidth
• 8,000 telephony minutes

Scale: $500/month

• Unlimited concurrent participants
• 1.5M connection minutes
• 3TB bandwidth
• 45,000 telephony minutes

Enterprise: Contact sales for pricing

How Does LiveKit Compare to Competitors?

Here's how LiveKit stacks up against other popular real-time video platforms.

Hosting Model:

• LiveKit: Self-hosted or cloud-managed
• Twilio: Fully managed
• Agora: Fully managed
• VideoSDK: Fully managed
• Daily.co: Fully managed
• Stream: Fully managed

Open Source:

• LiveKit: ✅ Yes
• Twilio: ❌ No
• Agora: ❌ No
• VideoSDK: ❌ Core platform (SDKs available)
• Daily.co: ❌ No
• Stream: ❌ No

Real-Time Video/Audio:

• LiveKit: ✅ Yes
• Twilio: ✅ Yes
• Agora: ✅ Yes
• VideoSDK: ✅ Yes
• Daily.co: ✅ Yes
• Stream: ✅ Yes

In-App Chat & Feeds:

• LiveKit: ❌ No native support
• Twilio: Limited (via add-ons)
• Agora: Limited
• VideoSDK: Basic
• Daily.co: ✅ Yes (Partial; third-party integrations)
• Stream: ✅ First-class support

Customization Level:

• LiveKit: High (infrastructure control)
• Twilio: Medium
• Agora: Medium
• VideoSDK: Medium
• Daily.co: Medium
• Stream: Medium—High (via SDKs)

Best Suited For:

• LiveKit: Full-stack media control
• Twilio: Easy plug-and-play
• Agora: Global media apps
• VideoSDK: Quick MVPs, SDK-based apps
• Daily.co: Developer-focused video apps
• Stream: Full-stack real-time apps

LiveKit appeals to developers who want full control over their media infrastructure and prefer open-source tooling. It's a good fit for teams building heavily customized communication stacks and willing to manage hosting and scaling.

Stream offers a fully managed alternative that combines video, audio, chat, and feeds into one developer-friendly platform. It's ideal if you want to build live experiences faster, without managing infrastructure or stitching together multiple services.

If you're already committed to LiveKit for media, Stream's Chat and Feeds can fill in the rest of your real-time experience. But for many use cases, Stream Video can replace LiveKit entirely with a more integrated and scalable solution.

Frequently Asked Questions