LiveKit provides the real-time communication layer that connects users to each other and to AI agents. The open-source server handles WebRTC signaling, media routing, and selective forwarding for voice and video streams at scale. Unlike traditional WebRTC solutions that require managing STUN/TURN servers and complex NAT traversal, LiveKit packages everything into a single Go binary that can be deployed on any cloud provider or self-hosted on your own infrastructure.
The Agents framework is what makes LiveKit particularly relevant for AI developers. It provides a pipeline architecture where voice input flows through speech-to-text, gets processed by any LLM (OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, or self-hosted), and returns as natural speech through text-to-speech providers like ElevenLabs, Cartesia, or Deepgram. The framework handles voice activity detection, interruption handling, and turn-taking automatically—the hard problems that make voice AI feel natural rather than robotic.
LiveKit Cloud offers managed infrastructure with pay-as-you-go pricing starting at $0.0004 per participant minute for WebRTC. The platform includes Egress for recording and streaming sessions, Ingress for bringing in RTMP/WHIP streams, and SIP connectivity for bridging to traditional phone networks. With over 18,000 GitHub stars and Apache 2.0 licensing, LiveKit has become the default real-time infrastructure for AI-native applications.
