> Source: https://meetrix.io/blogs/amazon-chime-sdk-alternatives/ > Markdown copy of that page. Cite the URL above, not this file. Development # Amazon Chime SDK Alternatives: 12 Options for 2026 [By Shalomi Umeshika](https://meetrix.io/blogs/authors/shalomi-umeshika/) • September 22, 2026 • 14 min read First, let’s clear up the rumor that keeps showing up on comparison pages: the Amazon Chime SDK is not going away. Yes, AWS shut down the Chime app itself (meetings, chat, and Business Calling) on February 20, 2026. But the Chime SDK is a different service. It’s the toolkit you use to build video into your own product, and AWS has said directly that it’s not affected. The SDK is still being maintained, too. The [amazon-chime-sdk-js](https://github.com/aws/amazon-chime-sdk-js) repo released v3.32.0 on July 15, 2026. So if you landed here thinking you have a hard deadline, you don’t. That said, there are still real reasons teams might want to move on. The SDK tops out at 250 attendees per meeting, it only runs inside AWS, and you have to build the entire meeting UI yourself. Below are 12 alternatives, what they do better than Chime, where they fall short, and what they cost at list price in September 2026. The Quick Verdict Amazon IVS Real-Time Want to stay on AWS and mostly do one-to-many sessions? Look at Amazon IVS Real-Time. Self-hosted Jitsi Meet Want a full meeting app running in your own AWS account without a per-minute bill? Use self-hosted Jitsi Meet. LiveKit Building AI voice agents or a custom real-time product? LiveKit is the strongest choice. Daily or Agora Want someone else to handle everything and don’t mind paying per minute? Daily or Agora. ## Is the Chime SDK Actually Shutting Down? No. The [AWS announcement from February 2025](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/messaging-and-targeting/update-on-support-for-amazon-chime/) ended support for the Chime service, and the transition guide repeats the same line on every page: “This does not impact the availability of the Amazon Chime SDK service.” The SDK is still alive and maintained. Feb 20, 2026 The Chime app (meetings, chat, Business Calling) shut down v3.32.0 Chime SDK for JavaScript release, July 15, 2026 $0.0017 Chime SDK price per attendee-minute, bandwidth included That said, I understand the anxiety. AWS stopped using its own meetings product and moved internally to Zoom. When a vendor walks away from the app built on top of its SDK, it’s fair to wonder if the SDK is next. AWS says it isn’t. And honestly, no vendor on this list is completely immune to that question. Just look at the Twilio Video story below. ## Why Teams Actually Leave Chime Price usually isn’t the reason, even though many comparison pages imply it is. Chime charges [$0.0017 per attendee-minute](https://aws.amazon.com/chime/chime-sdk/pricing/), billed in 6-second increments, and that includes bandwidth. At list price, that’s cheaper than Twilio, Daily, Vonage, and Agora’s HD tier. The real reasons are more practical: The 250-attendee ceiling. A standard meeting maxes out at 250 attendees and 25 video tiles. Turn on Full HD and the limit drops to 25 attendees. If you need more, you’re bolting on media capture or a live connector at $0.09 per stream-minute and running a second system. You build the whole app. There’s a React component library, but no prebuilt meeting UI. Screen layout, device pickers, reconnection handling, waiting rooms: all of it is on you. It only runs on AWS. You can’t self-host it, and you can’t run the media on-prem or in a sovereign cloud. Few extras. Recording, transcription, and live streaming are separate AWS services with their own bills. There’s no agent framework for AI voice. If none of that bothers you, the honest advice is: stay. Migrating means rewriting client code, and there’s no deadline forcing you out. ## How to Choose a Replacement Before you start comparing vendors, answer four questions. They’ll eliminate most of the list fast. 1. **Many-to-many or one-to-many?** A meeting where everyone talks needs an SFU built for conferencing. A town hall with three speakers and 5,000 viewers is a streaming problem, and different tools handle it better. 2. **Who runs the servers?** A managed API costs more per minute, but nobody on your team gets paged. Self-hosting costs less at steady volume, but you own upgrades, TURN, and scaling. 3. **Where can the media go?** If data residency or a regulator says “our servers only,” most managed APIs are out. 4. **Do you need a UI or building blocks?** Some teams want a working meeting page this week. Others want control over every pixel. ## 1\. Jitsi Meet: A Full Meeting App in Your AWS Account - Meeting app - Apache 2.0 - Self-hostable [Jitsi Meet](https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/) is open-source (Apache 2.0) video conferencing. It’s a complete meeting app with its own videobridge, not an SDK you have to assemble. It’s first on this list because it’s the option Meetrix knows best, and because for many Chime SDK users it solves the exact problem they had: they didn’t want to build a meeting app. They wanted video inside their product. ### Why switch - You get a working meeting UI on day one: screen share, chat, breakout rooms, lobby, and recording through Jibri. - You can embed it with the [Jitsi iframe API](https://meetrix.io/blogs/jitsi-api-iframe/) in a few lines, or customize the frontend fully. - There’s no per-minute billing. You pay for EC2 and bandwidth, sized by concurrent users rather than minutes. - It can run on AWS, another cloud, or on-prem, so you’re not tied to one provider. ### Watch out for - You operate it. A meeting that connects but shows no video almost always means UDP 10000 is closed in the security group. That’s the first of many things to learn. - Bandwidth is billed separately. Chime bundles it; on EC2, every stream the videobridge relays is AWS data transfer at $0.09/GB after the first 100 GB. - It’s a meeting app first. If you want a fully custom call experience, LiveKit or mediasoup give you more control. ### Pricing The software is free. Raw AWS cost for 50 concurrent users running 24/7 is roughly $60 to $100 a month, and a 500-user setup with recording can run past $550. [Meetrix Jitsi Meet images](https://meetrix.io/store/jitsi-meet/) on AWS Marketplace come in 50, 100, 250, and 500-user plans, with or without recording, and add a software fee on top of EC2. ## 2\. LiveKit: The Builder’s Pick, Especially for AI Voice - SFU + Cloud - Apache 2.0 - Self-hostable [LiveKit](https://livekit.com/) is an open-source (Apache 2.0) WebRTC SFU with solid client SDKs for web, iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, and Unity. You can self-host it or use LiveKit Cloud. It’s the closest thing to “the Chime SDK, but portable”: you still build your own UI, but with much better building blocks. If LiveKit itself turns out not to be the fit, our [LiveKit alternatives roundup](https://meetrix.io/blogs/livekit-alternatives/) picks up from there. ### Why switch - The same code runs on LiveKit Cloud or your own servers, so choosing managed today doesn’t lock you in. - The Agents framework is the most mature option for AI voice agents that join a call, listen, and talk back. If that’s on your roadmap, this decides it. - Prebuilt React components, simulcast, and SVC codecs are built in. ### Watch out for - On a self-hosted cluster, one room lives on one node. More servers means more rooms, not bigger rooms. - Session analytics and enhanced noise cancellation are LiveKit Cloud features. ### Pricing LiveKit Cloud has a free Build tier with 1,000 WebRTC minutes a month. Ship is $50/month with 150,000 minutes included and $0.0005 a minute after that. Scale is $500/month with 1.5 million minutes. Self-hosting is free apart from infrastructure. ## 3\. Amazon IVS Real-Time: Stay on AWS, Change the Shape - Managed (AWS) - Proprietary - Not self-hostable If leaving AWS isn’t an option, [Amazon IVS Real-Time Streaming](https://aws.amazon.com/ivs/) is AWS’s other WebRTC product. It’s built around a “stage”: a few people publish, lots of people watch, with sub-300ms latency. ### Why switch - Same AWS bill, IAM, and region model you already use. - Scales audiences Chime can’t: 10,000 subscribers per stage by default, adjustable up to 25,000. - Cheaper per minute than Chime, and audio-only is a tenth of the video rate. ### Watch out for - Only 12 people can publish to a stage at once, and that limit can’t be raised. It’s not a meeting product. - Published video is capped at 720p. ### Pricing $0.072 per participant-hour for the first 10,000 hours a month in North America (about $1.20 per 1,000 minutes), dropping to $0.048 above 500,000 hours. Hosts and viewers are both billed. ## 4\. Daily: Managed, With a Prebuilt UI - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable [Daily](https://www.daily.co/) is a managed video API with two modes: Daily Prebuilt, a complete call UI you embed, and a lower-level SDK for custom builds. The team also maintains Pipecat, a popular open-source framework for voice agents. ### Why switch - Prebuilt gets you from zero to a working call faster than almost anything else here. - 10,000 free participant minutes every month, not just a trial. - Cheap audio-only rate ($0.00099/minute) for voice-heavy products. ### Watch out for - At list price, it’s more than twice Chime’s per-minute rate for video. - Managed only, so media runs on Daily’s infrastructure. ### Pricing $0.004 per participant-minute after the free 10,000, with automatic volume discounts down to $0.0015. Cloud recording is $0.01349 per recorded minute. ## 5\. Agora: Global Reach and Big Audiences - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable [Agora](https://www.agora.io/) runs its own global real-time network rather than renting a public cloud’s, and it’s widely used for live interactive streaming and social apps with large audiences. ### Why switch - A dedicated global network, which matters if your users are spread well beyond the AWS regions Chime media runs in. - UI kits and SDKs for nearly every platform. - 10,000 free minutes a month. ### Watch out for - Pricing is tiered by the total video resolution each user receives, so a gallery of HD streams can move a user into a pricier tier. Model your real layouts before you commit. ### Pricing $0.99 per 1,000 minutes for audio, $3.99 for HD video, $8.99 for Full HD, rising to $35.99 for 2K+. ## 6\. Twilio Video: Back From the Dead - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable [Twilio Video](https://www.twilio.com/en-us/video) is the cautionary tale of this list. Twilio announced its end of life in late 2023, pushed the date to December 2026, then reversed the decision in October 2024. It’s a supported product again today. ### Why switch - Mature SDKs and docs, and easy to combine with Twilio’s SMS, voice, and SIP if you already use them. - Bandwidth and track counts aren’t billed separately. ### Watch out for - If vendor risk is why you’re leaving Chime, a product that was nearly shut down once is a hard sell. ### Pricing Group rooms are $0.004 per participant-minute. Recording costs another $0.004 per recorded participant-minute, and compositions are $0.01 a minute. ## 7\. Vonage Video API: The Old OpenTok - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable [Vonage Video](https://www.vonage.com/communications-apis/video/) grew out of TokBox’s OpenTok, one of the earliest WebRTC platforms. Its pricing is built around how many people publish video at once, which suits small calls and punishes big ones. ### Why switch - Long track record and enterprise contracts. - Built-in interactive broadcast for moving from a call to a large live stream. ### Watch out for - The price per participant jumps sharply once a session has more than 25 active publishers. ### Pricing $0.0041 per participant-minute with up to 25 publishers, $0.01865 with 26 to 35, and $0.02275 with 36 or more. ## 8\. Zoom Video SDK: Zoom’s Engine, Your UI - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable The [Zoom Video SDK](https://developers.zoom.us/docs/video-sdk/) gives you Zoom’s media stack without the Zoom app around it. Users never see a Zoom logo or need a Zoom account. ### Why switch - Zoom’s audio and video quality on poor networks, which is honestly its biggest selling point. - 10,000 free session minutes a month. ### Watch out for - It’s not true pay-as-you-go: you buy credits through the Zoom Build Platform in $100 blocks, which is awkward for bursty or seasonal traffic. ### Pricing $0.0035 per session minute after the free 10,000, sold as Build Platform credits ($100 for 100 credits, or $450 for 500). ## 9\. Cloudflare RealtimeKit: Dyte’s Successor - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable [RealtimeKit](https://realtime.cloudflare.com/) is what Dyte became after Cloudflare acquired it. It runs on Cloudflare’s edge network and includes prebuilt UI components. If you were on Dyte, note that its SDKs are now in maintenance mode. ### Why switch - Cloudflare’s global network, and cheap audio-only pricing. - Free while it’s in beta. ### Watch out for - It’s still in beta. The prices below are Cloudflare’s planned GA rates and could change. ### Pricing Planned: $0.002 per minute for audio/video participants and $0.0005 for audio-only, with 10,000 minutes free each month. Recording is $0.01 a minute. ## 10\. Stream Video: Cheapest Managed List Price - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable [Stream](https://getstream.io/video/) started as a chat and activity-feed API and added video. If your app already uses Stream Chat, adding calls through the same vendor is appealing. ### Why switch - The lowest list prices of any managed API here, and a $100 monthly free credit. - Chat, feeds, and video under one SDK family. ### Watch out for - You’re billed on the resolution each user receives, so the headline HD rate only holds if your layout actually delivers HD and not Full HD. ### Pricing Per 1,000 participant minutes: $0.30 audio, $0.75 SD, $1.50 HD, $3.00 Full HD. ## 11\. mediasoup: A Library, Not a Product - SFU library - ISC - Self-hostable [mediasoup](https://mediasoup.org/) is an SFU library for Node.js (and Rust), licensed under ISC. It handles media routing and nothing else. Signalling, rooms, auth, and UI are all up to you. ### Why switch - Very efficient and very flexible, with no licence fee and no vendor. - Fits teams that already have a Node.js backend and want media inside it. ### Watch out for - It’s more work than the Chime SDK, not less. Only pick it if you have WebRTC engineers. ### Pricing Free. You pay for servers, bandwidth, and the engineers. ## 12\. Janus: The Swiss Army Knife - WebRTC server - GPLv3 - Self-hostable [Janus](https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/) is a general-purpose WebRTC server in C from Meetecho, built around plugins: VideoRoom for conferencing, plus SIP, streaming, and more. It’s GPLv3. ### Why switch - The SIP plugin is a good fit if your video must interoperate with phones or legacy conferencing gear. - Lightweight and battle-tested. ### Watch out for - GPLv3 matters if you plan to modify and distribute it; check with your legal team. - Like mediasoup, you build the application layer yourself. ### Pricing Free. ## Chime SDK Alternatives Compared List prices for video at standard HD quality, before volume discounts, checked on September 22, 2026. The last column is what 100,000 participant-minutes a month would cost at those rates, for example 20 people in an hour-long call on about 83 days. | Option | Type | Self-host | Licence | Video, per 1,000 min | Free each month | 100k min/month | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Amazon Chime SDKBaseline | Managed (AWS) | No | Proprietary | $1.70 | None | $170 | | Jitsi Meet | Meeting app | Yes | Apache 2.0 | Servers only | n/a | Flat, by concurrency | | LiveKit | SFU + Cloud | Yes | Apache 2.0 | $0.50 overage | 1,000 min | $50 (Ship plan) | | Amazon IVS Real-Time | Managed (AWS) | No | Proprietary | ~$1.20 | 20 h, first year | ~$120 | | Daily | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $4.00 | 10,000 min | $360 | | Agora | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $3.99 | 10,000 min | $359 | | Twilio Video | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $4.00 | Trial only | $400 | | Vonage Video | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $4.10 | Trial only | $410 | | Zoom Video SDK | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $3.50 | 10,000 min | ~$315 in credits | | Cloudflare RealtimeKit | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $2.00 (planned) | 10,000 min | $180 (free in beta) | | Stream Video | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $1.50 | $100 credit | $50 | | mediasoup | SFU library | Yes | ISC | Servers only | n/a | Servers + engineering | | Janus | WebRTC server | Yes | GPLv3 | Servers only | n/a | Servers + engineering | Recording, transcription, streaming out, and (for self-hosted options) AWS data transfer are extra everywhere. Vendors change prices, so check each pricing page before you sign anything. $2,300a month, at 1M minutes Two things jump out. Chime is already one of the cheapest managed options, so “move to save money” only really works if you’re heading to IVS, Stream, LiveKit Cloud, or your own servers. And the per-minute gap gets big fast. At a million minutes a month, the difference between $1.70 and $4.00 per thousand is $2,300 a month. ## Why Run Jitsi with Meetrix on AWS - 50 to 500 concurrent users - Launches with CloudFormation - Recording to S3 with Jibri Plenty of teams that left Chime didn’t want another SDK at all. They wanted meetings in their own AWS account, on their own domain, without a per-minute meter running. That’s what Meetrix Jitsi images are for. The fiddly parts of self-hosting Jitsi are wiring several videobridges into one deployment, getting SSL right, and getting Jibri to record into S3. [Meetrix Jitsi Meet plans](https://meetrix.io/store/jitsi-meet/) launch through CloudFormation with that already done, sized for 50 to 500 concurrent users. That’s already twice Chime’s 250-attendee ceiling on the largest plan. If your users sit behind strict corporate firewalls, add a TURN server; our [Coturn image](https://meetrix.io/store/coturn/) handles that, and this [STUN vs TURN explainer](https://meetrix.io/blogs/stun-vs-turn-vs-ice-webrtc-nat-traversal/) covers why you’d need one. The [Jitsi on AWS developer guide](https://meetrix.io/blogs/setup-jitsi-meet-aws-dev-guide/) walks through a launch from start to finish. It isn’t the right fit for everyone. If your product is a custom call experience, or an AI agent that joins calls, you want LiveKit. Our [LiveKit vs Jitsi comparison](https://meetrix.io/blogs/livekit-vs-jitsi/) goes through that choice in detail. ## Where I’d Start Amazon IVS Real-Time If you want **everything to stay on AWS** and your sessions are a few speakers with a big audience: Amazon IVS Real-Time. It’s cheaper than Chime and it’s the same bill. Self-hosted Jitsi Meet If you need **meetings for your users or staff** and don’t want to build a UI: self-hosted Jitsi Meet on AWS. No per-minute cost, and it scales past Chime’s cap. LiveKit If you’re **building a product**, especially one with AI voice agents: LiveKit. Start on LiveKit Cloud, and move to your own servers later if the bill or a regulator says so. The code doesn’t change. Daily or Stream If you want **zero operations** and a prebuilt UI: Daily. Stream if price matters more than the prebuilt experience. And if you’re happy with Chime and just worried by the app shutdown? Stay. The SDK works, it’s cheap, and AWS has said in writing that it isn’t going anywhere. Keep a written plan B, and pick one of the portable options above so switching is a project and not an emergency. ## Frequently Asked Questions Is the Amazon Chime SDK being discontinued? No. The Chime app was retired, but the SDK is a separate service and AWS says it’s unaffected. What is the cheapest Amazon Chime SDK alternative? For managed options, Stream Video and Amazon IVS Real-Time are among the cheapest. Self-hosted Jitsi or LiveKit can be cheaper at steady volume, but you pay in infrastructure and engineering time. How many participants can an Amazon Chime SDK meeting have? A standard meeting tops out at 250 attendees and 25 video tiles. Full HD drops that to 25 attendees. Can I self-host the Amazon Chime SDK? No. It only runs on AWS. Is there an AWS-native alternative to the Chime SDK? Yes. Amazon IVS Real-Time is AWS’s other WebRTC product, built for one-to-many stages rather than meetings. Does moving off the Chime SDK mean rewriting my frontend? Usually, yes. Chime has its own client SDKs and UI components, so switching vendors typically means rewriting the client integration. ## Run Meetings in Your Own AWS Account Self-hosted Jitsi Meet on AWS Marketplace for 50 to 500 concurrent users, with videobridges, SSL, and recording to S3 already configured. [See the Jitsi Meet Plans](https://meetrix.io/store/jitsi-meet/) Meetrix Store Jitsi Meet Self-hosted video calls for 50 to 500 users [Deploy it](https://meetrix.io/store/jitsi-meet/) Meetrix Store New Deploy what this guide covers, pre-configured. - [Jitsi Meet Self-hosted video calls for 50 to 500 users](https://meetrix.io/store/jitsi-meet/) - [Coturn TURN/STUN for WebRTC, no per-minute relay fees](https://meetrix.io/store/coturn/) - [Mattermost Team chat, a self-hosted Slack alternative](https://meetrix.io/store/mattermost/) - [RustDesk Remote desktop AMI, a TeamViewer alternative](https://meetrix.io/store/rustdesk/) - [OpenVPN Encrypted remote access, no per-user fees](https://meetrix.io/store/openvpn/) - [Plane Issues, cycles and roadmaps, a Jira alternative](https://meetrix.io/store/plane/) [Browse all products](https://meetrix.io/store/)