> Source: https://meetrix.io/blogs/livekit-alternatives/ > Markdown copy of that page. Cite the URL above, not this file. Development # LiveKit Alternatives: 13 Options for 2026 [By Shalomi Umeshika](https://meetrix.io/blogs/authors/shalomi-umeshika/) • September 23, 2026 • 16 min read LiveKit is still Apache 2.0. It's still actively developed. And it's still one of the most respected WebRTC stacks out there, particularly if you're building AI voice agents. Nobody's walking away because the project went bad. They're walking away because of what LiveKit expects from you. Self-hosting means running the LiveKit media server, a TURN server, and Redis for room state, then sizing all of it around a rule LiveKit's own docs spell out clearly: scalability is bound by CPU and bandwidth, and production deployments want 10Gbps networking. LiveKit Cloud takes away that operational burden, but neither path gives you a meeting UI. You build the call screen, the device pickers, the reconnection logic, all of it. For teams that just wanted video that works, or that ran into LiveKit Cloud's Scale tier and its $500-a-month floor, that's a heavy lift. Below are 13 alternatives, what each one does better, and what they cost as of September 2026. The Quick Verdict Jitsi Meet Want a finished meeting app instead of building one? Go with self-hosted Jitsi Meet. OpenVidu Like LiveKit's engine but want room management and scaling handled for you? OpenVidu wraps it. Daily Building AI voice agents and want a managed alternative to LiveKit Agents? Look at Daily's Pipecat framework. Agora or Stream Want zero infrastructure and don't mind paying per minute? Agora for global reach, Stream for the lowest list price. ## Is LiveKit Open Source? Yes. [LiveKit's media server, SIP service, Egress, Ingress, and SDKs are all Apache 2.0](https://github.com/livekit/livekit/blob/master/LICENSE), and that hasn't changed. LiveKit Cloud is the managed version of that same open-source stack, not a separate product designed to lock you in. So if your worry is a bait-and-switch, you're not really the audience for this article; the code is yours no matter what. What follows is for teams weighing the real operational cost of running LiveKit, self-hosted or in the cloud, against something that asks less of them. Apache 2.0 License for LiveKit's server, SIP, Egress, Ingress and SDKs $500/mo Floor for LiveKit Cloud's Scale tier, the first with SOC 2/HIPAA 10 Gbps Networking LiveKit's own docs recommend for a production self-hosted node ## Why Teams Look for a LiveKit Alternative Price is rarely the first thing people mention. LiveKit's free Build tier and $50 Ship tier are honestly generous compared to most managed video APIs. The real friction shows up once a team is actually running it: Self-hosting carries real infrastructure weight. Production deployments need the LiveKit server, a TURN server, a load balancer terminating SSL, and Redis for room state. LiveKit's own guidance says scalability is bound by CPU and bandwidth, with 10Gbps networking recommended, which is a very different budget line than "just run a binary." You still build the entire app. LiveKit gives you SDKs and prebuilt React components, not a finished meeting product. Layout, waiting rooms, chat, recording UI, all still yours to build. It's the same gap that pushes people away from raw SDKs in general. Cloud pricing climbs quickly past prototyping. Build is free, but HIPAA/SOC 2 compliance and an SLA live behind Scale ($500/month) and Enterprise. Teams that need compliance early end up paying for a tier sized for far more traffic than they actually have. It's built for builders, not meetings. The Agents framework is genuinely the strongest reason to pick LiveKit. But if your product is a meeting room rather than a custom real-time app or a voice agent, that strength is mostly unused weight. If none of that describes your project, the honest advice is: stay. LiveKit is actively maintained and Apache 2.0, so there's no forcing event pushing you off it. ## How to Choose a Replacement Four questions narrow the list fast. 1. **Do you want a product or building blocks?** A finished meeting app (Jitsi, OpenVidu) gets you live faster. An SDK or library (mediasoup, Janus, most managed APIs) gives you more control over the exact call experience. 2. **Who operates the servers?** Self-hosting avoids per-minute billing but means you own upgrades, TURN, and scaling. A managed API removes that, at a metered cost. 3. **Is AI voice on the roadmap?** If you're building an agent that joins calls, listens, and talks back, weight this heavily: Daily's Pipecat and Vonage both have mature agent tooling, and it's the one area where "just like LiveKit but easier" options are thinner. 4. **Where does the media have to live?** Data residency or a regulator's "our infrastructure only" rule rules out every managed API on this list. ## 1\. Jitsi Meet: A Finished Meeting App, Not a Toolkit - Meeting app - Apache 2.0 - Self-hostable [Jitsi Meet](https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/) is open-source (Apache 2.0) video conferencing with its own videobridge. Where LiveKit hands you an SFU and SDKs to build with, Jitsi hands you a complete meeting product on day one. It's first on this list because for teams whose actual goal was "meetings for our users," not "a custom real-time app," it removes the exact work LiveKit leaves to you. ### Why switch - Screen share, chat, breakout rooms, lobby, and recording via Jibri all work out of the box. - Embed it with the [Jitsi iframe API](https://meetrix.io/blogs/jitsi-api-iframe/) in a few lines, or fully customize the frontend. - No per-minute billing. You pay for EC2 and bandwidth sized by concurrent users. - Runs on AWS, another cloud, or on-prem. ### Watch out for - Still self-hosted infrastructure: a videobridge that connects but shows no video almost always means UDP 10000 is closed in the security group. - It's a meeting app first. If you need a fully custom call experience or an agent framework, that's LiveKit's or mediasoup's territory, not Jitsi's. ### Pricing The software is free. Raw AWS cost for 50 concurrent users running 24/7 runs roughly $60 to $100 a month. [Meetrix Jitsi Meet images](https://meetrix.io/store/jitsi-meet/) on AWS Marketplace launch through CloudFormation for 50 to 500 concurrent users, with or without recording. ## 2\. OpenVidu: LiveKit's Engine, With the Product Layer Built - Self-hosted platform - Community: Apache 2.0 - Self-hostable [OpenVidu](https://openvidu.io/) deserves an honest framing: it isn't a separate media engine competing with LiveKit, it's [built on the open-source LiveKit stack and mediasoup](https://github.com/OpenVidu/openvidu). What it adds is room management, deployment tooling, and a PRO tier for clustering and high availability. If you like LiveKit's media quality but don't want to hand-roll the operational layer around it, OpenVidu is the closest thing to "LiveKit, managed by someone else's packaging." ### Why switch - Community edition is free and open source, with the deployment and scaling groundwork already done. - PRO adds mediasoup-backed clustering for handling more rooms per node, priced by core-minute rather than participant-minute. ### Watch out for - PRO requires an OpenVidu account and license key, so it's not license-free the way raw LiveKit is. - You're still one layer removed from LiveKit itself; upstream changes reach you on OpenVidu's schedule. ### Pricing Community is free. PRO starts at $0.0006 per core-minute across the cluster, with a 15-day free trial license. ## 3\. mediasoup: Leaner Than LiveKit, and More Work - SFU library - ISC - Self-hostable [mediasoup](https://mediasoup.org/) is an SFU library for Node.js and Rust, ISC licensed. It's a step below LiveKit in scope: no built-in room server, no SDKs beyond the media layer, no Cloud option. Signalling, room state, auth and UI are entirely on you. ### Why switch - Lighter footprint than LiveKit's server, and no Redis dependency for basic setups. - Fits teams that already run a Node.js backend and want media routing inside it rather than a separate service. ### Watch out for - It's a downgrade in convenience from LiveKit, not an upgrade. You lose LiveKit's SDKs, Agents framework, and room management, and rebuild them yourself. ### Pricing Free. You pay for servers, bandwidth, and the engineering time. ## 4\. Janus: When You Need SIP Interop - 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 others. ### Why switch - The SIP plugin matters if your calls need to interoperate with phones or legacy conferencing gear, something LiveKit doesn't do natively. - Lightweight and battle-tested in telecom deployments. ### Watch out for - GPLv3, not Apache 2.0. Check with legal before modifying and distributing it. - Like mediasoup, the application layer is entirely yours to build. ### Pricing Free. ## 5\. Daily: The Managed Pick for Voice Agents - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable [Daily](https://www.daily.co/) is a managed video API with Daily Prebuilt, a complete embeddable call UI, alongside a lower-level SDK. The team also maintains Pipecat, the open-source framework most often cited alongside LiveKit Agents for building voice AI. ### Why switch - Prebuilt gets you a working call faster than assembling one on LiveKit's SDKs. - Pipecat is a real alternative to LiveKit Agents if you want to stay off LiveKit's stack entirely for voice AI. - 10,000 free participant minutes every month, not a time-boxed trial. ### Watch out for - Managed only. There's no self-hosted path if that's why you were leaving LiveKit Cloud. - List price is well above LiveKit's per-minute overage rate. ### Pricing $0.004 per participant-minute after the free 10,000, with volume discounts down to $0.0015. Audio-only is $0.00099/minute. ## 6\. Agora: Its Own Global Network - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable [Agora](https://www.agora.io/) runs its own real-time network rather than renting a public cloud's, which matters if your users are spread well beyond wherever you'd run LiveKit yourself. ### Why switch - A purpose-built global network instead of a self-hosted region you pick and manage. - SDKs and UI kits for nearly every platform, plus 10,000 free minutes a month. ### Watch out for - Pricing tiers by resolution delivered to each user, so a gallery of HD streams can push you into a pricier tier than expected. ### Pricing $0.99 per 1,000 minutes for audio, $3.99 for HD video, $8.99 for Full HD, up to $35.99 for 2K+. ## 7\. 100ms: Enterprise-Leaning Managed Video - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable [100ms](https://www.100ms.live/) is a managed conferencing API with mature SDKs across web and mobile, positioned similarly to Daily and Agora but leaning more toward custom enterprise contracts than transparent self-serve pricing. ### Why switch - 10,000 free conferencing minutes a month on the published HD plan. - Recording and RTMP-out ship as first-party features rather than a separate service to wire up. ### Watch out for - Much of its pricing sits behind a sales conversation rather than a public rate card, which slows down evaluation. ### Pricing Published rate: $0.004 per participant-minute after 10,000 free, $10/1,000 for recording, $12/1,000 for RTMP out. Larger volumes are quote-based. ## 8\. Twilio Video: Back From Its Own Shutdown - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable [Twilio Video](https://www.twilio.com/en-us/video) announced end-of-life in late 2023, pushed the date to December 2026, then reversed the decision entirely in October 2024. It's a supported product again. ### Why switch - Mature SDKs and docs, easy to combine with Twilio's SMS, voice, and SIP if you already use them. - Bandwidth and track counts aren't billed as separate line items. ### Watch out for - If vendor risk is why you're evaluating alternatives at all, a product that nearly shut down once is a hard sell over LiveKit's Apache 2.0 code you can run yourself regardless of the vendor's fate. ### Pricing Group rooms are $0.004 per participant-minute. Recording adds $0.004 per recorded participant-minute; compositions are $0.01/minute. ## 9\. Vonage Video: Publisher-Based Pricing - 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, with pricing built around how many people publish video at once. ### Why switch - A long track record and enterprise contract support LiveKit's smaller commercial team can't yet match. - Built-in interactive broadcast for scaling a call into a large live stream. ### Watch out for - Price per participant jumps sharply past 25 active publishers in a session. ### Pricing $0.0041 per participant-minute with up to 25 publishers, $0.01865 with 26 to 35, $0.02275 with 36 or more. ## 10\. Zoom Video SDK: Zoom's Media Quality, 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, arguably its strongest differentiator against any SFU on this list. - 10,000 free session minutes a month. ### Watch out for - Not true pay-as-you-go: billed in $100 credit blocks through the Zoom Build Platform, awkward for bursty 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). ## 11\. Amazon Chime SDK: If You're Already Committed to AWS - Managed (AWS) - Proprietary - Not self-hostable The [Amazon Chime SDK](https://aws.amazon.com/chime/chime-sdk/) is AWS's own conferencing toolkit, billed per attendee-minute with no separate infrastructure to run. ### Why switch - Same AWS bill, IAM, and region model as the rest of your stack, with no servers to size or patch. - Competitive per-minute pricing that includes bandwidth. ### Watch out for - 250-attendee ceiling per meeting (25 with Full HD on), and it only runs on AWS. There's no self-hosted path if that's what drew you to LiveKit in the first place. - No agent framework equivalent to LiveKit Agents. ### Pricing $0.0017 per attendee-minute, billed in 6-second increments, bandwidth included. ## 12\. Stream Video: Cheapest 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 convenient. ### Why switch - The lowest list prices of any managed API here, plus a $100 monthly free credit. - Chat, feeds, and video under one SDK family. ### Watch out for - Billed on the resolution each user actually receives, so the headline rate only holds if your layout delivers that resolution. ### Pricing Per 1,000 participant-minutes: $0.30 audio, $0.75 SD, $1.50 HD, $3.00 Full HD. ## 13\. Cloudflare RealtimeKit: Runs on Cloudflare's Edge - Managed API - Proprietary - Not self-hostable [RealtimeKit](https://realtime.cloudflare.com/) is what Dyte became after Cloudflare's acquisition. It runs on Cloudflare's edge network with prebuilt UI components included. ### Why switch - Cloudflare's global edge network, and cheap audio-only pricing. - Free while it remains in beta. ### Watch out for - Still in beta; the prices below are Cloudflare's planned GA rates and could change before launch. ### Pricing Planned: $0.002/minute for audio/video participants, $0.0005 for audio-only, 10,000 minutes free monthly. Recording is $0.01/minute. ## LiveKit Alternatives Compared List prices for video at standard HD quality, before volume discounts, checked on September 23, 2026. The last column shows what 100,000 participant-minutes a month would cost at those rates, roughly 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 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | LiveKitBaseline | SFU + Cloud | Yes | Apache 2.0 | $0.50 overage | 1,000 min | $50 (Ship plan) | | Jitsi Meet | Meeting app | Yes | Apache 2.0 | Servers only | n/a | Flat, by concurrency | | OpenVidu | Platform on LiveKit/mediasoup | Yes | Apache 2.0 / PRO license | Per core-minute | 15-day trial | Servers + core-minutes | | mediasoup | SFU library | Yes | ISC | Servers only | n/a | Servers + engineering | | Janus | WebRTC server | Yes | GPLv3 | Servers only | n/a | Servers + engineering | | Daily | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $4.00 | 10,000 min | $360 | | Agora | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $3.99 | 10,000 min | $359 | | 100ms | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $4.00 | 10,000 min | $360 | | 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 | | Amazon Chime SDK | Managed (AWS) | No | Proprietary | $1.70 | None | $170 | | Stream Video | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $1.50 | $100 credit | $50 | | Cloudflare RealtimeKit | Managed API | No | Proprietary | $2.00 (planned) | 10,000 min | $180 (free in beta) | 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. $350a month, at 1M minutes LiveKit Cloud's per-minute overage is already among the cheapest managed rates here, so switching to save money on raw per-minute pricing rarely works, unless you're moving to self-hosting or Amazon Chime SDK. At a million minutes a month, LiveKit's $0.50/1,000 sits close to Chime's $1.70; most of the managed APIs above land between $3.50 and $4.10, a gap worth roughly $350 a month against LiveKit at that volume. ## Why Run Jitsi with Meetrix on AWS - 50 to 500 concurrent users - Launches with CloudFormation - Recording to S3 with Jibri Plenty of teams evaluating LiveKit alternatives don't actually need another SDK, self-hosted or otherwise. They want meetings running in their own AWS account, on their own domain, without building a call UI first. 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 all of that already done, sized for 50 to 500 concurrent users. 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, staying on LiveKit, or moving to Daily's Pipecat, still makes more sense than Jitsi. Our [LiveKit vs Jitsi comparison](https://meetrix.io/blogs/livekit-vs-jitsi/) goes through that choice in detail, and if you're already running LiveKit for Matrix-based calls specifically, our [Element Call and MatrixRTC guide](https://meetrix.io/blogs/self-host-element-call-matrixrtc/) covers that setup. ## Where I'd Start Self-hosted Jitsi Meet If you need **meetings for your users or staff** and don't want to build a call UI: self-hosted Jitsi Meet on AWS. No per-minute cost, no client code to write. OpenVidu If you want **LiveKit's media quality without operating it yourself**: OpenVidu's Community edition, or PRO if you need clustering. Daily If you're **building AI voice agents** and want a managed alternative to LiveKit Agents: Daily's Pipecat framework is the most mature option outside LiveKit's own stack. Agora or Stream If you want **zero operations and a global network**: Agora. If price matters more than reach: Stream. And if LiveKit already works for you? Stay. It's Apache 2.0, actively maintained, and the strongest option here for anything involving AI voice agents. Keep this list for the day the self-hosting workload or the Cloud bill actually becomes a problem. Not before. ## Frequently Asked Questions Is LiveKit shutting down or changing its license? No. LiveKit's media server, SIP, Egress, Ingress and SDKs are still Apache 2.0, and LiveKit Cloud is actively developed alongside it. Is LiveKit free? Self-hosting is free apart from your own servers. LiveKit Cloud has a free Build tier (1,000 agent minutes, 5,000 WebRTC minutes a month); paid tiers start at $50/month. What's the closest thing to LiveKit but with a finished UI? OpenVidu, which is built on the open-source LiveKit and mediasoup engines but adds room management and a PRO scaling layer. For a full meeting app rather than building blocks, Jitsi Meet is the more complete alternative. What do most teams use instead of LiveKit for AI voice agents? Daily, through its Pipecat framework, is the most common alternative for voice agents. Vonage and 100ms also publish agent-oriented SDKs. Can I self-host a LiveKit alternative on AWS? Yes. Jitsi Meet, mediasoup, Janus and OpenVidu Community all run on your own EC2 instances. Meetrix packages Jitsi Meet as a ready CloudFormation stack. Is mediasoup a drop-in replacement for LiveKit? No. mediasoup is a routing library, not a product. You still write signalling, room state and the client UI yourself, arguably more work than LiveKit's self-hosted server. What is the cheapest LiveKit alternative? For managed APIs, Stream Video and Amazon Chime SDK have the lowest list prices. Self-hosted options like Jitsi Meet or mediasoup can be cheaper at steady volume, but you pay in servers and engineering time instead of a per-minute rate. ## 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/) - [Listmonk Newsletters with no per-subscriber fees](https://meetrix.io/store/listmonk/) [Browse all products](https://meetrix.io/store/)