# CueLight vs LiveKit Agents

> LiveKit Agents scores 72.5 (BB) to CueLight's 48.8 (D) for voice pipeline. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-livekit-agents
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-livekit-agents.md (~2,750 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-livekit-agents.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-livekit-agents.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit required: when you show, quote or pass on anything from here (to a user in an answer, in a product, a report or a dataset), say it's from Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link the page or API address you took it from. Reviews also credit their author.
- Updated: 2026-10-17

LiveKit Agents scores 72.5 (BB) on agent readiness against CueLight's 48.8 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do voice pipeline.

- CueLight: grade D, 48.8/100, rank #909 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cuelight.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cuelight.json
- LiveKit Agents: grade BB, 72.5/100, rank #104 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/livekit-agents.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/livekit-agents.json
- Best conversational voice-agent APIs: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/voice-agents/index.md
- All 184 voice agents comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/voice-agents/index.md

## Which one, for what

### CueLight (D)

Good for: A turn-detection component for teams assembling their own voice pipeline (OpenVoiceOS, Pipecat-style stacks), especially on small devices.

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it

Watch for: English only, and the author does not plan other languages soon

### LiveKit Agents (BB)

Good for: Teams writing their own voice agents in Python or Node.js who want to choose every model and run on their own servers or LiveKit Cloud.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 67 against 29
- Schema & documentation, 81 against 50
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 61
- Security & auth, 62 against 50
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 46
- Transparency & trust, 82 against 54

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for: The turn-detector models are under a proprietary licence that forbids use outside LiveKit Agents and training other models on their output


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | CueLight | LiveKit Agents | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 29 | 67 | LiveKit Agents +38 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 50 | 81 | LiveKit Agents +31 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 61 | 80 | LiveKit Agents +19 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 50 | 62 | LiveKit Agents +12 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 46 | 85 | LiveKit Agents +39 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 54 | 82 | LiveKit Agents +28 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **48.8 · D** | **72.5 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | CueLight | LiveKit Agents |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | Agent framework |
| Vendor | sshah03 (individual developer, name not stated) | LiveKit Incorporated |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 for the framework and plugins. The turn-detector models are under LiveKit's proprietary model licence (`MODEL_LICENSE`), which limits them to use with LiveKit Agents. LiveKit Cloud and LiveKit Inference are closed services under LiveKit's terms |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-15 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | yes |
| Popularity | 10 stars | 15k stars, 820k npm/wk, 1.1M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**CueLight.** CueLight gives a voice pipeline a local end-of-turn probability every 20 ms from audio alone, with a 1.9 MB model and Apache-2.0 weights. It is one day old, English only, installs from Git rather than PyPI, has no CI or changelog, and its accuracy figures are the author's own.

**LiveKit Agents.** An Apache-2.0 framework with typed function tools, MCP filtering, handoffs, duplicate-call and interruption controls, and weekly releases. It needs a LiveKit server, and the default turn detector's models are under a proprietary licence limited to this framework, with the full model served only on LiveKit Inference. No approval primitive or prompt-injection guidance was found.

## Before you call either

### CueLight

1. Feed 320 float32 samples at 16 kHz mono per `push`. Resample first, or the call raises an AssertionError
2. Spell the preset as `snappy` or `careful`. Any other name silently uses default thresholds
3. Call `clear()` before a new call or session. Pass `reset_on_turn_start=False` if your pipeline already resets per turn
4. Pin weights by downloading them to a local folder and passing that path to `from_pretrained`
5. Don't use it to identify speakers or clone voices. The training data's conditions forbid it

### LiveKit Agents

1. Set `LIVEKIT_URL`, `LIVEKIT_API_KEY` and `LIVEKIT_API_SECRET` before starting. Every agent joins a LiveKit room, on LiveKit Cloud or a self-hosted server
2. Pass `inference.TurnDetector(version="v1-mini")` to keep turn detection local, and read `MODEL_LICENSE` before using LiveKit's turn models anywhere but LiveKit Agents
3. Pass `record=False`, or a dict per category, to `session.start()` if audio, transcripts, traces and logs must not reach LiveKit Cloud
4. Call `context.disallow_interruptions()` first in tools that write, and set `on_duplicate="reject"` or `"confirm"`. Duplicates are matched by tool name only, not arguments
5. Wrap MCP servers in `mcp.MCPToolset` with `allowed_tools` (Python only). The `mcp_servers` parameter is deprecated

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, CueLight or LiveKit Agents?

LiveKit Agents scores 72.5 (BB) on agent readiness against CueLight's 48.8 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

### Are CueLight and LiveKit Agents open source?

Yes. CueLight is open source (Apache-2.0). LiveKit Agents is open source (Apache-2.0 for the framework and plugins. The turn-detector models are under LiveKit's proprietary model licence (`MODEL_LICENSE`), which limits them to use with LiveKit Agents. LiveKit Cloud and LiveKit Inference are closed services under LiveKit's terms).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-livekit-agents.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-livekit-agents.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "cuelight", "b": "livekit-agents"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare cuelight livekit-agents`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cuelight.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/livekit-agents.json

## Other comparisons with CueLight or LiveKit Agents

- [AssemblyAI Voice Agent API vs LiveKit Agents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/assemblyai-voice-agent-vs-livekit-agents.md)
- [Bland AI API + MCP vs LiveKit Agents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bland-ai-vs-livekit-agents.md)
- [Bolna API + MCP vs LiveKit Agents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bolna-vs-livekit-agents.md)
- [Deepgram Voice Agent API vs LiveKit Agents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepgram-voice-agent-vs-livekit-agents.md)
- [ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP vs LiveKit Agents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/elevenlabs-agents-vs-livekit-agents.md)
- [Gemini Live API vs LiveKit Agents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-live-vs-livekit-agents.md)
- [Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) vs LiveKit Agents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hume-evi-vs-livekit-agents.md)
- [LiveKit Agents vs OpenAI Realtime API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-openai-realtime.md)
- [LiveKit Agents vs Pipecat](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-pipecat.md)
- [LiveKit Agents vs PlaceCall](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-placecall.md)
- [LiveKit Agents vs Retell AI API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-retell-ai.md)
- [LiveKit Agents vs Synthflow API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-synthflow.md)
- [LiveKit Agents vs Ultravox Realtime API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-ultravox.md)
- [LiveKit Agents vs Vapi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-vapi.md)
- [LiveKit Agents vs Vocily AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-vocily.md)
- [LiveKit Agents vs Vogent API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-vogent.md)
- [AssemblyAI Voice Agent API vs CueLight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/assemblyai-voice-agent-vs-cuelight.md)
- [Bland AI API + MCP vs CueLight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bland-ai-vs-cuelight.md)
- [Bolna API + MCP vs CueLight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bolna-vs-cuelight.md)
- [CueLight vs Deepgram Voice Agent API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-deepgram-voice-agent.md)
- [CueLight vs ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-elevenlabs-agents.md)
- [CueLight vs Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-hume-evi.md)
- [CueLight vs Pipecat](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-pipecat.md)
- [CueLight vs Pipecat PhoneLLM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-pipecat-phonellm.md)
- [CueLight vs Retell AI API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-retell-ai.md)
- [CueLight vs Synthflow API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-synthflow.md)
- [CueLight vs Vapi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-vapi.md)
- [CueLight vs Vocily AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-vocily.md)
- [CueLight vs Vogent API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cuelight-vs-vogent.md)
- [LiveKit Agents vs Pipecat PhoneLLM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-pipecat-phonellm.md)
- [GPT-Live vs LiveKit Agents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpt-live-vs-livekit-agents.md)

---

Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp