Write a review

Head to head · Voice agents · October 2026 research run

Deepgram Voice Agent API vs LiveKit Agents

LiveKit Agents scores 72.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Deepgram Voice Agent API's 68.1 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Deepgram Voice Agent API leads on schema & documentation and security & auth. Both do voice agents.

Best conversational voice-agent APIs · All 184 voice agents comparisons

Deepgram Voice Agent APIDeepgram · HTTP API B68.1/100#250 of 1133 LiveKit AgentsLiveKit Incorporated · Agent framework BB72.5/100#104 of 1133

Which one, for what

Deepgram Voice Agent API B

Best for Developers who already run telephony (Twilio, Amazon Connect, Genesys, AudioCodes) and want a cheap managed pipeline with their choice of LLM.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 81
  • Security & auth, 71 against 62

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

No phone numbers or SIP, so you bridge Twilio or another carrier yourself

LiveKit Agents BB

Best 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 55
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 67
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
  • Transparency & trust, 82 against 77

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Open source

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

CategoryWeight this runDeepgram Voice Agent APILiveKit AgentsEdge
Reliability16%205567LiveKit Agents +12
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29081Deepgram Voice Agent API +9
Agent ergonomics13%16.26780LiveKit Agents +13
Security & auth14%17.57162Deepgram Voice Agent API +9
Payments & pricing10%12.54060LiveKit Agents +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88585even
Transparency & trust7%8.87782LiveKit Agents +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 68.1/100BB 72.5/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepgram Voice Agent APILiveKit Agents
KindHTTP APIAgent framework
VendorDeepgramLiveKit Incorporated
Hosted endpointhttps://agent.deepgram.com/v1/agentno (local only)
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio, SSE (legacy)
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPay per useFree
Price for voice agentsnot published$0.005 per minute of audio
x402nono
LicenceMIT (SDKs)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 documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-302026-10-15
Terms last updated2026-08-06no date given
Privacy policy last updated2021-10-26no date given
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-outnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes
Popularity468 stars, 1.1M npm/wk, 805k PyPI/wk15k stars, 820k npm/wk, 1.1M PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (2)3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Deepgram Voice Agent API

$0.075 a minute all in on Standard, $0.050 with your own LLM and TTS, $200 of credit with no card. No phone numbers or SIP, so you bridge Twilio or another carrier yourself.

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

Deepgram Voice Agent API

  1. Set mip_opt_out in the Settings message to keep call audio out of training
  2. Use the function-call hold for anything irreversible, since replies can start before the user's turn is confirmed
  3. Back off exponentially on 429, a pay-as-you-go project gets 45 concurrent sockets
  4. Pin the LLM version, an unpinned Gemini route failed for 1.5 hours on 21 July 2026
  5. Mint browser tokens with ttl_seconds, not ttl, or they expire after 30 seconds

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, Deepgram Voice Agent API or LiveKit Agents?

LiveKit Agents scores 72.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Deepgram Voice Agent API's 68.1 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Deepgram Voice Agent API leads on schema & documentation and security & auth.

Can an agent call Deepgram Voice Agent API and LiveKit Agents without installing anything?

Deepgram Voice Agent API has a hosted endpoint at https://agent.deepgram.com/v1/agent. No hosted endpoint is listed for LiveKit Agents.

Are Deepgram Voice Agent API and LiveKit Agents open source?

No open-source release is listed for Deepgram Voice Agent API. 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).

Other comparisons with Deepgram Voice Agent API or LiveKit Agents

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report