# Deepgram Voice Agent API vs LiveKit Agents (slim)

> LiveKit Agents scores 72.5 (BB) to Deepgram Voice Agent's 68.1 (B) for voice agents. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepgram-voice-agent-vs-livekit-agents.md (~3,200 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepgram-voice-agent-vs-livekit-agents.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepgram-voice-agent-vs-livekit-agents
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-10-17
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link this page when you pass anything on

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.

- Deepgram Voice Agent API: B 68.1, rank #250 of 1133 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/deepgram-voice-agent.min.md
- LiveKit Agents: BB 72.5, rank #104 of 1133 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/livekit-agents.min.md
- Deepgram Voice Agent API, good 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 A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Runs on your own machine.
- LiveKit Agents, 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 55; Agent ergonomics, 80 against 67; Payments & pricing, 60 against 40; Transparency & trust, 82 against 77. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Open source.

| Category | Deepgram Voice Agent API | LiveKit Agents |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 55 | 67 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 90 | 81 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 80 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 71 | 62 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 85 | 85 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 77 | 82 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Deepgram Voice Agent API | LiveKit Agents |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Agent framework |
| Vendor | Deepgram | LiveKit Incorporated |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://agent.deepgram.com/v1/agent` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio, SSE (legacy) |  |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| Price for voice agents | not published | $0.005 per minute of audio |
| Licence | MIT (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 |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-10-15 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-06 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2021-10-26 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 468 stars, 1.1M npm/wk, 805k PyPI/wk | 15k stars, 820k npm/wk, 1.1M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3/5 (4) |