Head to head · Voice agents · October 2026 research run
fone.me vs LiveKit Agents
LiveKit Agents scores 72.7 (BB) on agent readiness against fone.me's 28.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do voice agents.
Best conversational voice-agent APIs · All 518 voice agents comparisons
Which one, for what
fone.me F
Best for Agents acting for a person who need to reach a freelancer's, shop's or small business's own AI agent at its fone.me link to ask a question, request a booking or quote or leave a message, and owners who want an answering agent on a link, WhatsApp, Telegram and a $9.99 number without building one.
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
Watch for
No tool arguments, input schemas, annotations, error shapes or rate limits are published for the MCP server or A2A endpoints
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 15
- Schema & documentation, 81 against 31
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 29
- Security & auth, 62 against 30
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 50
- Maintenance & community, 87 against 23
- Transparency & trust, 82 against 23
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- Free to start without a card
- 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
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Maintenance & community LiveKit Agents +64
fone.me 23
Closed service. The newest dated change to the agent surface found is the MCP repository github.com/spearisa/fone-me-mcp, created 5 October 2026 with server.json version 1.0.0, 31 days ago (20). The comparison page marked 'Checked October 28, 2026' and the profile lastmods in the sitemap are content, not releases. No changelog, release notes or three dated changes in 90 days (0 of 20). The support page and FAQ draw by script and no support email, forum or community channel was found; responsiveness unchecked (3 of 15). server.json names the server me.fone.www/agents, a namespace that needs proof of the domain, but the official MCP registry could not be read, so presence is scored absent (0 of 15). No package, public code or CI (0 of 10). 20+0+3+0+0 = 23.
LiveKit Agents 87
livekit-agents 1.8.10 tagged on 28 October 2026, after 1.8.9 on 23 October (30). 18 tagged releases in the 90 days to 1 November, from 1.6.8 on 3 August to 1.8.10, counted from the repository's tags since PyPI didn't answer from our shell on 1 November, and @livekit/agents 1.9.4 (24 October) and 1.9.5 (28 October) in livekit/agents-js (20). Issue and pull request reply times weren't read, because GitHub's pages answer 403, and the earlier figures, taken from a third-party copy of GitHub data, are struck. In the clone, 147 of the 200 newest commits (11 to 31 October) came from about 80 authors with addresses outside livekit.io, bots aside, and every one of the 200 landed as a numbered pull request. CODEOWNERS sends every change to the agent-devs team, a workflow requests that team's review on pull requests from the repository's own branches, and the issue form points questions to LiveKit's community forum, with a Slack linked from the README (15 of 25). Python 1.8.10 and Node.js 1.9.5 were both tagged on 28 October (15). Renovate, a uv lockfile that holds new dependencies back seven days, security bumps of aiohttp (22 October) and nltk (27 October), pinned actions and CI on every push, with the pass state unconfirmed (7 of 10). 30 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 7 = 87.
Transparency & trust LiveKit Agents +59
fone.me 23
Closed service. Terms of service exist at /terms but draw by script, so their content, governing law and the company they name are unchecked; no company, address or country of incorporation appears on any page read, llms.txt says San Francisco, and the MCP repository has no licence (5 of 30). Data handling was read only from guide pages, which say only the owner sees their calls and messages, calls are transcribed and callers told so, and private categories are withheld. The privacy policy and data-deletion page draw by script, so no retention period, recording statement, DPA or AI-training statement was read (8 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices (0). No subprocessors, telephony, model or hosting providers or data locations are named on any page read; the demo agent card's icon is served from Cloudinary (0 of 20). 5+8+0+0 = 13.
LiveKit Agents 82
Apache-2.0 for the framework and its 81 plugin packages. The turn-detector models are under LiveKit's proprietary model licence, and the core package now requires livekit-local-inference, installed from PyPI with its source outside the repository, which runs the local v1-mini model that the turn-detector docs place under the same model licence. The README calls the project "Fully open-source" and names the model licence in its licence section, and MODEL_LICENSE itself calls LiveKit Agents a proprietary framework (20 of 30). The terms, the observability docs and the pricing page agree on 30-day observability retention, zero data retention for LiveKit Inference and no training on customer data, and a DPA and sub-processor list are published. The privacy policy (15 October 2026) excludes data LiveKit processes for customers. The pricing page lists LiveKit Inference models from Fish Audio, Gradium and Speechmatics, which the sub-processor list of 10 September 2026 does not name (22 of 30). Deprecations are flagged in code and docs (mcp_servers, cli.run_app, the text turn-detector plugin), mostly without dates. One warning names 30 April 2026 for removing api_version and is still in 1.8.10 on 1 November, and 2.0.0b1 has no migration notes we could find (9 of 20). What reaches LiveKit is documented with opt-outs (record, TurnDetector(version="v1-mini")), and the sub-processor list names each entity and country (17 of 20).
Reliability LiveKit Agents +52
fone.me 15
Hosted reading, for the MCP server and A2A endpoints and the service behind them. No status page is linked from llms.txt, the home page or any guide page read, and https://www.fone.me/status failed to load (0). No readable incident history, so the floor (5). No request rate limit for the MCP server, the search API or A2A is published; the only limits are on the agent's own outbound calls (8 am to 9 pm in the callee's time zone, 'limited per day' with no number), which are not request limits (0 of 15). No 429, overload or retry guidance and no idempotency key for message_agent or message/send (0 of 15). No SLA (0). Nothing on the MCP server, the agent cards or llms.txt is marked beta or preview, and the MCP repository's server.json is version 1.0.0 (10). 0+5+0+0+0+10 = 15.
LiveKit Agents 67
Graded as a framework with the local-software lines, since LiveKit Cloud is optional and not graded. Official packages on PyPI (Python 3.10 to 3.14 declared) and npm (Node.js 20 or later per the docs) (20). Public workflows run on every push to main and on pull requests. Unit tests on Linux with Python 3.12 over 310 test files on 1 November, ruff, and mypy on Python 3.10 and 3.13, with a small blockguard suite on Linux, macOS and Windows. GitHub's pages and API weren't readable from our session, so a passing main is not confirmed (15 of 25). Open issues and reply times weren't read, because GitHub's pages answer 403, and the earlier issue figures, taken from a third-party copy of GitHub data, are struck. In a clone of main, the 200 newest commits run from 11 to 31 October 2026 and 104 of them are fixes, among them an Inference STT socket that hung when silently dropped (#8023) and an avatar plugin's error handler that crashed (#7498). None names the issue it closes and there is no changelog, so whether reported crashes and regressions get handled can't be seen (10 of 25). No CHANGELOG file. Release notes are on GitHub, which we couldn't read, and the repository's release-notes script asks for Breaking changes and Security sections. Migration guides exist for 0.x to 1.0, AGENTS.md makes patch bumps the default, and 2.0.0b1 was tagged on 12 October and the docs' migration guides still stop at Python 0.x to 1.0 and Node.js 1.x to 1.5 on 1 November (7 of 15). 1.8.10, stable since 1.0 (15).
Agent ergonomics LiveKit Agents +51
fone.me 29
MCP reading. Four tools named in llms.txt, a small set, but their definitions were not read, so short of full marks (18 of 25). find_agents searches by what someone does and the search API takes a query; no limit, paging or output-size controls are documented (3 of 20). No error codes or messages documented for the MCP server, the search API or A2A (0 of 20). No readOnlyHint or destructiveHint seen and no idempotency key; the three lookups are read-only by name and description, while message_agent writes to a real person's inbox and continues the conversation across calls (2 of 20). No credentials, no configuration beyond the URL, and few stated inputs; no SDK in any language (6 of 15). 18+3+0+2+6 = 29.
LiveKit Agents 80
Framework reading. An MCP server is about ten lines with mcp.MCPToolset, with allowed_tools, filter_tools() and a tool_result_resolver to trim results before they reach the model, but Python only (20 of 25). Tools can be added, removed or replaced per agent and per state, flags such as IGNORE_ON_ENTER hide a tool at the greeting, and handoffs swap the active toolset (16 of 20). ToolError returns a message the model can act on, invalid arguments come back as a ToolError naming the tool, and by default a session closes only after more than three unrecoverable STT, LLM or TTS errors of one kind (17 of 20). Interrupted tools finish in the background and keep their result in history, disallow_interruptions() protects tools that write, and on_duplicate can reject, replace or confirm a second call. Duplicates are matched by tool name only, and there are no idempotency keys (14 of 20). AgentSession supplies VAD and a turn detector by default and LiveKit Inference takes model strings with one key, in Python and Node.js, but every agent needs a LiveKit server and three environment variables (13 of 15).
Schema & documentation LiveKit Agents +50
fone.me 31
MCP reading, since the MCP server is what an outside agent calls. No tool arguments or input schemas are published in llms.txt, the guide pages or the GitHub README, and robots.txt disallows /mcp, so no session was opened and tools/list was not read. Per-link A2A agent cards are machine-readable JSON (protocol 0.3.0, JSONRPC, input and output modes, skills with examples) and server.json names the remote, but neither types the MCP tools (8 of 25). llms.txt is a real document for agents covering the MCP server, A2A, the search API and the widget (10). Each tool has a one-line purpose in llms.txt and the README, and the how-it-works page states what the agent will and won't do; nothing says when not to use a tool (6 of 20). No typed inputs, enums, constraints or required fields published (0 of 15). Example prompts in the README, per-skill examples in agent cards and widget code for eight site builders; no error response is documented (4 of 15). server.json and the agent cards carry version 1.0.0 and the cards a protocol version; no changelog (3 of 15). 8+10+6+0+4+3 = 31.
LiveKit Agents 81
Library reading. A typed Python package (py.typed, mypy in CI) with a Python and Node.js API reference on docs.livekit.io. The reference llms.txt link to the Python reference's Markdown still returns 404 on 1 November (22 of 25). llms.txt with section indexes, .md on every page, llms-full.txt and a docs MCP server (10). Pages say when to use a realtime model or a pipeline, when to choose v1 or v1-mini, when to disallow interruptions and how to gate critical actions, and mark MCP as Python only (16 of 20). Function tools take their schema from typed signatures and docstrings, raw JSON Schema is accepted, and argument validation failures go back to the model as ToolError (13 of 15). 15 example folders in the repository after provider-specific examples were removed on 27 October, 39 recipes, and an events and error-handling reference (13 of 15). No changelog in the repository or docs, release notes only on GitHub, and the quickstart's agent.py still ends with agents.cli.run_app(server), which the framework marks as deprecated, still so on 1 November (7 of 15).
Security & auth LiveKit Agents +32
fone.me 30
No credential exists for callers. llms.txt gives auth 'none', the README says the server is 'public, like the links themselves', and the two agent cards read declare no security scheme. There is nothing to leak or rotate, but fone.me and an owner can tell callers apart only by the name they give ('Maria via ChatGPT' in the README) and by traffic, and no caller identity or verification is documented (10 of 30). Three of four MCP tools are lookups; message_agent and A2A message/send reach any owner's agent. On the owner's side the vendor says the agent asks before agreeing to anything or spending money, the owner approves what it will say before a call, outbound calls run only 8 am to 9 pm local, pause when reported and stop permanently on request, and the owner can take over any chat. No read-only mode and no confirmation on the caller's side (8 of 20). message_agent returns text generated from what the owner taught the agent, and every agent on the platform reads messages from anyone; the only guidance is the how-it-works statement that the agent keeps relationship status, health, money and address private, with no documented prompt-injection or spam handling for the open channel, and the call-screening page says it does not promise to block calls (4 of 15). Owners see every call and chat with a transcript in one inbox; nothing is logged for the calling agent (8 of 15). /.well-known/security.txt answers with the app shell, and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification appears on any page read (0 of 20). 10+8+4+8+0 = 30.
LiveKit Agents 62
Framework reading. Agents authenticate to a LiveKit server with an API key and secret that sign JWT access tokens with room grants and a lifetime. No analytics calls were found in the source. Uploads to LiveKit Cloud happen only when the agent connects to LiveKit Cloud media servers and the project enables Agent Observability, which the terms call a capability the customer elects to enable. record then defaults to the project setting, and since 23 October (1.8.9) the recording header also carries a session summary without chat history or events, with record=False or per-category opt-outs, 30-day retention and PII redaction that is off by default. The default turn detector streams user audio to LiveKit Inference when deployed to LiveKit Cloud or in dev mode with credentials, which the docs state (20 of 30). No built-in approval step or read-only mode. disallow_interruptions(), on_duplicate="confirm", MCP allowed_tools, prebuilt tasks with require_confirmation and the docs' advice to gate critical actions in code. Hosted agents run in sandboxed per-instance environments per the security page (10 of 20). Callers' speech and MCP results reach the model, and a search of llms-full.txt found no prompt-injection guidance (3 of 15). OpenTelemetry traces and metrics per session, session reports, and Agent Insights on LiveKit Cloud (14 of 15). security.txt with a contact and PGP key but no Expires field, a disclosure policy with safe harbour and a hall of fame, a SOC 2 Type II report for LiveKit Cloud under NDA, and no OSV advisories for livekit-agents or @livekit/agents on 1 November. No SECURITY.md in the repository and no paid bug bounty found. CI pins its actions by commit (15 of 20).
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | fone.me | LiveKit Agents | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 15 | 67 | LiveKit Agents +52 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 31 | 81 | LiveKit Agents +50 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 29 | 80 | LiveKit Agents +51 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 30 | 62 | LiveKit Agents +32 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 50 | 60 | LiveKit Agents +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 23 | 87 | LiveKit Agents +64 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 23 | 82 | LiveKit Agents +59 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | F 28.3/100 | BB 72.7/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | fone.me | LiveKit Agents |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Platform | Agent framework |
| Vendor | Fone | LiveKit Incorporated |
| Hosted endpoint | https://www.fone.me/mcp | no (local only) |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Price for voice agents | not published | $0.005 per minute of audio |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service. Terms of service at https://www.fone.me/terms, whose text draws by script and could not be read on 5 November 2026; no company is named on any page read. No source, SDK or package is published | 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 |
| Tools exposed | 4 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-05 | 2026-10-28 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | yes |
| Popularity | none | 820k npm/wk, 1.1M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
fone.me
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
fone.me
Any agent can find a fone.me link and message its owner's agent through a keyless MCP server or A2A, with no sign-up or cost, and owners see every conversation in one inbox. Tool schemas, rate limits and abuse controls for that open channel are unpublished, the terms and privacy policy draw by script, and no company is named.
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. No approval primitive or prompt-injection guidance was found.
Before you call either
fone.me
- Connect to https://www.fone.me/mcp with no credentials; use find_agents or get_agent before message_agent so the message goes to the right person's link.
- Say who you are acting for in every message_agent call; the owner reads it in an inbox as a named conversation, and conversations continue across calls.
- Treat replies as the owner's agent speaking from what it was taught, not a commitment; the vendor says it asks its owner before agreeing to anything or spending money.
- Read a link's agent card at /{link}/.well-known/agent-card.json for its skills before using A2A message/send at /{link}/a2a.
- Don't send personal or payment details through message_agent; no retention or privacy terms for agent-to-agent messages could be read.
LiveKit Agents
- Set
LIVEKIT_URL,LIVEKIT_API_KEYandLIVEKIT_API_SECRETbefore starting. Every agent joins a LiveKit room, on LiveKit Cloud or a self-hosted server - Pass
inference.TurnDetector(version="v1-mini")to keep turn detection local, and readMODEL_LICENSEbefore using LiveKit's turn models anywhere but LiveKit Agents - Pass
record=False, or a dict per category, tosession.start()if audio, transcripts, traces and logs must not reach LiveKit Cloud - Call
context.disallow_interruptions()first in tools that write, and seton_duplicate="reject"or"confirm". Duplicates are matched by tool name only, not arguments - Wrap MCP servers in
mcp.MCPToolsetwithallowed_tools(Python only). Themcp_serversparameter is deprecated
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, fone.me or LiveKit Agents?
LiveKit Agents scores 72.7 (BB) on agent readiness against fone.me's 28.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.
Are fone.me and LiveKit Agents open source?
No open-source release is listed for fone.me. 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).
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- LiveKit Agents vs Rime Prism
- LiveKit Agents vs Synthflow API + MCP
- LiveKit Agents vs Ultravox Realtime API
- LiveKit Agents vs Vaani Developer Platform
- LiveKit Agents vs Vapi API + MCP
- LiveKit Agents vs Vocily AI
- LiveKit Agents vs Vogent API
- CueLight vs LiveKit Agents
- LiveKit Agents vs Pipecat PhoneLLM
- GPT-Live vs LiveKit Agents
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/fone-me-vs-livekit-agents.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/fone-me.json·/api/v1/tools/livekit-agents.json - From a terminal
anchor compare fone-me livekit-agents(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "fone-me", "b": "livekit-agents"}at/mcp, no key