# LiveKit Agents vs Ultravox Realtime API (slim)

> LiveKit Agents scores 72.5 (BB) to Ultravox Realtime's 58.5 (C) for voice agents. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-ultravox.md (~2,950 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-ultravox.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/livekit-agents-vs-ultravox
- 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 Ultravox Realtime API's 58.5 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do voice agents.

- LiveKit Agents: BB 72.5, rank #104 of 1133 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/livekit-agents.min.md
- Ultravox Realtime API: C 58.5, rank #633 of 1133 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ultravox.min.md
- 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 52; Agent ergonomics, 80 against 69; Security & auth, 62 against 46; Payments & pricing, 60 against 40; Maintenance & community, 85 against 43; Transparency & trust, 82 against 73. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Open source.
- Ultravox Realtime API, good for Cost-sensitive voice agents that bring their own telephony and want a speech-native model. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.

| Category | LiveKit Agents | Ultravox Realtime API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 67 | 52 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 81 | 84 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 80 | 69 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 62 | 46 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 85 | 43 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 82 | 73 |

| Fact (where they differ) | LiveKit Agents | Ultravox Realtime API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent framework | HTTP API |
| Vendor | LiveKit Incorporated | Ultravox (Fixie.ai) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.ultravox.ai/api` |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Pricing | Free | Pay per use |
| Price for voice agents | $0.005 per minute of audio | not published |
| Licence | 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 | MIT (model code) |
| Last release | 2026-10-15 | 2026-07-18 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-10-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 15k stars, 820k npm/wk, 1.1M PyPI/wk | 4.6k stars, 17k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | 3/5 (2) |