LiveKit Agents vs Vapi (2026): which should you pick?

Pick LiveKit Agents if

• Fits if you are a developer who wants to build and ship a voice agent in one place
• Works for teams that start on the free plan and add phone lines later

Look elsewhere if

• Not for you if you want no-code: you build agents in code
• Tight if you leave the free plan: 1,000 minutes, 5 concurrent sessions
• Pricey if you add it up: sessions, phone lines and models are billed per minute on top of the plan
• Watch out: private links, role-based access and HIPAA reports start at Scale, $500 a month

Pick Vapi if

• Fits if you are a developer who wants to choose each voice and model provider
• Makes sense if you want to pay for minutes as you use them

Look elsewhere if

• Pricey if you want one price, as model, voice and call charges sit on top of the $0.05 hosting
• Watch out: HIPAA-eligible handling is a $2,000 a month add-on
• Pricey if you grow, since Pro has a $999 a month minimum
• Watch out: extra lines cost $10 each and extra organisations $20 each a month

LiveKit Agents

• The plan prices are 'starting at' and add per-minute charges for agent sessions, telephony and model use.
• An estimator on the pricing page gives about $0.0479 a minute for one sample phone-call setup; model choice changes it.
• Private links, role-based access and HIPAA reports start at the Scale plan.

Vapi

• Without a success package, hosting is $0.05 per minute, pre-paid, and Deepgram, model and voice costs are added on top; the page's 1,000-minute estimate is $82 to $129 a month.
• HIPAA-eligible data handling is a $2,000 per month add-on.
• Extra concurrent lines cost $10 per line per month and extra organizations $20 per organization per month.
• Twilio, Vonage and Telnyx call charges are billed by those providers, such as $0.008 per minute for Twilio inbound.

LiveKit Agents

Agents framework

An open source framework for building and testing voice agents in Python or Node.js.

LiveKit Inference

One API key for speech-to-text, language and text-to-speech models, billed by model per minute.

Agent deployment

Hosts agents on LiveKit Cloud with rollback, deployment metrics and a global network.

Telephony

Phone numbers and SIP integrations so an agent can take or place calls.

Observability and simulations

Session recordings, event logs and text simulations for testing agents.

Vapi

Voice agent orchestration

Configure voice, conversation flow, telephony and integrations for an agent, then deploy it behind a phone number or an API.

Choice of providers

The pricing calculator lets you pick the transcriber, language model and voice, for example Deepgram, OpenAI and ElevenLabs. Models are passed through at cost.

Testing and simulation

Calls can be simulated before they reach customers, and monitoring flags issues in live calls.

Telephony options

Vapi telephony and SIP, WebSockets and Daily WebRTC are listed as free transport; Twilio, Vonage and Telnyx are charged by those providers.

Enterprise controls

The site lists SSO, OAuth, RBAC and AI guardrails, and says SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI compliance are supported.

LiveKit Agents

• Build$0

  1,000 agent session minutes, 5 concurrent sessions, $2.50 of inference credits, community support.

• Ship$50

  per month, starting at

  5,000 session minutes then $0.01 a minute, 20 concurrent sessions, team access and email support.

• Scale$500

  per month, starting at

  50,000 session minutes, up to 600 concurrent sessions, roles, region pinning and HIPAA reports.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Volume pricing, SSO, a support SLA and a shared Slack channel.

Vapi

• Core$29

  per month, pre-paid, auto-renew

  2 organizations, 5 included phone numbers, 10 concurrent calls, 30 days of raw data retention and email support.

• Pro$999

  per month minimum, 10% of the hosting fee

  10 organizations, 30 concurrent calls, 180 days retention, RBAC, a dedicated Slack channel and a 99% uptime SLA.

• PremierCustom

  Direct sales only: higher limits, named support team, 99.9% uptime SLA, SSO and dedicated SIP.