Vapi vs LiveKit Agents
Pricing and features, side by side. Checked October 14, 2026.
| Vapi | LiveKit Agents | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $0 to start; $0.05/min Vapi hosting, models billed pass-through at cost | Free; Ship from $50/mo |
| Billing | Usage-based (per minute) + optional support package | Plan + per-minute usage |
| Best for | Developers who want to choose their own LLM, transcriber, voice and telephony provider | Developers building on open-source realtime infrastructure |
| Key features | Bring-your-own model, transcriber and voice providers | Open-source Agents framework and media server you can self-host |
| Unlimited agents on every plan | LiveKit Inference: LLM, STT and TTS models through one API key, billed per minute | |
| Vapi telephony/SIP, WebSockets and WebRTC transport at no extra charge | Built-in end-of-turn detection and interruption handling |
Both are developer platforms for voice agents with models billed per minute. Vapi charges a $0.05/min hosting fee with providers passed through at cost, $5 free credits and 4 concurrent calls to start. LiveKit Cloud's free Build plan includes 1,000 agent session minutes; Ship is from $50/mo with 5,000 minutes, then $0.01/min per agent session, and its Agents framework is open source. LiveKit's pricing page estimates about $0.048/min all-in for a sample model stack.
Pick Vapi if you want a managed platform where you configure agents and plug in providers without running your own agent code.
Pick LiveKit Agents if you want open-source code you can self-host, a lower per-minute platform fee, and included minutes on every plan.
Sources: Vapi · LiveKit Agents