livekit vs agent-starter-node
Two of the top projects in Voice and realtime, side by side: who leads on each score part and who each one suits, then setup, license, activity and what each review found.
livekit
WebRTC SFU server for realtime audio, video and AI agent rooms
agent-starter-node
Node.js voice AI agent starter for LiveKit Agents
Verdict
livekit ranks higher, 83 to 54. Of the 4 score parts we measure for both, livekit leads on 2, agent-starter-node on 1 and 1 is even.
- Adoptionlivekit leads by 75 points, 91 to 16: a wide gap.
- FreshnessEven at 100.
- Maintenancelivekit leads by 47 points, 87 to 40: a wide gap.
- Agent-readyagent-starter-node leads by 70 points, 70 to 0: a wide gap.
Pick livekit if you are
Developers building voice, video or AI agent apps on self-hosted WebRTC
- Single Go binary; also ships Docker images and Helm charts
- Client SDKs for web, mobile, desktop, embedded and server languages
Pick agent-starter-node if you are
Node.js developers building voice agents on LiveKit
- Models via LiveKit Inference need no separate provider API keys, including realtime models
- Turn detector covers 14 languages; adaptive interruption handling and noise cancellation included
| What we compare | livekit | agent-starter-node |
|---|---|---|
| Score parts, out of 100 | ||
| Adoption | 91, widely used | 16, niche |
| Momentum | Not scored for this kind | Not scored for this kind |
| Freshness | 100, active | 100, active |
| Maintenance | 87, healthy | 40, patchy |
| Agent-ready | 0, none | 70, partly |
| Facts from GitHub and the README | ||
| Stars | 22.1k | 116 |
| License | Apache-2.0 (permissive) | MIT (permissive) |
| Last commit | Nov 2026 | Nov 2026 |
| Last release | Oct 2026 | None published |
| Language | Go | TypeScript |
| Docker | Yes | Yes |
| GPU | Not needed | Not needed |
| arm64 or Apple Silicon | Mentioned | Not stated |
livekit
LiveKit server is a distributed WebRTC SFU written in Go on Pion. People, devices and AI agents join the same room as participants, with JWT access tokens, simulcast, SVC codecs (VP9, AV1), end-to-end encryption and SIP telephony. Agent logic lives in the separate LiveKit Agents SDK (Python, Node.js), not in this repository.
Who it is for: Developers building voice, video or AI agent apps on self-hosted WebRTC
Strengths
- Single Go binary; also ships Docker images and Helm charts
- Client SDKs for web, mobile, desktop, embedded and server languages
- Distributed and multi-region deployment, with UDP, TCP and TURN connectivity
- Dev mode (livekit-server --dev) starts with a placeholder API key pair
Weaknesses
- Server only: voice agents need the separate Agents SDK and model plugins
- Egress, ingress and SIP are separate repositories to deploy
- Self-hosting has no LiveKit Inference; you wire up provider plugins and keys yourself
- Production setup (TURN, multi-region, scaling) needs networking knowledge
- Go
- Docker
agent-starter-node
TypeScript starter for a voice AI assistant built on LiveKit Agents for Node.js. It wires up a speech pipeline through LiveKit Inference (default LLM Gemma 4 31B, default TTS Fish Audio S2.1 Pro), with turn detection, interruption handling and noise cancellation. It also includes simulation tests that run in CI and a Dockerfile for LiveKit Cloud deployment.
Who it is for: Node.js developers building voice agents on LiveKit
Strengths
- Models via LiveKit Inference need no separate provider API keys, including realtime models
- Turn detector covers 14 languages; adaptive interruption handling and noise cancellation included
- Simulation scenarios in scenarios.yaml run in GitHub Actions on every merge to main
- Ships AGENTS.md, a CLI debugger and a Dockerfile; pairs with React, Swift, Flutter, Android starters
Weaknesses
- Defaults assume a LiveKit Cloud account; self-hosting means swapping in model plugins
- Noise cancellation plugin is LiveKit Cloud only and must be removed when self-hosting
- Simulations use real inference on LiveKit Cloud, so CI runs cost money
- No frontend included; web or mobile client lives in a separate repo
- TypeScript, Gemma 4 31B, Fish Audio S2.1 Pro, OpenAI, Cartesia
- Needs LiveKit Cloud, LiveKit CLI 2.18.8+, pnpm
- GitHub template
- Docker
- env example file
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