livekit vs pipecat-examples
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
pipecat-examples
Intermediate and advanced example bots built on the Pipecat voice framework
Verdict
livekit ranks higher, 83 to 56. Of the 4 score parts we measure for both, livekit leads on 2, pipecat-examples on none and 2 are even.
- Adoptionlivekit leads by 64 points, 91 to 27: a wide gap.
- FreshnessEven at 100.
- Maintenancelivekit leads by 27 points, 87 to 60: a wide gap.
- Agent-readyEven at 0.
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 pipecat-examples if you are
Developers building voice agents and phone bots with Pipecat
- Telephony coverage across Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo, Exotel, Genesys and Daily PSTN/SIP
- simple-chatbot has clients for React, JavaScript, Swift, Kotlin and React Native
| What we compare | livekit | pipecat-examples |
|---|---|---|
| Score parts, out of 100 | ||
| Adoption | 91, widely used | 27, niche |
| Momentum | Not scored for this kind | Not scored for this kind |
| Freshness | 100, active | 100, active |
| Maintenance | 87, healthy | 60, fair |
| Agent-ready | 0, none | 0, none |
| Facts from GitHub and the README | ||
| Stars | 22.1k | 406 |
| License | Apache-2.0 (permissive) | BSD-2-Clause (permissive) |
| Last commit | Nov 2026 | Nov 2026 |
| Last release | Oct 2026 | None published |
| Language | Go | Python |
| Docker | Yes | Yes |
| GPU | Not needed | Not stated |
| 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
pipecat-examples
Python example apps for Pipecat, an open-source framework for voice and multimodal AI. They cover phone bots (Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo, Exotel, Genesys, Daily PSTN/SIP), web and mobile clients, WebRTC and WebSocket transports, plus deployment and tracing samples. Learning-level examples live in the main Pipecat repo.
Who it is for: Developers building voice agents and phone bots with Pipecat
Strengths
- Telephony coverage across Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo, Exotel, Genesys and Daily PSTN/SIP
- simple-chatbot has clients for React, JavaScript, Swift, Kotlin and React Native
- Deployment samples for Pipecat Cloud, Fly.io, Modal and Cerebrium
- OpenTelemetry examples using Langfuse, LangSmith and Jaeger
Weaknesses
- Separate example directories, not a single app to fork
- Needs third-party API keys such as OpenAI, Deepgram and Cartesia
- Tied to the Pipecat framework; examples do not carry over to other stacks
- No tagged releases to pin examples against
- Python, OpenAI, Gemini Live, Deepgram, Cartesia
- Needs Python 3.11+, OpenAI, Deepgram, Cartesia, Twilio, Daily
- Docker
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