LiveKit Cloud overview

Overview

LiveKit Cloud is a fully managed, globally distributed platform for building, hosting, and operating AI agent applications at scale.

While LiveKit's open-source server provides the realtime media foundation, LiveKit Cloud extends beyond managed infrastructure. It combines realtime audio, video, and data streaming with agent development tools, managed agent hosting, built-in inference, native telephony, and production-grade observability in a single, cohesive platform.

What LiveKit Cloud includes

Realtime communication core: A fully managed, globally distributed mesh of LiveKit servers that powers low-latency audio, video, and data streaming for realtime applications.

Agent Builder: Design, test, and iterate on AI agents using a purpose-built development experience. Agent Builder streamlines prompt design, tool configuration, and interaction flows.

Managed agent hosting: Deploy and run agents directly on LiveKit Cloud without managing servers or orchestration. LiveKit handles scaling, lifecycle management, isolation, and upgrades.

Built-in inference: LiveKit Inference lets you run supported AI models directly within the LiveKit Cloud environment without requiring API keys.

Native telephony: LiveKit Phone Numbers lets you provision phone numbers and connect PSTN calls directly into LiveKit rooms without setting up trunks.

Observability and operations: Production-grade analytics, logs, and quality metrics are built into the LiveKit Cloud dashboard, giving visibility into agent behavior, media quality, usage, and performance across your deployment.

Why choose LiveKit Cloud?

• End-to-end platform: Build, deploy, and operate AI agents, realtime media, inference, and telephony in one system.
• Zero operational overhead: No need to manage servers, scaling, or infrastructure.
• Global edge network: Users connect to the closest region for minimal latency.
• Elastic, unlimited scale: Support for rooms with unlimited participants using LiveKit's global mesh architecture.
• Enterprise-grade reliability: 99.99% uptime guarantee with redundant infrastructure.
• Comprehensive analytics: Monitor usage, performance, and quality metrics through the LiveKit Cloud dashboard.
• Seamless developer experience: Use the same APIs and SDKs as open source, with additional cloud-native capabilities.

Open source compatible, platform complete

LiveKit Cloud runs the same open-source LiveKit server available on GitHub and supports the same APIs and SDKs. This means:

• You can start on open source and migrate to LiveKit Cloud without rewriting application code.

• You can move from LiveKit Cloud to self-hosted if your requirements change.

• Your client and agent code remains portable—the connection endpoint is the primary difference.

What does differ is everything around the server: agent tooling, hosting, inference, telephony, global scaling, and observability, all of which are native features of LiveKit Cloud.

Comparing LiveKit Cloud to self-hosted

When building with LiveKit, you can run the open-source server yourself or use LiveKit Cloud as a fully managed, end-to-end platform:

LiveKit Cloud administration

For information about LiveKit Cloud architecture, administration, and configuration, see the Administration section.

Deploying agents to LiveKit Cloud

Deploy, configure, and manage your agents on LiveKit Cloud with these guides.