LiveKit is a realtime platform that enables developers to build video, voice, and data capabilities into their applications. Building on WebRTC, it supports a broad range of frontend and backend platforms.
Problems LiveKit solves
- Scalability: Building scalable realtime communication systems is challenging. LiveKit is an opinionated, horizontally-scaling WebRTC SFU (Selective Forwarding Unit) that allows applications to scale to support large numbers of concurrent users.
- Complexity: Implementing WebRTC from scratch is complex, involving signaling, media handling, networking, and more. LiveKit solves these undifferentiated problems, presenting a consistent set of API primitives across platforms.
- Fragmented solutions: Many WebRTC solutions lack advanced features like simulcast, selective subscription, SVC codecs, and end-to-end encryption. LiveKit provides these and more out-of-the-box.
- Vendor lock-in: Proprietary WebRTC solutions can lead to vendor lock-in. As an open-source platform, LiveKit makes it easy to switch between our self-hosted and Cloud offerings.
How LiveKit works
LiveKit's architecture consists of the following key components.
- LiveKit Server: This is the core component of the LiveKit platform. It acts as a Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU), handling signaling, media, and other realtime communication tasks.
- SDKs: LiveKit provides full-featured web, native, and backend SDKs to abstract away WebRTC complexity for easier integration.
- Egress: This component allows recording or live streaming of rooms and individual participant tracks.
- Ingress: This enables ingesting external streams (such as RTMP and WHIP) into LiveKit rooms.
- AI Agents: This server-side framework allows building intelligent, AI-powered applications with realtime capabilities.
- CLI: This utility allows you to create and manage LiveKit services, whether cloud or self-hosted.
Build a LiveKit implementation
Here's a high-level overview of the steps involved in building a LiveKit implementation:
- Install LiveKit Server SDKs: LiveKit server-side SDKs provide the necessary APIs and tools to manage rooms, generate access tokens, and handle server-side operations. These act as a bridge between your application backend and the LiveKit Server.
- Set up LiveKit Server: Deploy the LiveKit Server binary or Docker image to your infrastructure (self-hosted), or use the LiveKit Cloud managed service.
- Integrate client SDKs: Integrate the appropriate LiveKit client SDKs (such as web or mobile) into your application code.
- Create an Access Token server: Set up a mechanism to generate and validate access tokens (JWT) for secure room access.
- Build your frontend: Develop the user interface for video conferencing, including camera and microphone access, participant lists, and screen sharing.
- Add advanced features (optional): Integrate additional LiveKit components like Egress, Ingress, or AI Agents based on your application's requirements.
- Test and optimize: Thoroughly test your implementation across different networks, devices, and loads. Optimize media server settings (CPU, bandwidth, codecs) as needed.
- Deploy and monitor: Deploy your LiveKit implementation to production and set up monitoring and logging for performance tracking and debugging.
Deployment considerations
When building a LiveKit implementation, you can either self-host the open-source LiveKit server, or use the managed LiveKit Cloud service. Here's a table comparing them.
open-source | Cloud | |
---|---|---|
Realtime features | Full support | Full support |
Egress (recording, streaming) | Full support | Full support |
Ingress (RTMP, WHIP, SRT ingest) | Full support | Full support |
SIP (telephony integration) | Full support | Full support |
Agents framework | Full support | Full support |
Who manages it | You | LiveKit |
Architecture | Single-home SFU | Mesh SFU |
Connection model | Users in the same room connect to the same server | Each user connects to the closest server |
Max users per room | Up to ~3,000 | No limit |
Analytics & telemetry | - | Cloud dashboard |
Uptime guarantees | - | 99.99% |