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. It's zero data retention by default, so prompts, audio, and model outputs are never stored or used to train models.
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.
Dashboard
Sign up for LiveKit Cloud to manage projects, configure agents and telephony, and view detailed analytics.
Pricing
View LiveKit Cloud pricing plans and choose the right option for your application's needs.
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.
AI agents
| Self-hosted | LiveKit Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Agents framework | Full support | Full support |
| Managed agent hosting | N/A, you run and scale agent servers yourself. | Included: deploy agents to LiveKit Cloud with automatic scaling, managed builds, and instant rollback. |
| Agent Builder | N/A | Included |
| Built-in inference | N/A, bring your own model provider API keys. | Included, with custom voice clones on paid plans. |
| Agent observability | Custom / external, using OpenTelemetry data hooks. | Included: built-in observability stack with transcripts, traces, session recordings, and log drains. |
| Noise cancellation | Client-side WebRTC cancellation; ai-coustics supported with your own license key. | Client-side WebRTC cancellation, plus enhanced models (Krisp, ai-coustics). |
Telephony
| Self-hosted | LiveKit Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| SIP & telephony | Full support, SIP service deployed as a separate service. | Full support |
| Phone numbers | Bring your own SIP trunking provider. | Native LiveKit Phone Numbers, plus support for external SIP trunks. |
| Noise cancellation | N/A | Krisp noise cancellation applied at the SIP trunk for inbound and outbound calls. |
Media and transport
| Self-hosted | LiveKit Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Realtime media (audio, video, data) | Full support | Full support |
| Egress (recording, streaming) | Full support, deployed as a separate service. | Full support, included with every project. |
| Ingress (RTMP, WHIP, SRT ingest) | Full support, deployed as a separate service. | Full support, included with every project. |
| End-to-end encryption | Full support | Full support |
| Webhooks | Full support | Full support |
Platform and operations
| Self-hosted | LiveKit Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Who manages it | You | LiveKit |
| Architecture | Single-home SFU | Global mesh SFU |
| Connection model | Single server per room | Each user connects to the nearest edge. |
| Max users per room | Up to ~3,000 | No limit |
| Regions & data residency | Regions you deploy to | Global edge network, with region pinning for data residency requirements. |
| Analytics & telemetry | Custom / external | LiveKit Cloud dashboard, plus Analytics API on Scale plans. |
| Access token revocation | N/A | Included |
| Uptime guarantees | N/A | 99.99% |
LiveKit Cloud administration
For information about LiveKit Cloud architecture, administration, and configuration, see the Administration section.
Next steps
Ready to deploy your agents? Get started with the Agent deployment guide.