# Alternatives to LiveKit Agents > Source: https://theagentsindex.com/livekit-agents/alternatives (current datasheets, evidence-ranked) Candidates share the baseline category or are previously researched peers. Requirements, preserved strengths, explicit trade-offs and research coverage decide the order; paid tier does not. ## Shortlist ### 1. LangGraph Open-source orchestration framework and runtime for stateful, long-running LLM agents, from LangChain. **Research coverage:** 35/35 criteria **Where it improves on LiveKit Agents:** - [In your pipeline: yes — The vendor publishes a CI/CD reference pipeline with a companion repository: tests and offline evals on a PR, then quality-gated preview and production deploys via the Control Plane API.](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/cicd-pipeline-example) - [MCP server: yes — A deployed agent can be exposed as an MCP server, so another agent can call it; the plan table checks this row on Developer, Plus and Enterprise alike.](https://www.langchain.com/pricing) - [Bring your own key: yes — You supply provider keys directly in your own code, and the LLM Gateway's bring-your-own-key row is checked on every plan. Enterprise adds hybrid and self-hosted so inference and data stay in your cloud.](https://www.langchain.com/pricing) **Trade-offs against LiveKit Agents:** - No researched regression against the baseline. [View LangGraph](https://theagentsindex.com/langgraph) ### 2. Mastra Open-source TypeScript framework for building AI agents, with a hosted platform for running and observing them. **Research coverage:** 35/35 criteria **Where it improves on LiveKit Agents:** - [Done-for-you service: partial — You run the software, but Mastra sells professional services (Concierge, forward-deployed engineering) and enterprise support covering planning, prototyping and workshops.](https://mastra.ai/terms-of-service) - [Agent permissions: yes — Tool approval can gate any tool call, per server or by predicate on tool name/arguments; approvals propagate up a subagent delegation chain.](https://mastra.ai/ai-agent-framework) - [MCP server: yes — Both directions: MCPClient consumes external MCP servers, and MCPServer publishes your agents, tools and workflows to other MCP clients over stdio or HTTP.](https://mastra.ai/docs/connections/mcp) **Trade-offs against LiveKit Agents:** - No researched regression against the baseline. [View Mastra](https://theagentsindex.com/mastra) ### 3. Agno Python SDK, self-hosted AgentOS runtime and hosted control plane for building and operating agent platforms. **Research coverage:** 35/35 criteria **Where it improves on LiveKit Agents:** - [Done-for-you service: partial — You run the software yourself, but Enterprise adds vendor engineers on the build: dedicated help with your product agent, monthly office hours and ChatGPT/Claude app help.](https://www.agno.com/pricing) - [Agent permissions: yes — Permissions are enforced at runtime per agent and per tool, and a tool can be flagged to pause for user confirmation or for an admin approval that leaves a record.](https://www.agno.com/products/sdk) - [MCP server: yes — One flag serves an MCP endpoint beside the REST API, with eight built-in tools for discovering and running components; ChatGPT and Claude connect as clients on any plan.](https://docs.agno.com/features/mcp-server) **Trade-offs against LiveKit Agents:** - [In your pipeline: no — The enumerated serving surfaces are REST, MCP in Claude/ChatGPT and chat apps; no pull-request or CI surface appears.](https://www.agno.com/) - [Open source: partial — The SDK and AgentOS runtime are Apache-2.0 on GitHub, while the control plane is a hosted product whose self-hosted variant is quoted per deal on Enterprise.](https://github.com/agno-agi/agno) [View Agno](https://theagentsindex.com/agno) ### 4. ElevenLabs Agents Hosted platform for building voice and chat agents, with telephony, SDKs and a choice of LLM. **Research coverage:** 35/35 criteria **Where it improves on LiveKit Agents:** - [Done-for-you service: partial — Self-serve software you run, but enterprises can buy ElevenLabs Forward Deployed Engineers who scope, build and stabilise the deployment; no price is published.](https://elevenlabs.io/agents/forward-deployed-engineers) - [Agent permissions: yes — Tool use is gated per MCP server and per tool: always ask, fine-grained (auto-approved, requires approval, disabled), or no approval at all.](https://elevenlabs.io/docs/eleven-agents/customization/tools/mcp) - [In your pipeline: yes — Agents deploy from CI with an API key in the environment; the unit of change is the agent configuration, not a pull request in your code.](https://elevenlabs.io/docs/eleven-agents/operate/cli) **Trade-offs against LiveKit Agents:** - [Self-hosted: partial — The full agent runtime can run in your own VPC or hardware on AWS or GCP, but the documentation is NDA-gated and sold through the account team; Azure is unreleased.](https://elevenlabs.io/docs/overview/capabilities/private-deployment) - [Open source: partial — The CLI and the client SDKs are public on GitHub and take contributions; the agent platform and the speech models themselves are proprietary and hosted.](https://elevenlabs.io/docs/eleven-agents/operate/cli) [View ElevenLabs Agents](https://theagentsindex.com/elevenlabs-conversational-ai) ### 5. LangChain Open source agent frameworks plus LangSmith, a hosted platform to trace, evaluate, deploy and govern agents. **Research coverage:** 34/35 criteria **Where it improves on LiveKit Agents:** - [Done-for-you service: partial — You run the software yourself on every self-serve plan; only Enterprise buyers get LangChain engineers, architectural guidance and team training alongside the product.](https://www.langchain.com/pricing) - [Agent permissions: yes — Human-in-the-loop interrupts gate agent actions in the framework, dcode gates code execution behind approval modes, and Fleet agents can run as themselves or as the calling user.](https://www.langchain.com/langgraph) - [In your pipeline: yes — The vendor documents a GitHub Actions pipeline that runs tests and offline evals on a pull request, then promotes preview deployments to production through the control-plane API.](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/cicd-pipeline-example) **Trade-offs against LiveKit Agents:** - [Self-hosted: partial — The open source frameworks run anywhere, but self-hosting or hybrid-hosting the LangSmith platform on Kubernetes is an Enterprise-plan option; Developer and Plus are cloud-only.](https://www.langchain.com/pricing) - [Open source: partial — The frameworks and the dcode coding agent are MIT-licensed and free, while the LangSmith platform that carries the price, seats and governance is proprietary and hosted.](https://www.langchain.com/langchain) [View LangChain](https://theagentsindex.com/langchain) ### 6. CrewAI Open-source multi-agent framework with a managed platform for deploying and governing agent workflows. **Research coverage:** 34/35 criteria **Where it improves on LiveKit Agents:** - [Done-for-you service: partial — You run the software yourself, but the Enterprise plan sells forward-deployed engineers, onboarding and training separately, so people-delivered build help exists as a paid extra.](https://www.crewai.com/pricing) - [MCP server: yes — Both plans can publish a built workflow as an MCP server so other agents can call it, and agents can equally consume any external MCP server as tooling.](https://www.crewai.com/pricing) - [Bring your own key: yes — Inference runs on your own provider accounts: you supply each provider key, or manage LLM connections centrally in the platform, and Enterprise can host the runtime in your cloud.](https://docs.crewai.com/en/concepts/llms) **Trade-offs against LiveKit Agents:** - [How it meters: partial — Metering is per workflow execution rather than per seat, and the free tier states its allowance, but Enterprise volumes are sized case by case with unpriced overage.](https://www.crewai.com/pricing) - [Opt out of training: partial — Framework telemetry excludes prompts and agent data by default and is disabled with one environment variable, but no page states whether platform execution data trains vendor models.](https://docs.crewai.com/en/telemetry) [View CrewAI](https://theagentsindex.com/crewai) ## Method Unknown data is never treated as a benefit or a trade-off. Featured placement is labelled but cannot alter recommendation order.