# 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. LangChain Open source agent frameworks plus LangSmith, the platform for tracing, evaluating and deploying agents. **Research coverage:** 34/35 criteria **Where it improves on LiveKit Agents:** - [Done-for-you service: partial — You run the software; Enterprise adds LangChain engineers, architectural guidance and team trainings, not delivery of the agent.](https://www.langchain.com/pricing) - [Agent permissions: yes — Three approval modes: Manual asks before every gated action, Auto has a model classify routine ones, YOLO asks nothing.](https://docs.langchain.com/oss/deepagents/code/approval-modes) - [In your pipeline: yes — dcode runs headless with turn and time budgets and exit code 124 for CI; Engine opens pull requests on a connected GitHub repo.](https://docs.langchain.com/oss/deepagents/code/quickstart) **Trade-offs against LiveKit Agents:** - [Self-hosted: partial — Platform self-hosting and hybrid are Enterprise-only; Developer and Plus are Cloud, while the open source packages run wherever you install them.](https://www.langchain.com/pricing) [View LangChain](https://theagentsindex.com/langchain) ### 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. Agno Python SDK, open-source AgentOS runtime and hosted control plane for building and operating agents. **Research coverage:** 35/35 criteria **Where it improves on LiveKit Agents:** - [MCP server: yes — AgentOS can expose registered agents as an MCP server, so another agent can call them; docs also ship as MCP.](https://docs.agno.com/features/api) - [Bring your own key: yes — You supply each provider's own API key by environment variable, and the runtime runs on your compute.](https://docs.agno.com/faq/environment-variables) - [Seat model: yes — Three seats included on Pro, $30/month per extra seat; no published ceiling.](https://www.agno.com/pricing) **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 — SDK and AgentOS are Apache 2.0; the control plane is the commercial part and is not published as source.](https://www.agno.com/compare/agno-vs-langgraph) [View Agno](https://theagentsindex.com/agno) ### 6. Vapi Developer platform for building, testing and deploying voice AI agents that make and receive phone calls. **Research coverage:** 35/35 criteria **Where it improves on LiveKit Agents:** - [Done-for-you service: partial — You build and run the agent yourself; the Scale contract adds an embedded Vapi engineer for the go-live, not a done-for-you build.](https://vapi.ai/) - [MCP server: yes — A hosted MCP server exposes assistants, calls and numbers to another agent, and assistants can also call external MCP servers.](https://docs.vapi.ai/sdk/mcp-server) - [Bring your own key: yes — Provider keys for transcriber, LLM, voice and storage; with your key the model cost drops out of the Vapi bill entirely.](https://vapi.ai/pricing) **Trade-offs against LiveKit Agents:** - [Self-hosted: partial — Self-serve is hosted only; on-premise is offered to large enterprises, and the orchestration layer otherwise never leaves Vapi.](https://docs.vapi.ai/faq) - [Open source: partial — The CLI and SDKs are MIT-licensed on Vapi's GitHub; the platform and its orchestration models are closed and hosted.](https://github.com/VapiAI/cli) - [Opt out of training: partial — The privacy policy reserves call content for model training and names no toggle; the $1,000/month ZDR add-on is the only documented way to stop it being kept at all.](https://vapi.ai/privacy) [View Vapi](https://theagentsindex.com/vapi) ## Method Unknown data is never treated as a benefit or a trade-off. Featured placement is labelled but cannot alter recommendation order.