Voice AI Solutions Compared: From Demo to Full Control

Building real-time voice AI into your app? The landscape has exploded with options — from open-source frameworks to fully managed APIs. Each platform makes different trade-offs between cost, flexibility, and ease of integration.

We mapped out 7 major voice AI solutions, comparing them across pricing, LLM flexibility, React Native support, and maturity:

The Key Categories

Voice AI platforms fall into three buckets based on how much control they give you over the LLM (the "brain" behind conversations):

Full LLM Control

LiveKit Agents and Pipecat are open-source frameworks that let you bring your own LLM, your own STT/TTS, and wire everything together. They cost as little as $0.01/min for infrastructure, with the rest depending on which models you choose.

Limited LLM Choice

Deepgram ($0.075/min) and Ultravox ($0.05/min) offer excellent voice quality with some LLM flexibility. Deepgram is known for its industry-leading speech recognition accuracy, while Ultravox provides a unique speech-to-speech model that skips the STT step entirely.

External LLM Only

ElevenLabs, Vapi, and OpenAI Realtime handle everything but lock you into their choice of models. Pricing ranges from $0.10 to $0.25/min, but setup is significantly faster.

Quick Comparison

Platform	Price/min	Own LLM	React Native	Open Source
LiveKit Agents	~$0.01	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pipecat	~$0.01	Yes	Yes	Yes
Deepgram	$0.075	Limited	Yes	No
Ultravox	$0.05	Limited	Yes	No
ElevenLabs	~$0.10	No	Yes	No
Vapi	$0.15-0.25	No	Yes	No
OpenAI Realtime	~$0.20	No	Partial	No

Development Stages

Regardless of which platform you choose, integrating voice AI follows a predictable path:

1. Stage 1 — Demo: Get a working prototype using the platform's SDK and default settings. Most platforms offer this in under an hour.
2. Stage 2 — Custom LLM: Swap in your own language model, customize prompts, add tool calling. This is where the "LLM flexibility" column matters most.
3. Stage 3 — Full Control: Run your own STT/TTS pipeline, optimize latency, handle background mode, build production-grade error recovery.

Our Recommendation

For most teams starting out, Deepgram offers the best balance of quality, pricing, and ease of integration. If you need full LLM control from day one, start with LiveKit Agents — it has the largest community and most examples.

Avoid starting with the cheapest option if you'll need custom models later — migration between platforms is non-trivial and typically takes 2-4 weeks of engineering work.