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End-to-end stack for WebRTC. SFU media server and SDKs.

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Top Related Projects

Jitsi Meet - Secure, Simple and Scalable Video Conferences that you use as a standalone app or embed in your web application.

Quick Overview

LiveKit is an open-source platform for building real-time audio and video applications. It provides a scalable WebRTC SFU (Selective Forwarding Unit) server and client SDKs for various platforms, enabling developers to create high-quality, low-latency live streaming and video conferencing applications.

Pros

  • Scalable and performant WebRTC infrastructure
  • Comprehensive client SDKs for multiple platforms (Web, iOS, Android, React, React Native)
  • Advanced features like selective subscriptions, simulcast, and adaptive bitrate
  • Active community and regular updates

Cons

  • Steeper learning curve compared to some simpler WebRTC solutions
  • Requires server infrastructure setup and management
  • Limited documentation for advanced use cases
  • May be overkill for small-scale or simple projects

Code Examples

  1. Creating a room and connecting a participant:
import { Room, RoomOptions } from 'livekit-client';

const room = new Room();
const options: RoomOptions = {
  adaptiveStream: true,
  dynacast: true,
};

await room.connect('wss://your-livekit-server.com', 'token', options);
console.log('Connected to room:', room.name);
  1. Publishing local audio and video tracks:
import { createLocalTracks } from 'livekit-client';

const tracks = await createLocalTracks({
  audio: true,
  video: true,
});

await room.localParticipant.publishTracks(tracks);
  1. Subscribing to remote participant tracks:
room.on('trackSubscribed', (track, publication, participant) => {
  if (track.kind === 'video') {
    const element = track.attach();
    document.getElementById('remote-video-container').appendChild(element);
  }
});

Getting Started

To get started with LiveKit:

  1. Install the LiveKit client SDK:

    npm install livekit-client
    
  2. Set up a LiveKit server (follow the server setup instructions in the LiveKit documentation).

  3. Create a room and connect to it:

    import { Room } from 'livekit-client';
    
    const room = new Room();
    await room.connect('wss://your-livekit-server.com', 'your-access-token');
    
  4. Publish local tracks and subscribe to remote tracks as shown in the code examples above.

For more detailed instructions and advanced usage, refer to the official LiveKit documentation.

Competitor Comparisons

Jitsi Meet - Secure, Simple and Scalable Video Conferences that you use as a standalone app or embed in your web application.

Pros of Jitsi Meet

  • More mature project with a larger community and longer history
  • Fully open-source and self-hostable solution
  • Extensive documentation and guides for deployment and customization

Cons of Jitsi Meet

  • Can be resource-intensive, especially for large-scale deployments
  • Less flexible for integration into custom applications
  • Steeper learning curve for developers new to WebRTC

Code Comparison

Jitsi Meet (JavaScript):

const options = {
    roomName: 'MyConferenceRoom',
    width: 700,
    height: 700,
    parentNode: document.querySelector('#meet')
};
const api = new JitsiMeetExternalAPI(domain, options);

LiveKit (JavaScript):

const room = new Room();
await room.connect('ws://localhost:7880', token);
await room.localParticipant.enableCameraAndMicrophone();
room.on(RoomEvent.ParticipantConnected, participant => {
    console.log('Participant connected', participant.identity);
});

Both projects provide APIs for creating and managing video conferencing rooms, but LiveKit offers a more streamlined approach for custom integrations. Jitsi Meet's API is designed for embedding their full-featured conference solution, while LiveKit provides lower-level control for building custom video experiences.

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README

The LiveKit icon, the name of the repository and some sample code in the background.

LiveKit: Real-time video, audio and data for developers

LiveKit is an open source project that provides scalable, multi-user conferencing based on WebRTC. It's designed to provide everything you need to build real-time video audio data capabilities in your applications.

LiveKit's server is written in Go, using the awesome Pion WebRTC implementation.

GitHub stars Slack community Twitter Follow GitHub release (latest SemVer) GitHub Workflow Status License

Features

Documentation & Guides

https://docs.livekit.io

Live Demos

Ecosystem

  • Agents: build real-time multimodal AI applications with programmable backend participants
  • Egress: record or multi-stream rooms and export individual tracks
  • Ingress: ingest streams from external sources like RTMP, WHIP, HLS, or OBS Studio

SDKs & Tools

Client SDKs

Client SDKs enable your frontend to include interactive, multi-user experiences.

Language Repo Declarative UI Links
JavaScript (TypeScript) client-sdk-js React docs | JS example | React example
Swift (iOS / MacOS) client-sdk-swift Swift UI docs | example
Kotlin (Android) client-sdk-android Compose docs | example | Compose example
Flutter (all platforms) client-sdk-flutter native docs | example
Unity WebGL client-sdk-unity-web docs
React Native (beta) client-sdk-react-native native
Rust client-sdk-rust

Server SDKs

Server SDKs enable your backend to generate access tokens, call server APIs, and receive webhooks. In addition, the Go SDK includes client capabilities, enabling you to build automations that behave like end-users.

LanguageRepoDocs
Goserver-sdk-godocs
JavaScript (TypeScript)server-sdk-jsdocs
Rubyserver-sdk-ruby
Java (Kotlin)server-sdk-kotlin
Python (community)python-sdks
PHP (community)agence104/livekit-server-sdk-php

Tools

Install

[!TIP] We recommend installing LiveKit CLI along with the server. It lets you access server APIs, create tokens, and generate test traffic.

The following will install LiveKit's media server:

MacOS

brew install livekit

Linux

curl -sSL https://get.livekit.io | bash

Windows

Download the latest release here

Getting Started

Starting LiveKit

Start LiveKit in development mode by running livekit-server --dev. It'll use a placeholder API key/secret pair.

API Key: devkey
API Secret: secret

To customize your setup for production, refer to our deployment docs

Creating access token

A user connecting to a LiveKit room requires an access token. Access tokens (JWT) encode the user's identity and the room permissions they've been granted. You can generate a token with our CLI:

livekit-cli create-token \
    --api-key devkey --api-secret secret \
    --join --room my-first-room --identity user1 \
    --valid-for 24h

Test with example app

Head over to our example app and enter a generated token to connect to your LiveKit server. This app is built with our React SDK.

Once connected, your video and audio are now being published to your new LiveKit instance!

Simulating a test publisher

livekit-cli join-room \
    --url ws://localhost:7880 \
    --api-key devkey --api-secret secret \
    --room my-first-room --identity bot-user1 \
    --publish-demo

This command publishes a looped demo video to a room. Due to how the video clip was encoded (keyframes every 3s), there's a slight delay before the browser has sufficient data to begin rendering frames. This is an artifact of the simulation.

Deployment

Use LiveKit Cloud

LiveKit Cloud is the fastest and most reliable way to run LiveKit. Every project gets free monthly bandwidth and transcoding credits.

Sign up for LiveKit Cloud.

Self-host

Read our deployment docs for more information.

Building from source

Pre-requisites:

  • Go 1.22+ is installed
  • GOPATH/bin is in your PATH

Then run

git clone https://github.com/livekit/livekit
cd livekit
./bootstrap.sh
mage

Contributing

We welcome your contributions toward improving LiveKit! Please join us on Slack to discuss your ideas and/or PRs.

License

LiveKit server is licensed under Apache License v2.0.


LiveKit Ecosystem
Realtime SDKsReact Components · Browser · Swift Components · iOS/macOS/visionOS · Android · Flutter · React Native · Rust · Node.js · Python · Unity (web) · Unity (beta)
Server APIsNode.js · Golang · Ruby · Java/Kotlin · Python · Rust · PHP (community)
Agents FrameworksPython · Playground
ServicesLiveKit server · Egress · Ingress · SIP
ResourcesDocs · Example apps · Cloud · Self-hosting · CLI

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