Both are open source, both are built on WebRTC, and both use a selective forwarding unit to route video. The difference is what you get out of the box.
At a glance
| Jitsi Meet | LiveKit | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A complete meeting application | A media server plus client SDKs |
| User interface | Included, full-featured | You build it (example apps exist) |
| Time to first meeting | Minutes to hours | Days to weeks for a custom app |
| Embedding | IFrame API, JWT | Native SDKs for web, iOS, Android, more |
| Recording | Jibri, included | Egress service, included |
| Transcription | Jigasi with Vosk or Google | Via agents and third-party speech APIs |
| AI voice agents | Not a focus | A core use case |
| Licensing | Apache 2.0 | Apache 2.0 |
| Hosted option | 8x8 JaaS | LiveKit Cloud |
Choose Jitsi when
- You need video meetings for a team, school, clinic or community, with a proven UI.
- You want to embed meetings in an existing app with little frontend work.
- You want features like lobbies, moderation, breakout rooms, polls and whiteboard without building them.
- You want to self-host with a well-known Docker setup.
Choose LiveKit when
- You are building a product where the real-time experience is the product: live shopping, interactive streaming, multiplayer, AI voice assistants.
- You need fine control over tracks, layouts and data channels in native apps.
- You have frontend and mobile developers to build and maintain the interface.
Operating them
Both self-host well with Docker and scale horizontally by adding media servers. Jitsi has more moving parts (Prosody, Jicofo, the videobridge) but a fixed recipe that has not changed much in years. LiveKit is a smaller set of services with a newer, API-first design.
Our view
If the goal is “our people need private, branded video meetings”, Jitsi gets you there fastest, and our one-click hosting removes the setup. If the goal is “we are building a new real-time product”, LiveKit is worth evaluating seriously.