This question originally came up in our Slack community and the thread has been consolidated here for long-term reference.
If I self-host only the agent service (not the full LiveKit setup), does that help reduce costs compared to using LiveKit Cloud?
It depends on where you’re spending money. Self-hosting requires (physical or virtual) servers, routers, DNS, and staff to manage those.
LiveKit Cloud provides fast time from idea to deployment since it’s all ready to go and ready to scale. You won’t need to worry about global distribution, fail-over, etc.
You can self-host LiveKit agents while still using LiveKit Cloud for the infrastructure and/or inference. This gives you flexibility in how you balance costs.
If you’re just starting out, using Cloud and hosted agents is probably the most efficient way to get to market. Then adapt from there based on your needs and requirements.