Last updated: 2026-08-23
Daily is a WebRTC platform, founded in 2015, running 75+ global points of presence with about 13ms median first-hop latency. Its open-source Pipecat framework (BSD-2 licence) orchestrates speech-to-text, LLM, and text-to-speech into realtime voice and video AI agents across 40+ integrated AI providers.
About Daily
Daily is a realtime communications platform founded in 2015 by Kwindla Hultman Kramer, Doug Brunton, and Nina Kuruvilla, providing WebRTC APIs and infrastructure so developers can add live voice, video, and AI-driven conversation to their own products. The company has raised $70.1M across six rounds, including a $40M Series B led by Renegade Partners in November 2021, and runs a global mesh network with 75+ points of presence and a median first-hop latency of about 13ms. The platform has two connected halves. The Daily Video SDK covers web, iOS, Android, and React Native on a shared Rust core, so a single engineering change to Daily's call logic propagates across every platform at once. Pipecat, Daily's open-source (BSD-2-licensed) Python framework, sits on top of that transport layer and orchestrates speech-to-text, LLM, and text-to-speech services into a single realtime pipeline, wiring in more than 40 third-party AI providers including Google's Gemini Multimodal Live API and OpenAI's Realtime API. Voice agents built on Pipecat can call external functions mid-conversation using direct-function or FunctionSchema tool definitions. Daily is built for backend and full-stack engineers shipping in-app video calling, and for AI teams building voice agents, phone bots, and multimodal assistants that need low-latency audio/video transport rather than a no-code chatbot builder. Pipecat Cloud, Daily's managed hosting for Pipecat agents, went generally available after a nine-month beta during which more than 1,000 teams built on it. Daily Video bills per participant-minute after a free monthly allowance, with automatic volume discounts at higher usage and a custom-quoted Enterprise tier. Pipecat Cloud bills separately, per running-agent-minute, with reserved-instance pricing and graduated volume discounts at high monthly usage. Daily is SOC 2 Type II certified, offers a HIPAA add-on with a signed BAA, and maintains GDPR-compliant data handling under the EU-US and Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework.
Pricing
Daily Video SDK: free up to 10,000 participant-minutes/month, then $0.004/participant-minute with automatic volume discounts down to $0.0015/minute; custom Enterprise tier. Pipecat Cloud (voice agent hosting): billed from $0.01/running-agent-minute (agent-1x), reserved instances from $0.0005/minute, graduated discounts to $0.0015/minute at 50M+ minutes/month; one human + one agent minute is free when using a Pipecat Cloud-provisioned Daily key.
Key Features
- Daily Video SDK: One Rust-core WebRTC engine powers native mobile and browser clients alike, so calls scale from 1:1 meetings up to large-scale broadcasts on a single codebase.
- Pipecat orchestration framework: Open-source (BSD-2) Python pipeline framework wires speech-to-text, LLM, and text-to-speech into a single realtime agent, with more than 40 third-party AI service integrations.
- Pipecat Cloud managed deployment: Hosts and autoscales Pipecat voice agents on Daily's infrastructure with graduated per-minute volume discounts, after a nine-month beta with 1,000+ teams building on it.
- Global low-latency network: A worldwide mesh of points of presence delivers a median first-hop latency of about 13ms, backed by a 99.99% uptime SLA.
- Gemini Multimodal Live integration: Official Daily/Google integration streams realtime audio and video into Gemini's Multimodal Live API for vision-capable voice agents.
- Mid-conversation function calling: Pipecat's direct-function and FunctionSchema tool definitions let a voice agent call external APIs while the call is live, not just at the end of a turn.
Pros
- A generous monthly free allowance on Daily Video means small teams can prototype real production traffic before paying anything.
- Pipecat is fully open source under a BSD-2 licence on GitHub, so the orchestration layer itself has no vendor lock-in even when hosted elsewhere.
- SOC 2 Type II certified with a HIPAA add-on and signed BAA, covering telehealth and other regulated voice/video use cases.
Cons
- Two separate metered pricing systems, participant-minutes for Daily Video and agent-minutes for Pipecat Cloud, that a team building a full voice-agent product has to reconcile.
- Getlatka reported roughly $6M ARR against $15M raised as of 2024, small next to enterprise WebRTC rivals like Twilio and Vonage that bundle telephony and SMS in the same stack.
- No dedicated native desktop (Windows/macOS) client SDK; production platforms are web, iOS, and Android.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Daily cost in 2026?
Daily Video is free for the first 10,000 participant-minutes each month, then billed at $0.004 per participant-minute with automatic volume discounts down to $0.0015/minute; Enterprise pricing is custom-quoted. Pipecat Cloud, Daily's voice-agent hosting, bills separately from $0.01 per running-agent-minute (agent-1x), with reserved instances from $0.0005/minute and graduated discounts to $0.0015/minute past 50M minutes/month.
Does Daily have a free tier?
Yes. Daily Video includes 10,000 free participant-minutes per month before metered billing starts. On Pipecat Cloud, one human participant plus one agent's minutes are free when the agent uses a Pipecat Cloud-provisioned Daily key, but broader agent usage is billed per running-agent-minute.
What are the best alternatives to Daily?
LiveKit is the closest open-source WebRTC alternative if a team wants to self-host the transport layer. Retell AI and Vapi offer more turnkey, less code-first voice-agent platforms for teams that don't want to assemble a Pipecat pipeline themselves. Twilio and Vonage fit teams already using those platforms for SMS or telephony alongside video.
How does Daily compare to LiveKit in 2026?
Both are WebRTC infrastructure providers with open-source components, but Daily is fully managed with a 10,000-minute free tier and Rust-core SDKs, while LiveKit is built around self-hosting with a cloud tier starting near $0.005/participant-minute for teams that want infrastructure control instead of a hosted-only service.
How do you get started with Daily?
Sign up at daily.co for an API key, then either embed the Daily Video SDK directly (web, iOS, Android, or React Native) for calling, or install the open-source pipecat-ai/pipecat package on GitHub and follow its function-calling and transport docs to wire an LLM, STT, and TTS provider into a realtime voice agent.
Top Alternatives
- Retell AI: Pick Retell AI if you want a managed voice-agent platform out of the box; pick Daily/Pipecat if you want to own the pipeline and swap AI providers freely.
- ElevenLabs: Pick ElevenLabs when text-to-speech voice quality is the priority; pick Daily when you need the full realtime transport plus an orchestration framework around any TTS provider, including ElevenLabs itself.
- Deepgram: Pick Deepgram alone if you only need speech-to-text; pick Daily's Pipecat when you need STT wired into a full voice-agent pipeline with LLM and TTS stages.
- AssemblyAI: Pick AssemblyAI standalone for transcription-only workloads; pick Daily/Pipecat when transcription is one stage in a larger realtime voice agent.