You can build this yourself. Here’s what that costs.
Open-source frameworks like LiveKit Agents and Pipecat are real, capable, and free to start. They also hand you six jobs we’ve already done. Here’s the honest list.
What you still have to build.
Based on the public documentation for LiveKit Agents and Pipecat, the two most common open-source starting points, plus their managed hosting options (LiveKit Cloud, Pipecat Cloud).
Pick and wire up an LLM, STT, and TTS provider
Us: Already chosen and integrated (Kokoro, ElevenLabs, Cartesia, MiniMax)
Building it yourself: Your call — and your ongoing bill across three separate vendors
Write the agent’s conversation logic
Us: A node-based flow builder: 17 node types ready to assemble
Building it yourself: You write and maintain it in code against the framework’s APIs
Telephony (numbers, call routing)
Us: Forward a number you own or buy one from us (no SIP trunking; a Twilio port-in request form exists, ask us first)
Building it yourself: You configure SIP trunking yourself through a carrier (Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo, and others all work with these frameworks)
Hosting & scaling the agent process
Us: Included
Building it yourself: Managed hosting is available (LiveKit Cloud, Pipecat Cloud) starting around $0.01–$0.03/min compute, or you self-host it
Call monitoring & transcripts
Us: Built into the dashboard
Building it yourself: Available on managed hosting (30-day retention typical) or you build your own logging
Ongoing maintenance as providers change
Us: Our job
Building it yourself: Yours — provider SDKs, pricing, and model versions all shift over time
This isn’t a case against building your own — if you have the engineering time and want full control over every provider in the stack, both frameworks are genuinely good and open-source. It’s a honest accounting of what “free” actually includes.
When building your own makes sense.
If you need a provider combination we don’t support, want to self-host for data-residency reasons, or already have a team maintaining real-time voice infrastructure, building on LiveKit Agents or Pipecat directly is a legitimate choice — that’s what those frameworks are for.
If you want a phone agent live this week without owning the STT/LLM/TTS/telephony stack yourself, that’s the six jobs above we’ve already done.
Hear it yourself.
Place a real call to one of our demo agents. No account required.