Comparison
Castio vs LiveKit
A turnkey video platform vs a build-it-yourself toolkit. LiveKit gives you the engine. Castio gives you the car.
The core difference
LiveKit and Castio solve fundamentally different problems. Choosing between them depends on what you're building and how much engineering you want to do.
Infrastructure toolkit
LiveKit
Open-source WebRTC infrastructure -- a powerful SFU and SDK toolkit for building real-time applications. You get excellent building blocks: media routing, client SDKs, recording (Egress), ingestion (Ingress), and an AI agent framework.
But you still need to build the entire application layer: UI, user management, authentication, scheduling, recording management, analytics dashboards, branding, and everything else that makes a product.
Complete platform
Castio
A complete, ready-to-use video conferencing platform. Deploy in minutes and get meetings, webinars, livestreaming, recording, AI transcription, scheduling, analytics, branding, user management, and a REST API -- all working together.
Deploys entirely on your own Cloudflare account. You own the infrastructure, the data, and the brand. No servers to manage, no application code to write.
Side-by-side comparison
What you get out of the box with each approach.
| Category | Castio | LiveKit |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Complete video platform -- meetings, webinars, livestreaming, recording, AI, scheduling, analytics, branding | WebRTC SFU + client SDKs + Egress/Ingress services + AI agent framework |
| Time to production | Minutes | 4-12+ weeks of engineering |
| Infrastructure | Serverless on your Cloudflare account -- zero server management | Self-hosted: servers you provision and manage. Or LiveKit Cloud: managed but vendor-hosted |
| UI | 136 production-ready components | Component library (LiveKit Components) -- you assemble and customize |
| User management | Built-in with 5-tier role system (Owner, Admin, Manager, Member, Viewer) | You build it -- JWT tokens for room access, no user system |
| Recording | Built-in composite recording, stored in your R2 | Egress service -- capable but requires configuration and S3-compatible storage setup |
| AI features | Whisper transcription and AI meeting summaries -- built-in | AI agent framework -- powerful and purpose-built, but requires engineering to implement |
| Scheduling | Built-in meeting scheduler | You build it |
| Analytics | Built-in dashboard with meeting and participant metrics | Telemetry data via webhooks and OpenTelemetry -- you build the dashboard |
| Branding | Full white-label: custom domain, logos, colors, favicon, emails | You build the UI, so you control branding -- but you also have to build it |
| Operations | Zero ops -- serverless Cloudflare infrastructure | Self-hosted: server provisioning, scaling, monitoring. LiveKit Cloud: managed but vendor-hosted |
Where LiveKit wins
LiveKit is excellent infrastructure. In many scenarios, it's the better choice.
Fully open-source (Apache 2.0)
Inspect, modify, and extend every line of code. Fork it, contribute to it, audit it. True open-source with a thriving community.
Native mobile SDKs
First-class SDKs for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, and Unity. Build native mobile experiences with full platform capabilities.
AI agent framework
Purpose-built framework for AI voice and video applications. Build voice agents, real-time AI assistants, and intelligent workflows. Genuinely impressive.
Maximum flexibility
Build anything, not just meetings. Custom video workflows, interactive experiences, IoT applications, gaming -- LiveKit's architecture doesn't constrain what you create.
SIP/PSTN bridging
Connect traditional phone systems to WebRTC sessions. Dial-in and dial-out capabilities for telephony integration.
Any infrastructure
Deploy on any cloud provider, bare metal, or Kubernetes. Not locked to a single vendor's infrastructure.
End-to-end encryption
Built-in E2EE for media tracks and data channels with per-participant or shared key management. Castio does not currently offer E2EE.
Krisp noise cancellation
Integrated Krisp noise cancellation and background voice removal. Available on LiveKit Cloud; self-hosted requires a Krisp license.
Larger developer ecosystem
Active open-source community, extensive documentation, SDKs in 10+ languages, and a growing ecosystem of apps built on LiveKit. When you're building custom real-time applications, this ecosystem matters.
Where Castio wins
When you want a working video platform, not a construction project.
Complete platform -- no engineering required
136 production-ready UI components, user management, scheduling, recording, AI, analytics, and branding. All built and working together.
Deploy in minutes, not weeks
Go from zero to a branded, production-ready video platform in minutes. With LiveKit, plan for 4-12+ weeks of engineering before your first user.
Zero operations burden
No servers to provision, scale, or monitor. Cloudflare's serverless infrastructure handles everything. Self-hosted LiveKit means managing servers, Redis, Egress, Ingress, and scaling.
Everything is built-in
Scheduling, 5-tier roles, analytics dashboards, meeting recording, AI transcription, AI summaries, chat archives, webinars, and livestreaming. Not sold as add-ons.
Full white-label with custom domain
Your logo, your colors, your domain, your brand. No "Powered by" badges. With LiveKit, you get that flexibility too -- but you have to build the entire UI first.
No DevOps expertise required
Self-hosted LiveKit requires provisioning servers, configuring Redis, managing Egress workers, and handling scaling. Castio runs on serverless Cloudflare -- no DevOps needed.
Self-hosted on YOUR infrastructure
Unlike LiveKit Cloud, Castio deploys to your own Cloudflare account. You own the data and infrastructure. LiveKit Cloud runs on LiveKit's servers.
Flat cost structure
Castio's infrastructure costs go to Cloudflare at usage-based rates. No per-minute SDK fees, no variable server costs that spike unpredictably.
When to choose LiveKit instead
We respect LiveKit -- it's excellent at what it does. Here's when it's the better choice.
You're building a custom real-time application
AI voice agents, custom video workflows, interactive live experiences, gaming, IoT, telehealth with deeply embedded video, or anything that isn't standard meetings and webinars. LiveKit's flexibility as infrastructure is unmatched for these use cases.
You need native mobile apps
LiveKit has mature SDKs for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, and Unity. Castio currently works through the mobile browser -- there are no native mobile SDKs yet.
You want AI-native voice/video applications
LiveKit's Agents framework is purpose-built for AI applications -- voice agents, real-time transcription pipelines, multimodal AI assistants. If AI is core to your product, LiveKit's framework is a significant advantage.
You need infrastructure-level control
Choose your cloud provider, run on bare metal, deploy across regions, customize at the protocol level. If you need complete infrastructure control beyond what Cloudflare offers, LiveKit's self-hosted option gives you that.
The bottom line: If you're building a custom real-time application and have the engineering team to do it, LiveKit is outstanding infrastructure. If you want meetings, webinars, and video calls with your brand on your infrastructure with zero engineering, that's what Castio does.
Want a video platform, not a project?
Deploy a complete, branded video platform on your own infrastructure in minutes. No engineering required.