Pipecat
by Daily.co
Open-source framework for voice and multimodal conversational AI agents.
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TL;DR
Best for developers building self-hosted voice agents with explicit control over the stack. Pricing: free.
Category
Open source
License
BSD-2-Clause
Stars
★ 14.0k
Last push
2026-08-08
Pricing
free
Platforms
Linux, macOS, Windows, Cloud
What it is
Pipecat is an open-source Python framework from Daily.co for building realtime voice and multimodal AI agents. It composes pipeline stages — VAD, ASR, LLM, TTS, function calls — over WebRTC or WebSocket transport. Pipecat is the open alternative to Vapi or Retell for teams that want full ownership of the runtime, model choice, and cost model. BSD-2-Clause licensed.
Best for: Developers building self-hosted voice agents with explicit control over the stack.
Watch out for: DIY; you operate the media transport, model selection, and scaling.
Watch out for: DIY; you operate the media transport, model selection, and scaling.
Install / use
pip install pipecat-aiFeatures
| Speaker diarization | No |
| Word-level timestamps | No |
| Streaming / real-time | No |
| Languages supported | None |
| HIPAA eligible | No |
Links
Pipecat vs Whipscribe
| Feature | Pipecat | Whipscribe |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Open source | Transcription APIs |
| Pricing | free | $4–$24 one-time packs (credits never expire) · $2 single unlock · 60 min free on signup |
| Speaker diarization | — | Yes |
| Word timestamps | — | Yes |
| Streaming | — | No |
| Languages | — | 99 |
| Platforms | Linux, macOS, Windows, Cloud | Web, API, MCP |
Alternatives to Pipecat
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