Open-source Azure Communication Services alternatives

LiveKit is an open-source platform for realtime audio, video and data, aimed at developers building voice, video and AI agent applications. This repository holds the LiveKit server, a distributed WebRTC selective forwarding unit (SFU) written in Go on top of the Pion WebRTC implementation.

People, devices and AI agents join the same room as participants, and agents can be dispatched into rooms automatically or on demand. The server offers speaker detection, simulcast and selective subscription, uses JWT for authentication, and handles UDP, TCP and TURN connectivity. SDKs cover web, mobile, desktop, embedded and server environments, and a separate Agents framework in Python and Node.js supports code-first voice agents.

The server ships as a single binary and can be deployed with Docker or Kubernetes on your own infrastructure under the Apache 2.0 license. The vendor also runs LiveKit Cloud, a managed service that handles deployment and observability.

OpenIM is an open-source instant messaging solution aimed at developers rather than end users. The project contrasts itself with standalone chat apps such as Telegram, Signal and Rocket.Chat, saying it is a set of building blocks for adding messaging to your own application instead of an installable chat product.

It consists of the OpenIM SDK, a client-side library, and the OpenIM Server, written in Go. Together they handle sending and receiving messages, managing users and managing groups, so teams can embed chat into social, marketplace, enterprise or other apps without building the infrastructure themselves. The README is translated into many languages and links to community channels on Twitter, Slack and WeChat, and topics mention IM, chat and messaging.

OpenIM is Apache-2.0 licensed and runs on your own servers. It suits product teams and agencies who need to own their messaging stack, for example for data-residency or customization reasons, and who are comfortable operating a Go back end.

Fonoster is an open-source cloud communications platform presented as an alternative to Twilio. Its stated aim is a programmable telecommunications stack that lets businesses connect telephony services with the internet through a cloud-based utility, and the topics mention VoIP, WebRTC, UCaaS and CPaaS.

Main features include multitenancy, easy deployment of PBX functionality, programmable voice applications, a Node.js SDK, support for Amazon S3, secured API endpoints with Let's Encrypt, OAuth2 and JWT authentication, role-based access control, a plugin-based CLI and Google speech APIs. A voice application is a server process that drives a call using verbs such as Answer, Hangup, Play, Say, Gather, Stream, Dial, Record, Mute and Unmute, and everything in Fonoster is API first, including starting a call with the SDK.

Fonoster is written in TypeScript on Node.js and designed for Kubernetes deployments. It is licensed under MIT and aimed at developers and companies building voice bots, IVR systems and cloud phone features that they can run on their own infrastructure.

OpenVidu is a self-hosted real-time video and audio stack built on LiveKit and mediasoup by a team with long experience in WebRTC. It ships as two products. OpenVidu Meet is a ready-to-use video conferencing application and an open-source alternative to Zoom, Google Meet, and Jitsi Meet, with rooms, recordings, chat, screen sharing, and moderation. The code is released under the Apache-2.0 license.

OpenVidu Meet can be branded with your own name, logo, and colors, with per-participant feature choices, and embedded into your own application through a web component, driven from your backend with a REST API and webhooks. OpenVidu Platform provides programmable client and server SDKs for custom WebRTC apps with low-level media control, and it is API-compatible with LiveKit, so LiveKit SDKs work unchanged.

Both products are self-hosted only, deployable on AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle, DigitalOcean, or on-premises, with no hosted SaaS tier. OpenVidu PRO is a paid self-hosted edition, and the team offers support and consultancy. Advanced features include recording, RTMP streaming egress, AI agents for transcription and translation, and virtual backgrounds.