Compare realtime APIs
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| D-ID Agents (realtime streams) D-ID | Tavus Conversational Video Interface (CVI) Tavus | Runway Characters (GWM-1 Avatars) Runway | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Avatars + video | Avatars + video | Avatars + video |
| Status | GA | GA | GA |
| Est. per minute | $0.35 - 0.45 | $0.24 - 0.37 | $0.20 - 0.22 |
| How that was worked out | Scale $138.60/400 streaming min = $0.35 to Build $14.40/32 = $0.45; streaming shares the same credit pool as offline video. Third-party data, unverified. | Business $975/4,000 min = $0.24 up to Starter $22/60 min = $0.37; overage $0.26-$0.35 | 2 credits per 6 s = 20 credits/min at $0.01, plus a $0.02 upfront charge per session |
| Pricing model | credits | subscription | credits |
| Free tier | Trial allowance (reported up to 10 streaming minutes). | Free plan: 20 CVI minutes per month, 1 concurrent session, 5 minute max conversation. | None found. |
| Connects by | WebRTC, LiveKit | WebRTC, Daily, LiveKit, Pipecat, Agora | LiveKit, WebRTC |
| Audio in | User speech or text chat via SDK | User microphone in the Daily room (or your own pipeline via LiveKit/Pipecat/Echo modes) | User mic; or your LiveKit agent's audio |
| Audio out | D-ID managed TTS / voice clones | Synthesized voice from Tavus stock voices or integrated TTS | Runway character voice, or your LiveKit TTS (which overrides the character voice) |
| Languages | Not verified in this pass. | Changelog says stock voices can speak 42 supported languages. | Not captured. |
| Latency (vendor claim) | Vendor claim: sub-0.5 s conversational turns (V4). One developer forum report measured about 2.1 s extra before video starts in the browser. | Vendor describes Sparrow as delivering 'ultra-fast response times'; no number published on the models page. | Vendor claim (via secondary summary): 1.75 s server-side turnaround from end of user speech to character response; 24 fps. |
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| Compliance | Not verified in this pass. | Not verified in this pass; check Tavus trust/security pages for SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR terms. | Not verified. |
| Self-hostable | No | No | No |
| Last checked | 2026-10-10 | 2026-10-10 | 2026-10-10 |
| Key numbers and features | |||
| Session $/min | $0.35 | $0.24 | $0.20 |
| Entry plan $/mo | $14.4 | $22 | $0 |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | No |
| Free credit $ | - | - | - |
| Custom avatar | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| From photo | - | - | - |
| Own LLM | - | Yes | - |
| Own voice | - | - | Yes |
| Interrupts | - | Yes | - |
| Resolution p | - | 1,080 | - |
| FPS | - | 40 | 24 |
| CPU only | - | - | - |
| Latency ms | 500 | 500 | 1,750 |
| Languages | - | 42 | - |
| Max session min | - | 60 | 30 |
| Concurrency | - | 1 | - |
| WebRTC | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| WebSocket | - | - | - |
| Phone / SIP | - | - | - |
| HIPAA | - | - | - |
| SOC 2 | - | - | - |
| EU data | - | - | - |
| Self-host | No | No | No |
| Open weights | No | No | No |
| High warnings | 2 | 2 | 0 |