Compare realtime APIs
Pick up to four APIs from any category and see them side by side.
| fal Realtime endpoints fal | LemonSlice LemonSlice | Simli Simli | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Avatars + video | Avatars + video | Avatars + video |
| Status | GA | GA | GA |
| Est. per minute | $0.04 - 0.075 | $0.048 - 0.31 | $0.05 |
| How that was worked out | One H100 runner for a self-deployed realtime app: $2.49-$4.50/h divided by 60 (one stream per GPU assumed) | Vendor floor $0.048/min up to Starter overage $0.22 + $0.09 hosted | Third-party reported PAYG rate; unverified |
| Pricing model | per-second | subscription | per-minute |
| Free tier | Not verified. | Free plan only lets you chat with featured avatars; API access needs a paid plan. | $10 on signup and a monthly top-up of 50 minutes (homepage). |
| Connects by | WebSocket, WebRTC | LiveKit, WebRTC | WebRTC, LiveKit, WebSocket |
| Audio in | None for image endpoints | Your agent's TTS audio (self-managed) or hosted speech models | PCM16 audio from your TTS (audioInputFormat pcm16) |
| Audio out | None | Your TTS or hosted voice | None added; your audio is passed through with the video |
| Languages | Text prompts. | Not captured. | Language-agnostic lip sync from audio (not explicitly verified). |
| Latency (vendor claim) | Vendor: realtime requests skip the queue and reuse a warm runner; first connection can still cold start. | Not captured. | Vendor claim: under 300 ms for the speech-to-video stage. |
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| Compliance | Not verified. | Not verified. | Not verified. |
| Self-hostable | No | No | No |
| Last checked | 2026-10-10 | 2026-10-10 | 2026-10-10 |
| Key numbers and features | |||
| Session $/min | $0.04 | $0.048 | $0.05 |
| Entry plan $/mo | $0 | $8 | $0 |
| Free tier | - | No | Yes |
| Free credit $ | - | - | $10 |
| Custom avatar | - | Yes | Yes |
| From photo | - | Yes | Yes |
| Own LLM | - | Yes | Yes |
| Own voice | - | Yes | Yes |
| Interrupts | - | - | - |
| Resolution p | - | 560 | - |
| FPS | - | - | - |
| CPU only | - | - | - |
| Latency ms | - | - | 300 |
| Languages | - | - | - |
| Max session min | - | 30 | - |
| Concurrency | - | 3 | - |
| WebRTC | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| WebSocket | Yes | - | Yes |
| Phone / SIP | - | - | - |
| HIPAA | - | - | - |
| SOC 2 | - | - | - |
| EU data | - | - | - |
| Self-host | No | No | No |
| Open weights | No | No | No |
| High warnings | 0 | 1 | 1 |