Skip to content
Agents tracked: 444 Releases (7d): 644 Agent status: 7 with issuesSince last limit reset: Claude 31d · Codex 3d Updated Oct 23, 2026

OpenAI Realtime API by OpenAI

Speech-to-speech models for real-time voice agents, priced per 1M audio and text tokens.

Voice (speech-to-text, text-to-speech)

Price
from $10
pay as you go, list price
Free tier
No
SDK downloads
107M
npm openai · PyPI openai
Status
—
no public status page

How OpenAI Realtime API compares

OpenAI Realtime API is one of 12 APIs in the Voice (speech-to-text, text-to-speech) category on AgentGid. It is not among the 11 that can be started for free. 6 of them ship an official MCP server; OpenAI Realtime API does not. Its official SDK is the 1st most downloaded in the category (107M a week). See the full table.

Pricing

Free tier—
Cheapest paid plan—
Usage pricegpt-realtime-2.1: audio $32 in / $64 out per 1M tokens; gpt-realtime-2.1-mini: audio $10 / $20

From the official pricing page, checked Oct 22, 2026. Prices change: confirm before you buy.

Use it from an agent

MCP serverNo MCP server found
npmnpm install openai
PyPIpip install openai
GitHubopenai/openai-node · 11.2K stars · last push Oct 23, 2026

Alternatives to OpenAI Realtime API

All voice (speech-to-text, text-to-speech)

APIFreePrice SDK downloads / wkGitHub starsMCP
ElevenLabs
Text-to-speech, speech-to-text (Scribe), voice cloning and conversational voice-agent APIs.
Free plan: 10,000 TTS characters/month (v4) Free plan · paid from $6/mo 2.8M 3,150 MCP
LiveKit
Deploy and host AI voice and video agents with real-time communication.
Build plan: 1,000 agent session minutes, 1... Free plan · paid from $50/mo 2.8M 469
Deepgram
Real-time and batch speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice-agent APIs.
$200 credit, no credit card Free plan
then Nova-3 streaming $0.0048/min (promo; regular $0.0077);...
1.4M 469 MCP
Daily
Video SDK and WebRTC infrastructure for building calls and voice AI agents.
10,000 free minutes/month Free plan 510K —
Retell AI
Platform and API for phone voice agents and chat agents, billed per minute or message.
$10 in free credits Free plan
then $0.07-$0.31/min for AI voice agents; $0.002+/msg for chat agents
315K 62 MCP
Cartesia
Low-latency text-to-speech (Sonic), speech-to-text (Ink) and managed voice agents.
20K credits/month + $1 prepaid for agents Free plan · paid from $5/mo 259K 135 MCP
Is OpenAI Realtime API right for you? Ask AgentGid →