Explainer

What Realtime Voice APIs Cost per Minute of Conversation

A token-by-token breakdown of what a real conversation minute costs on OpenAI Realtime, Gemini Live, ElevenLabs Agents, Hume EVI 3, Azure Voice Live and the rest, plus the formula to estimate your bill before you ship.

Explainer

Voice Agent Latency Explained: Where the Delay Comes From and What Feels Natural

A plain breakdown of voice agent latency: network, buffering, turn detection, LLM and TTS, with the delays people notice and the levers that actually shorten reply time.

Explainer

Gemini Live API vs OpenAI Realtime API: How Sessions, Events and Audio Differ

A developer explainer on where Google's Gemini Live API and OpenAI's Realtime API disagree on connection setup, event names, audio formats, turn detection and tool calls, and how to wrap one interface over both.

Explainer

Speech-to-Speech Models vs an STT, LLM and TTS Pipeline: The Real Trade-offs

Native speech-to-speech models vs cascaded STT, LLM and TTS pipelines on latency, naturalness, control, debugging, compliance and cost. Pick the architecture before the vendor.

Explainer

Real-Time vs Turn-Based Voice Agents: Which Design Fits Your Product

A plain look at streaming full-duplex voice agents against turn-based ones, what each costs in latency, accuracy and money, and which design fits the product you are building.

Buying guide

How to Choose a Speech-to-Speech API for a Voice Agent

The real differences between realtime voice APIs for builders: latency, interruptions, SIP telephony, tool calling, voices, and price per conversation minute.