Agora.io
More info
- Creator
- Tony Zhao
- Founded
- 2014
- Type
- Real-time voice/video API
- Website
- agora.io
A cloud API for real-time voice and video that apps embed instead of wrestling with WebRTC themselves.
Agora (Agora, Inc., formerly Agora.io) was founded in 2014 by Tony Zhao and sells SDKs for voice, video and live streaming. The business model mirrors Twilio's for SMS: hide the protocol pain — WebRTC, codecs, TURN servers — behind a couple of API calls and charge by the minute.
Clubhouse was built on Agora, which became awkwardly visible in 2021 when the dependency came under scrutiny. The company IPO'd on Nasdaq in 2020. It competes with the open-source LiveKit and with streaming clouds like mux.