Balto: Real-time AI guidance and agent-assist platform that coaches contact-center and sales agents live during calls. WhisperLiveKit: Open-source, self-hosted real-time speech-to-text and speaker diarization toolkit with a FastAPI server and web interface, suitable for meeting transcription. We compare them on cost, capture approach, and day-to-day fit so you can choose faster.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Balto when guiding agents live through objections and compliance requirements matters most, and WhisperLiveKit when building privacy-first transcription into custom applications via compatible apis matters most. Run both through a week of actual calls to see which suits your workflow.
Real-time AI guidance and agent-assist platform that coaches contact-center and sales agents live during calls.
Open-source, self-hosted real-time speech-to-text and speaker diarization toolkit with a FastAPI server and web interface, suitable for meeting transcription.
Balto is a contact-center AI platform centered on real-time guidance during live customer and sales calls. Rather than focusing on post-call review, Balto listens to conversations as they happen and surfaces dynamic prompts, objection-handling cues, compliance checklists, and knowledge-base answers to the agent in the moment. Its Agent Assist pulls relevant information so reps can respond to customer questions instantly, while real-time QA automatically scores interactions across all calls and flags compliance risk early, maintaining an audit trail for supervisors. Coaching automation tailors recommendations to each agent's performance, and real-time note generation produces call summaries without manual write-ups. Balto also offers voice AI agents to handle high-volume, repeatable calls and supports omnichannel context across voice and digital channels. It integrates with CRMs and telephony systems such as Salesforce and RingCentral. The platform is used across industries including healthcare, insurance, banking, collections, and home improvement, and is aimed at contact centers and sales teams that want in-the-moment guidance, compliance assurance, and automated quality management at scale. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
WhisperLiveKit is an open-source, self-hosted toolkit for ultra-low-latency real-time speech-to-text and speaker diarization. Rather than naively running Whisper on each audio chunk, it uses state-of-the-art simultaneous-speech research for intelligent buffering and incremental processing, which preserves transcription quality while streaming results with minimal latency. The project ships a complete backend built on FastAPI with WebSocket support, an OpenAI-compatible REST API, a Deepgram-compatible WebSocket protocol, and a simple, customizable HTML and JavaScript web interface that captures microphone audio and streams it to the server. It supports multiple ASR backends including Whisper variants, Voxtral, and Qwen3-ASR, covers 200+ languages with translation, and includes real-time speaker diarization and voice activity detection to reduce processing overhead. It can handle multiple concurrent users on a single backend and is distributed via PyPI with Docker images for both GPU and CPU. Licensed under Apache 2.0 and actively maintained into 2026, the project explicitly lists meeting transcription, accessibility tooling, and podcast or call transcription with speaker identification among its intended use cases, making it a practical building block for private, on-premise meeting transcription pipelines. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Balto is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); WhisperLiveKit is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Balto | WhisperLiveKit |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Real-time, in-call guidance with dynamic prompts and objection cues | Real-time streaming speech-to-text with low latency over WebSocket |
| Standout feature | Agent Assist that surfaces knowledge-base answers live | Real-time speaker diarization to distinguish multiple speakers |
| Team usage | Automated quality assurance scoring across 100% of calls | FastAPI backend with OpenAI-compatible REST API and Deepgram-compatible WebSocket protocol |
| Integrations | Real-time compliance monitoring with audit trails | Multiple ASR backends (Whisper variants, Voxtral, Qwen3-ASR) and 200+ language support with translation |
| Languages & capture | Automated call summaries and coaching recommendations | Included customizable HTML/JavaScript web interface and Docker images (GPU and CPU) |
| Best-fit workflow | Integrations with CRMs and phone systems such as Salesforce and RingCentral | Voice activity detection and multi-user support on a single backend |
Balto
Choose Balto if you need guiding agents live through objections and compliance requirements — strengths include guides agents during the call rather than only analyzing afterward.
WhisperLiveKit
Choose WhisperLiveKit if you need self-hosted real-time meeting transcription with speaker labels — strengths include fully open source (apache 2.0) and self-hostable for private, on-premise transcription.
Balto
WhisperLiveKit
It depends on your workflow. Balto is strong for guiding agents live through objections and compliance requirements, while WhisperLiveKit is strong for self-hosted real-time meeting transcription with speaker labels. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Balto is a free tier with paid upgrades and WhisperLiveKit is a free tier with paid upgrades. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
You can — some teams pair them when each covers a different part of the meeting workflow.
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