LiveKit Livestreaming Demo

This is a demo app for livestreaming via RTMP or WHIP using LiveKit. One user is a broadcaster who gets an RTMP/WHIP for streaming (eg, via OBS). Other users can view their stream and chat. We also let you broadcast directly from your device from the "Host" page.

Today most livestreams experience a 5–30 second lag, which is evident in the delay it takes for streamers to respond to chats. Those streams use HLS, which leverages existing CDNs by uploading 5–30 second video chunks, which clients download one chunk at a time. HLS is hugely scalable, but it comes with latency.

LiveKit is a sort of WebRTC CDN, achieving sub-100ms latency for audiences of 1000 or 100,000 by streaming video over backbone Internet connections and only going over the public Internet for the last mile (that is, delivery to connected clients). This enables true real-time, large-scale events, where anyone and everyone can participate.

This sample app only leverages the following technologies:

• Next.js 14
• Tailwind CSS
• shadcn/ui

Running locally

Clone the repo and install dependencies:

git clone git@github.com:livekit-examples/livestream.git
cd livestream
npm install

Create a new LiveKit project at https://cloud.livekit.io. Then create a new key in your project settings.

Create a new .env.development file and add your new API key and secret as well as your project's WebSocket URL (found at the top of https://cloud.livekit.io):

LIVEKIT_API_KEY=<your api key>
LIVEKIT_API_SECRET=<your api secret>
LIVEKIT_API_URL=https://<your-project>.livekit.cloud
NEXT_PUBLIC_LIVEKIT_WS_URL=wss://<your-project>.livekit.cloud

Then run the development server:

npm run dev
# or
yarn dev
# or
pnpm dev
# or
bun dev

You can test it by opening http://localhost:3000 in a browser.

Deploying

This demo is a Next.js app. You can deploy to your Vercel account with one click:

Refer to the Next.js deployment documentation for more about deploying to a production environment.