Air AI vs Tavus
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Air AI if you want defunct ai voice agent; subject of a 2026 ftc enforcement settlement (Autonomous agent, enterprise); choose Tavus if you want api-first conversational video ai for real-time face-to-face agents (Supervised agent, freemium).
| Air AI | Tavus | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Defunct AI voice agent; subject of a 2026 FTC enforcement settlement | API-first conversational video AI for real-time face-to-face agents |
| Type | agent | platform |
| Autonomy | Autonomous agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | enterprise | freemium · $59/mo (Starter) |
| Best for | smb | developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise |
| Deployment | saas | saas, api |
| Modalities | voice | video, voice, text, api |
| Models | proprietary | proprietary, model-agnostic |
| Protocols | none | rest-api, function-calling |
| Integrations | - | OpenAI-compatible LLMs, @tavus/react-cvi (npm), REST API, Daily / WebRTC, custom infrastructure (Vercel, AWS) |
| Capabilities | 2 documented | 6 documented |
Air AI
- +2023 demos were unusually natural and long-duration for the era and reached a wide audience
- -Defunct: no live product, and the air.ai domain now belongs to an unrelated company
- -Subject of an FTC enforcement action and 2026 settlement banning the owners from marketing business opportunities
Tavus
- +API-first and bring-your-own-LLM, so the conversation logic and knowledge stay in your stack
- +Low-latency real-time video (reportedly ~600ms speech-to-video) with perception and turn-taking, not just lip-sync
- +Generous free tier and a clear usage-based ladder priced on conversational minutes
- -Minutes-based usage pricing can climb quickly for high-volume, always-on agents
- -It supplies the video front-end, not the agent's reasoning, so you still build and own the LLM and knowledge
Which should you choose?
Air AI is defunct ai voice agent; subject of a 2026 ftc enforcement settlement, best for smb. Tavus is api-first conversational video ai for real-time face-to-face agents, best for developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.