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.
This comparison is generated from the sourced Air AI and Tavus profiles. Open either profile to review its evidence and last-reviewed date.