Output Media API by Recall.ai
Output Media API by Recall.ai streams any web app's audio and video into live meetings so an AI agent can speak, appear and react in real
Buy Output Media if your agent exists as a web app and you'd rather not maintain join logic for six meeting platforms. Budget the bot surcharge honestly: your effective rate is $0.60/hr on 4-core and $1.50/hr on GPU bots, which is where output-media use cases land. If what you want is a finished agent that talks, license one — this is plumbing, deliberately.
Verified 2d ago · liveness 77/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/output-media-api-by-recall-ai
- Engineering teams adding a speaking, visible AI agent to live calls
- Developers building real-time voice agents or language translator bots on a meeting bot
- Product teams that want one API across Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, GoTo and Slack Huddles
- Early-stage startups prototyping interactive meeting AI with the first 5 free hours and a $0.25/hr startup rate for the first 10,000
- Buyers who want a finished conversational agent rather than meeting transport
- Non-technical users who need a no-code meeting bot
- Passive recording and transcription workloads, where the output path adds nothing
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Skip Output Media by Recall.ai if you want a finished AI agent rather than an API, or if your only meeting workload is passive recording that never speaks back.
Output-media workloads typically run on 4-core bots, which add $0.10/hr, so your real rate is $0.60/hr rather than the headline $0.50/hr.
Pay As You Go at $0.50/hr of recording (prorated to the second, first 5 hours free) suits solo developers and early-stage startups proving the concept, with an optional $0.25/hr startup rate for the first 10,000 hours. Compare Recall.ai vs Meeting BaaS across the platform. Once you need SSO, uptime guarantees or a HIPAA BAA, you move to the custom-priced Launch or Enterprise plans. Cheaper per-hour alternatives exist for pure recording, but they don't cover six meeting platforms plus the output
In short
Output Media API by Recall.ai — Output Media API by Recall.ai streams any web app's audio and video into live meetings so an AI agent can speak, appear and react in real. Best for Engineering teams adding a speaking, visible AI agent to live calls, Developers building real-time voice agents or language translator bots on a meeting bot, Product teams that want one API across Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, GoTo and Slack Huddles. Free to start; paid plans from $0.5.
What's new in Output Media API by Recall.ai
Checked todayAcross the latest 2 updates: 1 launch and 1 news mention.
How to build an AI interview assistant
Tutorial on building an AI interview assistant that takes notes, auto-joins the call and interacts with it in real time.
Launching Output Media
Recall launched Output Media, which renders any web app into ultra-low-latency audio and video and streams it into a video conference through the bot, with sample repos pairing it with OpenAI's real-time API and a language translator bot.
What people actually say about Output Media API by Recall.ai — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
31 mentions across 2 sources (YouTube, Product Hunt) · researched Jul 5, 2026.
Average across the 2 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Unified API across Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex, and more.
- +Enables active AI participation—output audio/video and chat in real time.
- +Built-in transcription at $0.15/hr, cheaper than many alternatives.
- +Calendar integration with Google and Microsoft for automated meeting joining.
- +Data residency options in US, EU, and JP for compliance.
- −Still in preview—may have stability and breaking changes.
- −Very little community feedback available to vet reliability.
- −Costs add up: $0.15/hr transcription + $0.05/hr storage.
- −Limited third-party integrations documented (only calendar and webhooks).
- −No support for self-hosting or on-premises deployment.
- • No free tier—starting costs immediately for transcription and storage
- • Additional costs for third-party transcription or AI models
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Output Media API by Recall.ai? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Render any web app into ultra-low-latency audio and video and stream it into a live meeting
- Display video and play audio in the meeting for AI avatars that join the call
- Real-time audio and video recording
- Asynchronous audio and video recording
- Send and receive meeting chat messages
- Extract participant names and other meeting metadata
- Built-in transcription at $0.15/hr, or bring a third-party transcription provider
- Free Calendar API for Google Calendar and Microsoft Calendar
- Choose between US, EU or JP data residency
- Billing prorated to the second by meeting length, not participant count
- 7 days of free storage per recording, then $0.05/hr retained for 30 days
- Desktop Recording SDK for on-device recording with no bots
- Mobile Recording SDK for phone calls and in-person meetings
- 4-core bots (+$0.10/hr) and GPU bots (+$1/hr) for output media workloads
- Sample repos for a real-time voice agent on OpenAI's Realtime API and a live language translator bot
About Output Media API by Recall.ai
Output Media API by Recall.ai is infrastructure for engineering teams who want their AI to show up inside a live call rather than sit in a text box. You point it at a web application, and Recall renders that app into ultra-low-latency audio and video and pipes it into the meeting through its bot. Any AI product that already runs in a browser can become a speaking, visible participant with essentially one line of code. You keep the intelligence. Speech generation, orchestration and turn-taking logic all stay in your stack; Recall handles rendering, transport, authentication and the per-platform quirks across Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, GoTo Meeting and Slack Huddles. Recall's own sample repositories show the pattern in practice: a real-time voice agent wired to OpenAI's Realtime API, and a live language translator bot. Around the output path you get the rest of the Meeting Bot API surface: real-time and asynchronous audio and video recording, sending and receiving meeting chat messages, participant names and metadata extraction, built-in transcription at $0.15/hr or a third-party provider of your choice, a free Calendar API on Google and Microsoft calendars, and a choice of US, EU or JP data residency. Pricing rides one usage meter. Pay As You Go is $0.50 per hour of recording, prorated to the second, with your first 5 hours free and participant count irrelevant. Output-media workloads typically land on bigger machines, so budget the surcharges Recall publishes: 4-core bots at +$0.10/hr and GPU bots at +$1/hr. It competes with assembling your own bot stack or buying a finished conversational agent — this is the transport layer, and it knows it.
Behind the Verdict
The interesting thing about Output Media isn't the rendering — it's the admission that most teams don't want to build a meeting bot. Recruiting a bot into Zoom, negotiating Google Meet auth, keeping Teams from breaking every quarter: that's the tax. Recall's pitch is that you pay the toll and get back to your model, your prompts and your product. Pick this when your AI already renders to a browser. The samples lean on OpenAI's Realtime API, but nothing marries you to one vendor — if you can draw it on the web, you can stream it into the call. The six-platform breadth matters more than it looks, because the cost of a second platform is rarely the code, it's the edge cases. Pass when your workload is passive. If you only need transcripts and recordings, the output path is overhead — the same $0.50/hr meter covers recording, so paying for bot horsepower you don't use makes no sense. Pass too if you want a no-code notetaker or a ready-made conversational agent; you'd be buying a toolbox to assemble what someone else already sells finished. Watch the meter arithmetic. $0.50/hr prorated to the second sounds cheap until you run long multi-hour sessions on GPU bots at $1.50/hr; the first 5 hours free and the $0.25/hr startup rate for the first 10,000 hours soften prototyping, not production. Volume discounts and Launch/Enterprise terms exist, so at scale the list price is a starting position. In practice, the real caveat is architectural. Output Media puts your application into the room; it doesn't decide what your application says. Latency budgets, barge-in, and turn detection are yours to solve, and the vendor's samples are the honest map of that work. If your team has someone who enjoys that problem, this is the shortest path from a working web agent to one that speaks
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Output Media API by Recall.ai actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You already have a browser-based AI agent. You sign up on Pay As You Go, use one of Recall's sample repos (real-time voice agent on OpenAI's real-time API), point the bot at a Zoom test meeting, and have the agent display video and play audio into the call.
Outcome: A working speaking agent in a live call inside the first 5 free hours, without writing per-platform Zoom, Meet or Teams integrations.
You build a real-time language translator bot that joins Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls, uses built-in transcription at $0.15/hr for the input side, and streams translated speech back through Output Media.
Outcome: One codebase covers both platforms; you choose US, EU or JP data residency to match your customers' requirements.
You move to the Launch plan for SSO, uptime guarantees and a shared Slack support channel, keep the AI layer in-house, and use the free Google Calendar and Microsoft Calendar API to auto-join scheduled meetings.
Outcome: Meeting transport and auth are outsourced with contractual support, while your team stays focused on agent behavior.
Use Cases
- Build an AI avatar that joins daily stand-ups and displays visual status updates.
- Create a virtual moderator that enforces meeting etiquette and interjects via chat or audio.
- Run a real-time language translator that outputs translated speech into the call.
- Drop an AI customer-support agent into meetings to answer questions live.
- Ship a note-taker that can ask clarifying questions mid-conversation.
- Give AI sales agents a visible presence on calls for real-time coaching.
- Build a real-time voice agent on OpenAI's real-time API that listens and reacts inside the meeting.
- Prototype an AI interview assistant that takes notes, auto-joins the call and interacts in real time.
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-10-18
Limitations
- Output Media handles transport, not intelligence — you implement speech generation, orchestration and interaction logic.
- Integrations cover Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, GoTo Meeting and Slack Huddles.
- Usage pricing is $0.50/hr of recording prorated to the second, with built-in transcription at $0.15/hr and storage at $0.05 per hour of recording retained for 30 days after the first 7 free days.
- Output-media workloads often sit on 4-core bots (+$0.10/hr) or GPU bots (+$1/hr), so the effective rate is $0.60/hr or $1.50/hr rather than the headline $0.50.
- There is no on-prem deployment; data residency is limited to US, EU or JP, and SSO, uptime guarantees, custom contract redlining and a BAA for HIPAA compliance appear only on the Launch or Enterprise plans.
as of 2026-10-09
Verification history
We have re-verified Output Media API by Recall.ai 10 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 10 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Output Media API by Recall.ai tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Pay As You Go
$0.50/hr of recording
Ideal for
Solo developers and early-stage startups building a proof of concept on live conversational AI, with the first 5 hours of recording free.
What this tier adds
Entry self-serve tier at $0.50/hr of recording prorated to the second; email, dashboard chat and Ask AI in docs support.
Launch
Custom
Ideal for
Companies shipping a product to customers that need contractual guarantees, SSO for their team and a direct support channel.
What this tier adds
Adds custom pricing, volume discounts, SSO, uptime guarantees, custom contract redlining and a shared Slack support channel. No public price.
Enterprise
Custom
Ideal for
Large or regulated organizations that need white-glove infrastructure, HIPAA coverage and custom contract terms.
What this tier adds
Adds white-glove security, support and infrastructure plus a BAA for HIPAA compliance on top of the Launch plan. No public price.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Output Media API by Recall.ai's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Pay As You Go at $0.50/hr of recording (prorated to the second, first 5 hours free) suits solo developers and early-stage startups proving the concept, with an optional $0.25/hr startup rate for the first 10,000 hours. Compare Recall.ai vs Meeting BaaS across the platform. Once you need SSO, uptime guarantees or a HIPAA BAA, you move to the custom-priced Launch or Enterprise plans. Cheaper per-hour alternatives exist for pure recording, but they don't cover six meeting platforms plus the output
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Output Media API by Recall.ai — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
A developer with a working browser-based agent can be streaming audio and video into a test meeting the same day using Recall's sample repos. The first five hours of recording are free on Pay As You Go, so a proof of concept fits inside the free allowance. Adding built-in transcription, calendar-based auto-join or multi-platform coverage adds incremental work; larger teams that need SSO, uptime
Switching to or from Output Media API by Recall.ai
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From in-house meeting integrations: replace separate Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, GoTo Meeting and Slack Huddles plumbing with one API.
- →From Meeting BaaS: move your existing bot logic over and keep the same browser-based agent, Recall publishes a direct comparison page.
- →From passive notetakers: add the output path so your agent can display video and play audio into the call.
- →From a recording-only setup: keep async and real-time recording on the same meter while you add interactive behavior.
- →From third-party transcription: switch to Recall's built-in transcription at $0.15/hr or bring the provider you already use.
- ↗To a finished conversational agent product: if you'd rather buy the intelligence than build it, Output Media is not the right layer.
- ↗To Meeting BaaS: a comparable meeting-bot transport API, Recall publishes a side-by-side comparison.
- ↗To separate per-platform bots: build Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, GoTo Meeting and Slack Huddles integrations yourself if you need on-prem.
- ↗To self-hosted recording: move off the cloud API if US, EU or JP residency no longer covers your compliance needs.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
Recall.ai Output Media API: send AI agents to your meetings
RecallAI
Recall.ai: Meeting Bot API
RecallAI
How to build a meeting bot
RecallAI
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Output Media API by Recall.ai”, and we withheld 1: 1 did not mention Output Media API by Recall.ai. Showing the 5 we can prove are about Output Media API by Recall.ai.
Official links
Tools that pair well with Output Media API by Recall.ai
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Output Media API by Recall.ai, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Recall.ai Meeting API
Recall.ai is a meeting recording API that captures each participant on a separate audio stream for speaker-accurate transcripts.
Tana
Tana is an agentic meeting platform where AI agents file issues, draft emails, and update your CRM during live calls.
Plaud
Plaud pairs wearable AI note takers with transcription, AI Notes, and a voice-driven Plaud Agent.
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Output Media Api By Recall Ai vs Spider Cloud
If you need to feed your AI agent up-to-date web content for RAG or LLM context, Spider Cloud offers a cost-effective, high‑performance scraping API with a Rust engine and structured output—especially compelling with its AI Studio and Browser AI commands. If instead you want your AI agent to actively participate in video meetings (showing an avatar, speaking, chatting), Output Media API by Recall.ai is the only choice, with live audio/video output across major platforms. Pick the tool that matches your domain: web data or real‑time meetings.
Output Media Api By Recall Ai vs Temporal Ai
Temporal AI and Output Media API solve entirely different problems: Temporal is for building reliable, durable workflows behind any AI agent or microservice, while Output Media API is for giving an AI agent a real-time presence in video meetings. Choose Temporal if you need crash-proof orchestration; choose Output Media if your agent must see, hear, and speak in live calls. Most teams may eventually need both, but pick based on your primary bottleneck.
Output Media Api By Recall Ai vs Presto Voice
Presto Voice is a specialized drive-thru solution for QSR chains aiming to boost revenue via upselling and operational efficiency, while Output Media API by Recall.ai is a developer tool for building AI agents that participate in video meetings. Choose Presto if you run a multi-location QSR; choose Recall.ai if you need a meeting bot that can see, hear, and speak in real time.
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Recall.ai Meeting API
Recall.ai is a meeting recording API that captures each participant on a separate audio stream for speaker-accurate transcripts.
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