Stop guessing which one. Put them side by side.

The grid says what these tools are. This says what builders did about it — one decision per person, changeable whenever you change your mind.

# Tool comparison — Agora vs Giscus vs PartyKit

Source: Kbaise, a directory of tools that work with Lovable projects.
Pick one and tell me why before writing any integration code.

## Agora (agora)
- URL: https://www.agora.io
- Category: Realtime, comments & collab
- Cost: mixed — Free monthly: 10,000 combined RTC minutes, 1M signaling messages, 500 chat users, 300 conversational AI minutes. RTC $0.59 per 1,000 minutes; recording $0.99 per 1,000; speech-to-text $16.99 per 1,000; real-time translation $8.99 per 1,000 per language. Analytics add-on from $449/mo
- What it is: Global realtime engagement platform selling voice, video, interactive live streaming, signaling and chat as metered minutes across its own software-defined network. Video is priced by resolution tier, so standard definition costs materially less than Full HD or 2K. Notably strong routing and presence across Asia, including mainland China.
- Why builders pick it: Cheapest headline per-minute rate among the large video vendors and the broadest platform SDK coverage, including Unity and Electron. Its interactive live-streaming mode handles one host plus thousands of viewers, which a plain SFU room cannot.
- Trap: Minutes are aggregated and priced by resolution tier, so a 1080p multi-party call bills at several times the advertised standard-definition rate — read the resolution table before modelling costs. The SDK surface is large and the docs are dense next to Daily or LiveKit.
- Wiring: npm i agora-rtc-sdk-ng
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/agora

## Giscus (giscus)
- URL: https://giscus.app
- Category: Realtime, comments & collab
- Cost: free — Free forever and open source. No hosting cost, no database, no accounts to administer — every thread is stored as a GitHub Discussion in a repository you already own
- What it is: Comment widget that stores each thread as a GitHub Discussion. You install the giscus app, enable Discussions on a public repo, and a script tag maps each page to a discussion by pathname, URL or og:title. Supports threaded replies, reactions, themes and lazy loading, with no database of your own.
- Why builders pick it: Zero infrastructure, zero cost, zero moderation queue — GitHub handles authentication, spam and abuse reporting for you. For a developer-audience project or a docs site it is the default answer and takes about ten minutes.
- Trap: Commenters need a GitHub account and must authorise the app, which excludes almost all non-technical readers — usually disqualifying for a general-audience project. The repository must be public, so every comment is public too.
- Wiring: Paste the generated script tag from giscus.app/#configuration
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/giscus

## PartyKit (partykit)
- URL: https://www.partykit.io
- Category: Realtime, comments & collab
- Cost: free — Individual free: deploy to PartyKit cloud, up to 10 live projects, room storage cleared every 24 hours. Commercial free: deploy to your own Cloudflare account with unlimited projects and custom domains, paying only Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects usage
- What it is: Open-source framework for stateful realtime servers built on Cloudflare Durable Objects. Each 'party' is a server-side class owning a room of WebSocket clients, so presence, chat, cursors and Yjs sync take a few dozen lines. PartyKit announced it was joining Cloudflare in April 2024.
- Why builders pick it: You want a multiplayer backend without operating one. npx partykit dev gives a local room server in seconds, and deploying to your own Cloudflare account keeps the bill at raw Workers prices instead of a per-message meter.
- Trap: Since the Cloudflare acquisition, momentum has shifted toward Cloudflare's own Durable Objects and Agents SDK — treat PartyKit as a convenience layer that may fold into the platform. Free-tier room storage is wiped every 24 hours, so it is not durable.
- Wiring: npm create partykit@latest
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/partykit

## Quick read

- Free with no card: Giscus, PartyKit.

## Rules
1. Prefer the free tier when no budget was stated, and say what the ceiling is.
2. Read the full dossier before integrating.
3. Fetch /api/public/models before writing any AI model ID.

Agents can fetch the same thing: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=agora,giscus,partykit