Top 05 Live Chat APIs & SDKs for Streaming Apps & Websites

What would it be like when millions of viewers were interacting on your live streams? The chat API helps you do it in a snap!

Live streaming is one of the easiest ways to attract and engage your customers. If you are running a business, live streams are a great way to resolve your queries right away.

But, how do you do this? You need chat functionality on your streams.

Live streaming is a technology that can stream video in real-time via the internet, without storing or recording the streaming data.

This is where, as livestream creators, you need a chat API to power up the impact of live streaming on your live-streams for real-time interactions.

They are not just an extra feature. Rather, its integration has become a strategic necessity. This is particularly important for companies and artists wanting to dominate the audience engagement and sales market.

Let’s take a closer look at chat for a live streaming app and how it should be integrated into your video stream.

Why Do You Need Live Chat On Your Streaming Apps?

➡️ Increased engagement 

 A live stream becomes more dynamic and allows for more self-expression and interaction when it has an in-broadcast chat feature. It removes the barriers to one-way communication and promotes a two-way exchange of ideas.   

➡️ Chat in Live Events 

Talking to each other online during live events is a really effective way to get people to spend some money. You can set a small fee for using the live chat for the streaming platform, and people can easily sign up for it.

➡️ Monetization

 One practical strategy is to include subscriptions, donation models, tokens, PPV techniques, and advertisements in your live stream. One necessary requirement, though, is that your content needs to be so special that it makes people want to spend money on it.

➡️ Increase Audience

As someone who creates content, it’s clear that the more you connect and engage with your audience, the more your audience will grow. Having personal conversations and interactions makes people feel more connected to you. The in-app chat for live streaming can lead to more business for you.

How can viewers turn into active participants with live chat?

You can ask people to convey their opinions or pose questions. You could even bring in a surprise guest speaker or a popular performer for viewers to chat with. In app chat for mobile app provides various ways to turn quiet viewers into active participants. The main goal is to help you connect with a larger audience and attract more traffic.

How In-App Chat Helps Interactions during Live Streaming? 

Live streaming sets itself apart from TV, movies, or on-demand videos. Live streaming apps have a special advantage because people are there in the moment. That’s why these apps can maximize their audience by just turning on a chat, giving shoutouts, or bringing viewers into the stream.

📌 Retain your viewers

You can make use of the in app chat API for the live streaming platform to create custom messages and notifications.

📌 Fully personalized

Using live chat software, developers can create a personalized chat window for users. From plugins to pop-ups, there are many ways to make it personal. You can encourage conversation and provide the best chat experience possible.

📌 Sync real-time data

Because viewers are watching live, developers can decide to sync data in real-time. Using the appropriate live chat solution for a live broadcasting app makes it simple to synchronize data across iOS, Android, etc.

Create Stadium-quality with Live Interactions

Chat APIs that allow live interactions create a big and flexible space, giving an experience like being in a stadium. They work well to show ads that match the context, introduce brands, and run promotions. They are also profitable for places like arenas or sponsors because there are many ways to make money from them.

  • Gamify engagement or inject your chat with live analysis

This is a popular trend. It encourages viewers to reach specific goals. Streaming apps can give points, status, or rewards to viewers who achieve these goals, making sure they stay interested and involved.

  • Proactively protect your chat community

You can build and actively safeguard your chat community by emphasizing interactions among viewers. Additionally, activate multi-channel messaging so your live streaming app lets viewers connect through social platforms for stronger engagement.

  • Audience to influencer interaction

You can create influential roles in the chat system. This is how the audience feels inspired to join conversations and interact on their own.

Ready To Create Your Own Secure, Self-hosted Live Streaming App?

🚀Best Chat and Messaging APIs for Live Streaming Apps 🖥️

We Curated a List of The Best Stream Live Chat APIs & SDKs are MirrorFly, PubNub, Apphitect, Sendbird, Agora, etc. You may choose your best messaging provider based on their free trail, technology features, cost, and more.

1. MirrorFly 

MirrorFly is a powerful chat API and SDK provider that offers real-time communication features for Android, iOS, and Web platforms. With this solution, you can add 1000+ customizable chat features to your live streaming app. This allows your viewers to easily communicate with each other in real-time. Above this, MirrorFly is well-known for its unique set of features like topic-based chat, buyer-seller chat, SIP/ VoIP calls, uploading large files, custom security, and full source code ownership.

How MirrorFly Helps Live Streaming Apps?

1️⃣ Real-time Communication Features: MirrorFly provides a powerful SDK for enhancing your live streaming apps with more than 1000 features, including text messaging, voice calls, and video calls. 

This enables real-time interaction between viewers and broadcasters and enhances the overall live streaming experience.

2️⃣ 100% Customization Options: MirrorFly offers chat features that are highly customizable. This allows developers to personalize the chat experience according to their app’s unique requirements. It enables private messaging, group chats, and topic-based discussions.

3️⃣ Custom Security: MirrorFly focuses on secure communication by offering customizable encryption and a robust infrastructure.

4️⃣ Seamless Integration: MirrorFly is specifically designed for easy integration with current live streaming apps, reducing the need for complex resources.

5️⃣ White-labeling: You can brand the chat interface to seamlessly match your app’s design and style.


2. PubNub 

PubNub is a secure chat platform for live-streaming apps. It works similar to an unique network that enables real-time communication between your users.

Using SDKs, you can quickly add chat to your app with PubNub Chat. It has multiple interesting features, and you can customize it further with your own ideas.

How Pubnub Helps Live Streaming Apps?

1️⃣ Real-time Updates: With PubNub, creators of content may rapidly update a large audience base with game states, chat messages, and video frames. This ensures that users of your app will not experience any lag when watching live streaming.

2️⃣ Scalability: PubNub’s network infrastructure is designed to support a large number of simultaneous viewers, guaranteeing seamless live streaming even at times of high traffic.

3️⃣ Low latency: PubNub focuses on efficiently transmitting data to ensure a smooth live streaming experience with minimal delays.

4️⃣ Multi-platform support: PubNub seamlessly integrates with multiple platforms (mobile, web, and desktop), enabling developers to create real-time streaming applications to reach a broader user base.

5️⃣Data Aggregation: PubNub allows for the merging of data streams from various sources. This makes it easy to create interactive dashboards that capture multiple aspects of live events in real-time.


3. ApphiTect

Apphitect provides a versatile messaging SDK that seamlessly integrates with various apps, facilitating faster communication. The platform allows you to build customized chat apps with engaging features such as video and voice calls.

How Apphitect Helps Live Streaming Apps?

1️⃣ Real-time Chat and Video Calling: Apphitect offers an SDK that is designed to enhance live streaming applications by incorporating in-app chat, video calls, and messaging features. This enables users to engage with both broadcasters and fellow viewers in real-time.

2️⃣ Multiple Device Support: You can easily engage users on your live streaming app across multiple devices, such as mobiles or desktops, to expand your audience reach.

3️⃣ HD Video Quality: You can also optimize video quality to enhance the viewing experience of your users with immersive high-definition streaming.
Scalable Infrastructure: Apphitect is built to support a large audience while maintaining the quality of the stream and user engagement.


4. Sendbird 

Sendbird serves as a real-time chat solution that is popular for supporting live-streaming apps. Its unique features include group chats, setting it apart from other tools. 

Sendbird makes it easy to integrate chat features with its flexibility and customization. Moreover, Sendbird’s UIKit is equipped with pre-designed elements that make the design process even easier.

How Sendbird Helps Live Streaming Apps?

In-app Live Streaming: Sendbird Live enables developers to easily incorporate live streaming features directly into their app.
By eliminating the need for users to switch between different platforms, this enhances engagement within the app and streamlines the user experience.

1️⃣ Real-time Engagement:
Sendbird provides a powerful chat API that facilitates smooth and instant communication between audiences and content creators.
Audiences will also get the opportunity to participate in live chat, share their reactions, and actively participate in discussions during live streams, promoting increased community interaction.

2️⃣ Seamless Moderation: To promote a secure and friendly atmosphere, Sendbird offers chat moderation features. Content creators can make use of these tools to monitor chat interactions, silence, or restrict troublesome audience members.

3️⃣ Customization and Flexibility: Sendbird provides developers with ready-to-use UI elements and adaptable SDKs. This enables them to create a live streaming interface that seamlessly integrates with their app’s branding and features.

4️⃣ Advanced Features: Sendbird seamlessly integrates with existing chat and call capabilities. It helps developers host private watch parties and one-on-one video calls during live streams. 


5. Agora 

Agora offers the Agora RTC i.e., a Real-time Communication SDK that enables users to launch live streaming for real-time messaging, audio, and video conversations. 

Developers can utilize the Agora RTC SDK to integrate features such as voice/video calls, audio broadcasts, and video broadcasts into their live streaming applications or software.

How Agora Helps Live Streaming Apps?

1️⃣ Ultra-low Latency: Agora prioritizes minimizing data transmission delays using its advanced Software Defined Real-time Network.

This ultra-low latency is essential for ensuring smooth, real-time engagement between broadcasters and audiences during a live stream.

2️⃣ Multi-host streaming: This enables multiple streamers to join a live broadcast at the same time.

3️⃣ Screen sharing: Broadcasters have the option to share their screens for various purposes, such as presentations, tutorials, or live gaming sessions.

4️⃣ Dual-video streaming: Provides video content in multiple bitrates to accommodate audiences with different internet connectivity speeds.

5️⃣ Global Reach: Agora’s worldwide network enables smooth live streaming interactions with participants located across the globe. 

6️⃣ Ease of Integration: The SDK is developer-friendly, making it easy and fast to integrate into current live streaming apps.

Conclusion 

Adding live chat software to streaming apps is simple when you pick the right software. It doesn’t just provide advanced solutions; it also helps viewers engage and interact better. We recommend you analyze all your requirements and choose the best live-streaming chat software in this list. 

If you need more help on this, you can talk to our team of experts about the messaging needs of your live streaming platform.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) :

1. Which Chat API is Best for Live-streaming Applications?

MirrorFly, PubNub, Apphitect, Sendbird, and Agora are the best apps for live streaming your video content to millions of audience at the same time.

2. Can you Chat on a Live Stream?

Yes, you can chat during a live stream if the host has enabled live chat while streaming. If you are logged into the platform, you can chat with other participants during an ongoing stream. However, there are cases where live chat may be disabled for videos that are exclusively streamed for kids. 

3. What is Chat in Streaming?

Chat in a live stream is an engagement feature that enables viewers to interact with each other. Some of the platforms also let you interact with the host/ streamers to enhance engagement and drive an exciting streaming experience. 

4. What is Super Chat in the Live Stream?

Super chat is a paid feature that users can purchase on their own interest from the streaming platforms, to display their profile at the top of a live chat feed and highlight their messages if they prefer to.

5. How do I Add Chat to Live Stream?

Follow the below steps to add live chat to your video streams:

Use a pre-built chat API/ SDK

Sign up for a live streaming solution 
Purchase the live chat API/ SDK
Open your platform’s source code
Integrate the API/ SDK
Launch your app with live feeds

Develop from scratch 
(Recommended only if you have a tech team/ sufficient expertise)

Build a live streaming app
Write codes for live chat 
Launch your platform

Sign-up for a White-label Live Streaming Platform

Sign up for a video streaming platform
Add your brand elements 
Launch your stream to multiple social channels

Comments

  1. Great article! The comparison of different chat APIs and their benefits for live streaming is very informative. Perfect for developers and businesses aiming to enhance their streaming platforms

    Reply
    • That’s so kind of you!
      We’d love to add more valuable information on the subject in the coming days and we’d appreciate you coming back for more!

      Reply
    • It’s cool that you liked MirrorFly and are ready to try it for your project. If you’d like to hire a team to build your chat app with streaming features, our team would be more than happy to do it for you. Please let us know if you are interested!

      Reply
  2. Very detailed analysis on the best chat api providers list. This was really a very nice post that you have shared. I like the post, thanks for sharing.

    Reply
    • Glad you liked our post. We’d encourage you to keep coming back for more insights on building live streaming apps with live chat features.

      Reply
  3. Hi there, we are a startup company looking to build a chat app with live streaming features for our client and I came across your blog and found it to be interesting. Can I know what all features you give?

    Reply
    • Hey, thanks for your interest in MirrorFly!

      We offer live streaming features including

      Record live streams, Whiteboard, Virtual Background, RTMP Out, Emojis, Raise hand, Backstage Mode, Collaborative broadcasting, Cross-platform Support and Analyze & Debug.
      Plus we cover real-time communication features like Topics based Chat, Buyer Seller Chat, Profanity Filters , Huge file uploads, Unlimited 1 to 1 & group Video call, Unlimited 1 to 1 & group audio call, Video Conference, SIP & VOIP Call, Chat Bot, Chat GPT and Join via Meeting Link.

      Reply

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