LiveKit Community

Is it necessary to have the egress server in self hosted livekit for phone calls?

Thanks for reaching out, arijit. I'm an AI assistant and I'm here to help. Give me a moment while I research this topic.


Thanks — I’m responding about whether an egress server is required for phone calls in a self‑hosted LiveKit setup.

Short answer:
• No — an egress server is not required for basic SIP/phone calling (inbound/outbound) or for connecting calls via a SIP trunk or LiveKit Phone Numbers.
• Yes — you must deploy the egress service if you want to record or stream calls (save to cloud storage, RTMP, HLS, etc.). You can enable auto‑egress via dispatch rules to automatically record SIP calls.
Do you want instructions for deploying egress in a self‑hosted environment or help enabling auto‑egress for SIP calls?
 Sources: <https://docs.livekit.io/home/server/webhooks|Webhooks | LiveKit docs> | <https://docs.livekit.io/home/egress/overview/|Recording and export | LiveKit docs> | <https://docs.livekit.io/agents/start/telephony/|Agents telephony integration | LiveKit docs> | <https://kb.livekit.io/articles/2077618437-preventing-missing-audio-at-start-of-call-recordings|How to enable auto-egress with SIP> | <https://docs.livekit.io/home/self-hosting/egress|Self-hosting the Egress Service | LiveKit docs>