The Realtime API provides multiple transport protocols, each optimized for different requirements such as performance, latency, weak-network resilience, and integration cost.
The Realtime API supports three transport protocols: AOQ (AI over QUIC), WebRTC, and WebSocket. Choose the protocol that best fits your business scenario.
Dimension | AOQ | WebRTC | WebSocket |
|---|---|---|---|
Use cases | AI multimodal real-time interaction, weak-network conditions, mixed data transmission | Browser-based interaction, traditional audio and video calls | Server-side integration, rapid prototyping |
Browser compatibility | Not supported | Natively supported | Natively supported |
Integration difficulty | Low | Medium | Minimal |
Weak-network resilience | Excellent | Good | Poor |
Data types | Audio/video + text | Audio/video + text | Text/audio/image |
Connection setup speed | Fast | Slow | Slow |
Echo cancellation and noise suppression | Built-in | Built-in | None; the client must handle them |
AI scenario fit | Purpose-built for AI multimodal data characteristics | Traditional design; requires extra adaptation for AI scenarios | Basic; suitable for text-only scenarios or scenarios with low real-time requirements |
Client platform support | Android / iOS / HarmonyOS | Browsers, mobile clients | All platforms (any environment that supports WebSocket) |
Token Plan | Supported | Supported | Supported |
Select a protocol based on your requirements:
- AOQ: Best for AI real-time interaction scenarios with the most demanding requirements for latency, weak-network resilience, and multimodal data transmission, especially native mobile apps. Echo cancellation and noise suppression are built in.
- WebRTC: Best for traditional audio and video call scenarios that require native browser support or already run on WebRTC infrastructure. Echo cancellation and noise suppression are built in.
- WebSocket: Best for server-side integration, rapid prototyping, and scenarios that require a minimal integration barrier. Use the DashScope SDK to quickly implement real-time voice conversation.
Supported models and applications
The following table shows how each protocol supports different models and applications:
Model/application type | Model | AOQ | WebRTC | WebSocket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
qwen3.5-omni-plus-realtime | Supported | Supported | Supported | |
qwen3.5-omni-flash-realtime | Supported | Supported | Supported | |
qwen3.5-livetranslate-flash-realtime | Supported | Supported | Supported | |
Qwen-Audio-3.0-ASR-Flash-Streaming, Fun-ASR-Realtime series models | Supported | Unsupported | Supported | |
CosyVoice series models | Supported | Unsupported | Supported | |
qwen-audio-3.0-tts-flash, qwen-audio-3.0-tts-plus | Supported | Unsupported | Supported | |
qwen-audio-3.0-realtime-plus, qwen-audio-3.0-realtime-flash | Supported | Supported | Supported |
NoteFor information such as model names, context windows, prices, and snapshot versions, see the Alibaba Cloud Model Studio console. For rate limits, see Rate limiting.
Best practices
- Using WebRTC with qwen3.5-omni-plus-realtime for real-time calls
- Using AOQ with qwen3.5-omni-plus-realtime for real-time calls
- Build push-to-talk voice conversations with qwen3.5-omni-plus-realtime over AOQ
- Build real-time voice conversations with qwen-audio-3.0-realtime-plus over AOQ
- Synthesize speech with qwen-audio-3.0-tts-flash over AOQ
- Transcribe real-time speech with fun-asr-realtime over AOQ