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Mauro Iannicelli
Mauro Iannicelli

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Which WebRTC APIs Can Handle 10k Live Viewers + Massive Breakouts (5,000 rooms)?

We’re designing a large-scale WebRTC-based video platform and I’d love some input from people who’ve tackled similar problems.

Use case

  • Live stream to 1,000–10,000 concurrent viewers
  • At specific moments, move participants on the fly into thousands of 1-to-1 breakout rooms (pair discussions)
  • After a few minutes, bring everyone back seamlessly to the main live stream
  • All orchestration must be API-driven (rooms, users, transitions)

We’re currently evaluating video API / infrastructure providers (SFU + HLS, or hybrid approaches) that can realistically handle this scale with acceptable latency, reliability, and cost.

Questions for the community

  • Which video APIs or platforms have you seen work reliably at this scale?
  • Any strong opinions on managed APIs vs rolling your own SFU stack?
  • Pitfalls to watch out for when switching thousands of users between broadcast and WebRTC rooms?

Side note

We’re also looking for an experienced WebRTC freelance developer (WebRTC + Node.js) to help design the architecture and build an initial PoC. If this kind of problem excites you and you have real-world experience with large-scale WebRTC systems, feel free to DM me.

Thanks in advance—happy to share findings back with the community once we’re further along.

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