Lowest-Latency Inference APIs for Voice and Realtime Agents: A Time to First Token TTFT-First Benchmark

MarkTechPost published a benchmark on August 30, 2026, comparing time-to-first-token (TTFT) latency across inference APIs for voice and realtime agents, covering LLM, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and speech-to-speech layers. The analysis uses figures verified against primary sources, with each number labeled as independently measured, vendor-published, or vendor-measured on its own product, emphasizing that TTFT is the right starting point but not the only metric for choosing an inference API.

Voice agents fail on latency long before they fail on intelligence. Time to first token is the metric most teams use to choose an inference API, and it is the right starting point and the wrong stopping point. This benchmark works through every layer of the voice stack — LLM, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and speech-to-speech — using figures verified against primary sources on August 30, 2026, with each number labeled as independently measured, vendor-published, or vendor-measured on its own product. The post Lowest-Latency Inference APIs for Voice and Realtime Agents: A Time to First Token TTFT-First Benchmark https://www.marktechpost.com/2026/08/30/lowest-latency-inference-apis-for-voice-and-realtime-agents-a-time-to-first-token-ttft-first-benchmark/ appeared first on MarkTechPost https://www.marktechpost.com .