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

Time to first token (TTFT) is the metric teams use to pick an inference API for voice. It is also the metric that misleads them. TTFT marks when generation starts; a text-to-speech model cannot speak until a full clause arrives. Between those two points sits the difference between an agent that feels conversational and one that gets interrupted....