A user equipment (UE) selectively attempts recovery of lost media for a real-time communication session. In an embodiment, the UE detects presence of a lost media packet from another UE participating in the real-time communication session that did not successfully arrive at the UE. The UE evaluates a set of recovery criteria associated with the lost media packet to attempt to dynamically select at least one external source from a plurality of external sources from which the lost media packet can potentially be recovered at different predicted reliabilities and/or response times for attempting recovery of the lost media packet based on the set of recovery criteria. The UE attempts to recover the lost media packet from the selected at least one external source based on the evaluation.