Together AI vs Groq
Both are free/open-source alternatives to OpenAI API (ChatGPT). Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Together AI
One API for the whole open-model universe — Llama, DeepSeek, Qwen and more.
Together AI is a hosted inference cloud for open models: one OpenAI-compatible API serving Llama, DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral and dozens more, priced from about $0.05 to $9 per million tokens (Llama 3.3 70B around $0.88). The platform itself is commercial, but everything it serves is open-weight — so unlike a closed lab API, your exit is real: the same model you call today can run on your own GPUs tomorrow. A strong bridge for teams not ready to operate vLLM themselves.
Groq
The speed king — open models at 500+ tokens/second on custom LPU chips.
Groq runs open models (Llama and friends) on its custom LPU hardware and is, as of mid-2026, the fastest mainstream inference API available — 500+ tokens per second, at prices mostly under $1 per million tokens (Llama 3.3 70B at $0.59/$0.79). If your product's bottleneck is latency — voice agents, live UX, rapid tool loops — Groq is the honest answer. It's a proprietary hosted platform, but like Together, the models themselves are open, so you're renting speed, not locking in your stack.
Side by side
| Together AI | Groq | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 46 | 42 |
| Open source | No | No |
| Self-hostable | No | No |
| Local-first | No | No |
| License | Proprietary (platform); serves open-weight models | Proprietary (platform); serves open-weight models |
| Pricing | Usage-based, ~$0.05–$9 per 1M tokens by model; intro credits for new accounts | Most models under $1 per 1M tokens; Llama 3.3 70B $0.59/$0.79; batch −50% |
Together AI edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
Together AI
Strengths
- +Huge open-model catalog behind one OpenAI-compatible API
- +The models are open — migrating to self-hosting later is realistic
- +Often far cheaper than closed frontier APIs for comparable tasks
Trade-offs
- −A hosted US cloud — your prompts transit their infrastructure
- −Quality/cost varies widely across the catalog; you do the picking
Groq
Strengths
- +Fastest inference on the market (500+ tok/s)
- +Very low prices on open models
- +OpenAI-compatible API — near drop-in
Trade-offs
- −Hosted-only; custom hardware means no self-host path for the speed
- −Model catalog is narrower than Together's
More OpenAI API (ChatGPT) head-to-heads
Facts verified 2026-07-04. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.