Best Inference Providers

What are the best alternatives to Groq in 2026?

Independent research, updated 2026-11-09. Built from each provider's own pricing pages, docs and announcements. All speeds are vendor-reported. We did not run hands-on tests.

Answer in brief: Teams usually leave Groq for one of three reasons: they need more speed, a model Groq gates, or a lower price. For more speed, Cerebras reports about 3,000 tokens/sec on gpt-oss-120b, against Groq's ~500. For Llama 3.1 8B and Llama 3.3 70B, which Groq now limits to Enterprise contracts, DeepInfra serves them self-serve at $0.02 / $0.04 and $0.10 / $0.32 per 1M tokens, and SambaNova lists Llama 3.3 70B at $0.60 / $1.20. For a lower price on gpt-oss-120b, Baseten charges $0.10 / $0.50. For frontier open models such as Kimi K3 and GLM-5.3, use Fireworks AI or Together AI.

Top pick: Cerebras. If you chose Groq for speed, Cerebras posts the highest vendor-reported throughput on our list, about 3,000 tokens/sec on gpt-oss-120b and about 1,850 on Qwen 3.8 27B.

Why look beyond Groq

Groq is #3 on our ranked list. It is fast, cheap and production-labeled on gpt-oss. Its self-serve priced catalog is small, though: gpt-oss-120b and 20b, Whisper, Orpheus TTS, Prompt Guard and a Qwen3.8-27B preview. Llama 3.1 8B, Llama 3.3 70B, Muse Spark Open and MiniMax M2.7 are Enterprise only. The company has also changed shape. It licensed its inference technology non-exclusively to NVIDIA in December 2025 and announced that founder Jonathan Ross and president Sunny Madra would join NVIDIA. It then closed a $350M Series A in August 2026, subject to customary closing conditions.

Groq alternatives at a glance

AlternativeWhy switchPublished proof point
CerebrasMore speed~3,000 tokens/sec gpt-oss-120b; $0.35 / $0.75
Fireworks AISame gpt-oss price, far bigger catalog, Fast modegpt-oss-120b $0.15 / $0.60; Kimi K3 $3.00 / $15.00
Together AIBroadest multimodal cataloggpt-oss-120B $0.15 / $0.60; Whisper v3 $0.0015 per audio minute
BasetenLowest gpt-oss-120b price; Fast variants$0.10 / $0.50
DeepInfraSelf-serve Llama at rock-bottom pricesLlama 3.1 8B Turbo $0.02 / $0.04
SambaNova CloudCustom-chip speed alternative with LlamaLlama 3.3 70B $0.60 / $1.20
Nebius Token FactoryFast and Base flavors; region-pinned dedicatedDedicated endpoints with a 99.9% SLA
ModalRun your own low-latency engineH100 $0.001097/sec
ReplicateMedia and community models alongside LLMsFLUX 1.1 Pro $0.04 per image
OpenRouterFallback across providers, including Groq600+ models, 80+ providers
Hugging Face Inference Providers:fastest routing with no markupGroq, Cerebras and others as partners

Our picks by reason to switch

Cerebras: more speed

Cerebras reports about 3,000 tokens/sec on gpt-oss-120b on wafer-scale hardware, and Qwen 3.8 27B costs $0.99 / $1.49, well below Groq's $4.00 output price. The Developer tier is for evaluation. Production capacity, priority and custom weights come with Enterprise.

Fireworks AI: same price, many more models

Fireworks matches Groq's $0.15 / $0.60 on gpt-oss-120b and adds self-serve Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, Qwen 3.8 Max and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash. Its Fast mode targets 100+ tokens/sec, Ultra-fast is in preview, and Batch is 50% off.

Together AI: one vendor for text, image, video and audio

Together lists dozens of serverless models and also offers Provisioned Throughput and dedicated GPUs. For speech, it lists Whisper Large v3 at $0.0015 per audio minute. Groq's Turbo is cheaper per hour, but Together adds streaming and Parakeet options.

Baseten: the cheapest gpt-oss-120b

Baseten charges $0.10 / $0.50 against Groq's $0.15 / $0.60, offers Fast variants of GLM and DeepSeek, and lets you move to dedicated GPUs when you outgrow shared capacity.

DeepInfra: Llama without an Enterprise contract

DeepInfra serves Llama 3.3 70B Turbo at $0.10 / $0.32 and Llama 3.1 8B Turbo at $0.02 / $0.04, alongside more than 150 open models. It has no long-term contracts.

SambaNova Cloud: another custom-chip option

SambaCloud publishes gpt-oss-120b at $0.22 / $0.59, Llama 3.3 70B at $0.60 / $1.20 and Gemma 4 31B at $0.38 / $1.15.

Nebius Token Factory: pick speed or economy per call

Nebius lets you switch between Fast and Base flavors on the same API. Dedicated endpoints come with a 99.9% SLA and a fixed region.

Modal: tune latency yourself

On Modal you deploy your own engine on per-second GPUs. It suits teams that want to control batching and quantization themselves.

Replicate: when your app also generates media

Replicate pairs LLMs with thousands of image and video models. Public models bill only for the time they spend active.

OpenRouter and Hugging Face: keep Groq, add fallback

OpenRouter routes across more than 80 providers for a 5.5% fee on Standard. On Hugging Face, add :fastest to a model ID to send each request to the highest-throughput partner, or add :groq to pin it. There is no markup.

Pricing models

Groq, Cerebras, Fireworks, Together, Baseten, DeepInfra and SambaNova bill per 1M tokens on their self-serve tiers. Modal and Replicate bill per second of hardware, and Replicate also prices many models per output. OpenRouter adds a platform fee, while Hugging Face passes provider rates through.

FAQ

What is faster than Groq?

By vendor-reported figures, Cerebras: about 3,000 tokens/sec on gpt-oss-120b, against Groq's ~500.

Where can I run Llama 3.3 70B self-serve now that Groq marks it Enterprise?

DeepInfra lists Llama 3.3 70B Turbo at $0.10 / $0.32, and SambaNova lists Llama 3.3 70B at $0.60 / $1.20 per 1M tokens.

Which Groq alternative is cheapest for gpt-oss-120b?

Baseten, at $0.10 input / $0.50 output per 1M tokens.

Is Groq still a safe choice after the NVIDIA deal?

The December 2025 agreement was a non-exclusive license. Groq continues to operate GroqCloud and reported 13 data centers in August 2026. Using a gateway gives you a fallback if you want one.

Keep exploring

Back to the ranked list · Groq review · Groq vs Cerebras · Fireworks AI vs Groq

Reviews: Cerebras · Fireworks AI · Together AI · Baseten · DeepInfra · SambaNova · Nebius · Modal · Replicate · OpenRouter · Hugging Face

Sources

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