Groq review

Groq ranks fourth on speed and price. Its models page lists tokens per second next to each price, which few vendors do: GPT OSS 20B runs at 1,000 tokens per second for $0.075 input and $0.30 output per 1M tokens, and GPT OSS 120B at 500 tokens per second for $0.15 and $0.60. Both have 131,072-token context windows. The API is OpenAI compatible, so moving an existing app is mostly a base URL change, and there are Free Plan and Developer Plan rate limits plus Batch and Flex tiers. The weakness is choice. The production list is short, and several models such as Llama 3.3 70B and Muse Spark Open are marked Enterprise with Contact Sales pricing. Groq does not sell frontier proprietary models, so it works best alongside a larger provider for tasks where response time matters most.

Who it is for

Developers who need very fast responses from open-weight models such as GPT OSS 20B and 120B.

Price

Free plan; GPT OSS 20B from $0.075 per 1M input tokens.

GPT OSS 20B openai/gpt-oss-20b 1000 $0.075 input $0.30 output
Quoted from the vendor pricing page on November 7, 2026.

Key features

• Published speeds per model, such as 1,000 tokens per second for GPT OSS 20B
• OpenAI-compatible endpoint at api.groq.com/openai/v1
• Free Plan and Developer Plan rate limits
• Batch and Flex processing service tiers
• Speech-to-text with Whisper Large V3 Turbo at $0.04 per hour

Strengths and weaknesses

• Strength: Speed is documented per model rather than claimed in general terms
• Strength: GPT OSS 20B at $0.075 input is among the lowest prices here
• Strength: OpenAI-compatible API makes switching a small code change
• Weakness: A short list of production models compared with Together AI or Fireworks AI
• Weakness: Several models, including Llama 3.3 70B, are marked Enterprise with Contact Sales pricing
• Weakness: No first-party frontier proprietary models

Key facts

• Cheapest LLM: GPT OSS 20B, $0.075 input and $0.30 output per 1M tokens
• Speed: 1,000 tokens per second on GPT OSS 20B, 500 on GPT OSS 120B
• Context window: 131,072 tokens on GPT OSS models

Where it ranks

Groq is No. 5 in our Best LLM APIs verdict.