Groq

Groq is an AI inference company that built custom Language Processing Units (LPUs), silicon designed specifically for fast sequential token generation, enabling output speeds of 300–800 tokens per second on popular frontier models, which is 10–25x faster than typical GPU-based inference at comparable cost. This inference speed has practical implications beyond raw benchmarks: at 300+ tokens/second, a 1,000-token response generates in under 4 seconds versus 30–60 seconds on slower providers, which changes the interaction model from 'wait for the response' to near-instantaneous generation. Groq's API is OpenAI-compatible, making it a drop-in speed upgrade for applications currently using OpenAI's endpoints by changing one URL. Available models include Llama 3, Mistral, and Gemma through Groq's API, with Meta and Google models provided under their respective licenses.

Free tier provides 14,400 to 30,000 requests per day depending on model. Paid plans provide higher rate limits and priority access. Groq's speed advantage is most material for applications where generation latency directly affects user experience, voice AI applications needing sub-second response, real-time code completion, interactive multi-turn conversations, and agentic workflows where the model is called dozens of times per task and total wall-clock time compounds. For batch processing where latency doesn't matter, the speed advantage is less meaningful than for user-facing applications.