Groq vs OpenAI API
Fastest LLM inference — LPU-powered (300-1000+ tokens/sec)
vs. Frontier models: GPT-5, o-series reasoning, image, audio, embeddings
Pricing tiers
Groq
Free Tier
Generous free RPM / TPM by model. Great for dev + small apps.
Free
On-Demand (paid)
Pay-as-you-go per token. OpenAI-compatible API, no infrastructure to manage.
$0 base (usage-based)
Developer Tier
Higher rate limits for production apps.
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Custom. Dedicated capacity, SLA, on-prem option.
Custom
OpenAI API
Free Tier (Trial)
$5 free credit for new accounts. Rate-limited.
Free
Pay-as-you-go
No monthly min. Per-token pricing by model.
$0 base (usage-based)
Usage Tiers (1-5)
Automatic tier promotion based on cumulative spend. Higher tiers = higher rate limits + new model access.
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Custom. Priority access, SLA, dedicated capacity.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free-tier on Groq vs free-tier on OpenAI API.
| Metric | Groq | OpenAI API |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Groq · 7 features
- Audio Transcription — Whisper endpoint.
- Batch API — 50% discount.
- Chat Completions (OpenAI-compat) — Standard /v1/chat/completions endpoint.
- Function Calling
- JSON Mode — Enforce JSON output format.
- Prompt Caching — 50% discount on cached input.
- Streaming — SSE streaming for chat.
OpenAI API · 12 features
- Assistants API — Stateful assistants with tools, threads, file search.
- Batch API — 50% discount for async processing within 24h.
- Chat Completions API — Classic /v1/chat/completions endpoint.
- Files API — Upload docs for retrieval, fine-tuning, batch.
- Fine-Tuning — Supervised + DPO fine-tuning for GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4o-mini.
- Function Calling — JSON-schema tool calling; parallel calls supported.
- Moderation — Safety classifier API (free).
- Prompt Caching — Auto-cache repeated prefixes; 50% cheaper cached hits.
- Realtime API — WebSocket streaming voice + text with low latency.
- Responses API — Stateful conversational API.
- Structured Outputs — Enforced JSON schema compliance.
- Vision — Image input for GPT models.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Groq | OpenAI API |
|---|---|---|
| SDK | groq-python, groq-sdk (Node) | openai-dotnet, openai-go, openai-node, openai-python |
| REST | Groq API (OpenAI-compat) | OpenAI REST API |
| MCP | — | OpenAI MCP |
| OTHER | — | Realtime API (WebSocket) |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Groq and OpenAI API are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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