Fireworks AI vs Groq

Side-by-side — pricing, strengths, tradeoffs, and fit.

Fireworks AI

The fastest inference for generative AI

Groq

Ultra-fast LLM inference powered by custom LPU hardware.

At a glance

Free Tier
· Not enough data·From Freemium
Free TierEnterprise
· Not enough data·From ~$0.05/1M tokens

Overview

One-liner

The fastest inference for generative AI

One-liner

Ultra-fast LLM inference powered by custom LPU hardware.

Maturity

Not enough data

Maturity

Not enough data

Open source

✕ No

Open source

✕ No

Pricing

Free tier

✓ Available

Free tier

✓ Available

Rate-limited dev access — 30 req/min, 14,400 req/day, 6,000 tokens/min

Starts at

Freemium

Starts at

~$0.05/1M tokens

Model

Usage-based

Model

Usage-based

Enterprise

✕ None

Enterprise

✓ Available

Best for

✓ Best for

Teams needing low-latency open-source model inference, fine-tuned model serving, or building compound AI applications

✓ Best for

Teams building real-time applications requiring fast inference speeds.
Projects where low latency is critical for user experience.
Developers needing access to large models without managing infrastructure.

Not ideal for

✕ Not for

Teams that only need flagship proprietary models like GPT-4 or Claude

✕ Not for

Budget-constrained projects that cannot afford usage-based pricing.
Applications with very high request volumes, potentially leading to high costs.

Strengths

↑ Strengths

Fast LLM inference
Fine-tuning
Compound AI
Function calling

↑ Strengths

Fastest inference speed on the market
OpenAI-compatible API
Generous free tier for development
Competitive per-token pricing

Weaknesses

↓ Weaknesses

—

↓ Weaknesses

Limited model selection
No fine-tuning or private model hosting
Rate limits on free tier
Context window smaller than frontier models
Full Fireworks AI profile →Full Groq profile →