Groq vs OpenAI: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence
Full comparison of Groq and OpenAI — live token pricing, latency, throughput, context window, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases. Updated July 2026.
Groq
LPU-powered inference — the fastest tokens per second available
Groq runs custom Language Processing Units (LPUs) that deliver dramatically higher throughput than GPU-based inference — Llama 3.3 70B reaches 750+ tokens/second on Groq, versus 100–200 on typical GPU providers. Ideal for latency-sensitive applications, real-time chat, and high-volume batch workloads.
OpenAI
GPT-4o, o3, and the world's most widely-used AI API
OpenAI is the creator of the GPT model family and the ChatGPT product. Their API provides access to frontier models including GPT-4o, the o-series reasoning models, and the GPT-4.1 long-context family. Pricing is competitive for frontier-tier capability, with prompt caching available on most models.
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Live token pricing
Strengths & weaknesses
Groq
OpenAI
Key differentiators
Frequently asked questions
Groq FAQs
How fast is Groq inference?
Groq delivers 750+ tokens/second on Llama 3.3 70B and 1,200+ tokens/second on Llama 3.1 8B. This is 4–5× faster than typical GPU-based providers, making it ideal for real-time applications.
How much does Groq cost?
Llama 3.3 70B costs $0.59/1M input and $0.79/1M output tokens. Llama 3.1 8B is just $0.05/$0.08 per 1M tokens — among the cheapest options for a capable open-weight model.
What is a Groq LPU?
A Language Processing Unit (LPU) is Groq's custom silicon designed specifically for sequential token generation. Unlike GPUs which are optimised for parallel matrix operations, LPUs excel at the autoregressive decoding step that dominates LLM inference latency.
OpenAI FAQs
How much does the OpenAI API cost?
GPT-4o costs $2.50/1M input tokens and $10/1M output tokens. GPT-4o-mini is $0.15/$0.60 per 1M tokens. Prompt caching cuts input costs by 50% on eligible requests.
What is the difference between GPT-4o and o3?
GPT-4o is a fast, multimodal model optimised for chat, vision, and coding. o3 is a reasoning model that uses chain-of-thought to solve complex problems — it is slower and more expensive but significantly more capable on math, science, and hard coding tasks.
Does OpenAI support prompt caching?
Yes. Prompt caching is available on GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, o3, and o4-mini. Cached input tokens are billed at 50% of the standard input price, making long-context and repeated-system-prompt workloads significantly cheaper.
Provider resources
Groq — LPU-powered inference — the fastest tokens per second available
Groq runs custom Language Processing Units (LPUs) that deliver dramatically higher throughput than GPU-based inference — Llama 3.3 70B reaches 750+ tokens/second on Groq, versus 100–200 on typical GPU providers. Ideal for latency-sensitive applications, real-time chat, and high-volume batch workloads.
Groq's custom LPU chips deliver 750+ tokens/sec on Llama 3.3 70B — 4–5× faster than any GPU-based provider.
OpenAI — GPT-4o, o3, and the world's most widely-used AI API
OpenAI is the creator of the GPT model family and the ChatGPT product. Their API provides access to frontier models including GPT-4o, the o-series reasoning models, and the GPT-4.1 long-context family. Pricing is competitive for frontier-tier capability, with prompt caching available on most models.
The most widely-integrated LLM API — virtually every AI framework and tool supports OpenAI natively.
Key strengths compared
Groq
- ▸750+ tokens/sec on Llama 3.3 70B — fastest GPU-class inference
- ▸Sub-100ms time-to-first-token for real-time applications
- ▸Very competitive pricing on open-weight models
OpenAI
- ▸Largest ecosystem & third-party integrations
- ▸Best-in-class function calling & structured outputs
- ▸Prompt caching on all major models
Provider category context
Groq is a inference api, founded in 2016. OpenAI is a frontier lab, founded in 2015. Groq as an inference API provider hosts open-weight models — typically offering lower prices for equivalent capability tiers. OpenAI as a frontier lab trains and serves proprietary models with capabilities not available elsewhere.
How to choose between them
Choose Groq if you need 750+ tokens/sec on llama 3.3 70b — fastest gpu-class inference. Choose OpenAI if you need largest ecosystem & third-party integrations. For high-volume production workloads, run a cost comparison using the token pricing table above with your actual prompt/completion token ratio — the cheapest provider depends heavily on your input-to-output token ratio.