Which platform is faster: Groq or Cerebras?

Cerebras is currently the fastest inference engine on Earth, generating up to 2,100 tokens per second on Llama 3.3 70B (roughly 4.5x faster than Groq's ~450 tokens per second). However, Groq provides faster cold-start availability and wider model selection including Whisper.

How does pricing compare for Llama 3.3 70B between Groq and Cerebras?

Groq charges $0.59 per 1M input tokens and $0.79 per 1M output tokens. Cerebras charges a flat $0.60 per 1M input tokens and $0.60 per 1M output tokens. For high-output tasks, Cerebras is roughly 24% cheaper per output token while delivering 4x higher throughput.

⚡ The 2,000+ Tok/Sec Hardware Battle

Groq (LPU) vs Cerebras (CS-3)

The battle for extreme inference speed. Groq pushes ~450 tokens/sec on Language Processing Units (LPUs). Cerebras pushes ~2,100 tokens/sec on Wafer-Scale chips. Which delivers the better unit economics?

Groq (LPU Engine) LPU ARCHITECTURE

$0.59 in / $0.79 out

Throughput: ~450 tokens/second

Custom SRAM-based Language Processing Unit (LPU)
Sub-150ms Time to First Token (TTFT)
Hosts Llama 3.3 70B, Llama 3.1 8B, and Whisper Large v3
Massive developer adoption & proven production reliability
Native integrations across Cursor, Vapi, LangChain

Cerebras (CS-3 Engine) WAFER-SCALE RECORD

$0.60 in / $0.60 out

Throughput: ~2,100 tokens/second

World's largest monolithic chip (44,000 mm² silicon)
4.5x faster throughput than Groq on Llama 3.3 70B
Generates an entire 1,500-word essay in 0.8 seconds
Flat $0.60/$0.60 pricing (24% cheaper output than Groq)
Game-changer for speculative decoding and code synthesis

Head-to-Head Speed & Pricing (Llama 3.3 70B Benchmark)

Metric	Groq	Cerebras	Advantage
Tokens / Second (Output)	~450 tok/sec	~2,100 tok/sec	Cerebras (4.6x faster)
Input Cost / 1M Tokens	$0.59	$0.60	Roughly identical
Output Cost / 1M Tokens	$0.79	$0.60	Cerebras (24% cheaper output)
Time to Generate 1,000 Tokens	2.22 seconds	0.47 seconds	Cerebras (Sub-second)
Whisper STT Support	Yes ($0.0018/min)	No	Groq

Why Cerebras 2,000+ Tok/Sec Changes Software Architecture

Standard GPUs (like NVIDIA H100) generate 80 to 140 tokens per second on 70B models. At that speed, running multi-agent debate (where 3 agents critique and rewrite code before presenting the solution to the user) takes 25 to 45 seconds, ruining interactive UX.

On Cerebras, an agent can generate 6,000 tokens of internal chain-of-thought exploration across three rounds in under 3 seconds! This transforms slow offline agentic workflows into instantaneous real-time UI interactions without incurring GPU rental infrastructure overhead.

Frequently Asked Questions: Groq vs Cerebras

Does Cerebras support standard OpenAI SDK format?

Yes. Both Groq and Cerebras expose standard 100% OpenAI-compatible /v1/chat/completions REST endpoints, allowing drop-in replacement by switching your baseURL and API key.