AI cost · Groq
Groq API cost: what you actually pay
Groq's speed is free, but the free tier's tiny rate limits (30 req/min, 14,400/day) push teams to add a card — which also happens to cut the price 25% — and the hosted-model roster rotates often enough that a pinned model ID can disappear.
Public pricing
Token rates (USD per 1M tokens)
| Model | Input | Output | Cache read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.3 70B Versatile | $0.59 | $0.79 | — |
| Llama 3.1 8B Instantcheapest widely used model | $0.05 | $0.08 | — |
| Kimi K2 Instruct | $1 | $3 | $0.5 |
| GPT OSS 120B | $0.15 | $0.6 | $0.075 |
Token price is identical across On-Demand/Flex/Performance service tiers — tiers govern throughput and queueing, not $/token. Batch API and cached-input hits are each 50% off the on-demand input rate and stack (~25% of original price combined). Adding a card unlocks 'Developer Tier': a flat 25% discount plus 10x higher rate limits versus the free tier.
Last updated: 2026-07-22. Sourced from Groq Pricing (official) ↗, Groq Service Tiers Docs (official) ↗.
Where the real Groq API cost hides
The sticker is the smallest part of the story. For Groq API, these are the line items that quietly inflate the bill:
- Free tier is capped at 30 requests/min and 14,400/day — many teams hit this in testing, but the fix (adding a card for Developer Tier) is also a 25% price cut, so staying 'free' can mean an implicit premium in dev time and retries.
- Groq periodically rotates which open models it hosts (deprecating older Llama/Mixtral endpoints); a model ID that worked last quarter can disappear, forcing an unplanned re-pick at a different price point.
- Cached-input and batch discounts require specific request parameters/endpoints; default synchronous calls with fresh context every time get none of the available 50% discounts.
What an audit finds on Groq API
Reflexive use of a larger hosted model (e.g., Kimi K2 Instruct at $1/$3 per M) for simple classification/extraction tasks that Llama 3.1 8B Instant ($0.05/$0.08) would handle at roughly 1/15th the cost.
Worked example: Groq API at production volume
Take 50M input and 10M output tokens a month — a modest production workload, and a round number we picked — on Llama 3.3 70B Versatile at the published rates above.
- Monthly
- $37
- Annual
- $449
- On Llama 3.1 8B Instant
- $3
Same volume, $409 a year apart. Most workloads are a mix — some of it genuinely needs the frontier model and some of it does not — so the real question is what share of your calls is the routine kind, and that is a measurement, not a guess.
Arithmetic on the published prices above. Your mix will differ — run your own numbers.
Groq API pricing FAQ
Does Groq's speed advantage cost extra?
No — per-token price is the same across service tiers; you only pay more if you upgrade to the Enterprise 'Performance' tier for guaranteed low-latency capacity.
Can I get a volume discount without a custom contract?
Yes — Groq stacks 50% off cached input tokens and 50% off Batch API jobs, plus a 25% Developer Tier discount for adding a payment method, all without an enterprise agreement.
How much can routing cut a Groq API bill?
On 50M input and 10M output tokens a month, Llama 3.3 70B Versatile costs $37 at published rates and Llama 3.1 8B Instant costs $3 — $409 a year apart for the same volume. What you can actually move depends on how much of your traffic is routine, which is a measurement rather than a guess.
Are these Groq API prices current?
They were last checked against Groq Pricing (official) and Groq Service Tiers Docs (official) on 2026-07-22. Every price on this page carries that date and a link to its source, and a scheduled check fails our build when any figure goes more than 30 days unverified. Vendors do change pricing between checks — the source link is there so you can confirm before you sign.
What is Groq API really costing you?
Spendassay connects your Groq API spend to actual usage and engineering output — a proof-level AI cost report with the wasted dollars named. Neutral across every AI vendor.
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