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Groq vs xAI: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence

Full comparison of Groq and xAI — 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.

SpeedReal-time chatVoice AICost-efficiencyBatch processing
Open-weight hostHosts open weights

xAI

Grok 3 — Elon Musk's frontier AI with real-time web access

xAI is Elon Musk's AI company, building the Grok model family. Grok 3 is a frontier-tier model with a 131K context window and strong vision capabilities. Grok 3 Mini is a cost-efficient reasoning model. The API is available via the xAI platform with competitive frontier pricing.

Real-time dataReasoningVisionChatResearch
Proprietary models

Key metrics

Groq
xAI
Cheapest input ($/1M)

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Cheapest output ($/1M)

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Peak throughput

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Best latency (TTFT)

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Intelligence score

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Context window

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Live token pricing

Strengths & weaknesses

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-compatible API
Free tier available
Limited model selection vs. Together AI or Fireworks
No vision model support on most models
No fine-tuning capability

xAI

Real-time web access and X/Twitter data integration
Grok 3 Mini is a cost-efficient reasoning model
Strong vision capabilities on Grok 3
Competitive frontier pricing
OpenAI-compatible API
Smaller ecosystem and fewer integrations than OpenAI
No open-weight models
Limited model selection compared to frontier competitors

Key differentiators

Groq

Groq's custom LPU chips deliver 750+ tokens/sec on Llama 3.3 70B — 4–5× faster than any GPU-based provider.

xAI

Unique access to real-time X/Twitter data and web search — the only frontier model with native social media grounding.

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.

xAI FAQs

What is Grok and how much does it cost?

Grok is xAI's family of frontier LLMs. Grok 3 costs $3/1M input and $15/1M output tokens. Grok 3 Mini is a cheaper reasoning model at lower price points. Both support vision and function calling.

Does Grok have real-time web access?

Yes. Grok models can access real-time web content and X/Twitter data, making them uniquely suited for applications that need current information beyond a training cutoff.

How does Grok 3 compare to GPT-4o?

Grok 3 is competitive with GPT-4o on most benchmarks with strong vision capabilities. Its main differentiator is real-time web and X/Twitter data access. Pricing is similar to GPT-4o.

Provider resources

Groq

Provider pageWebsitePricingDocs

xAI

Provider pageWebsitePricingDocs

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.

xAI — Grok 3 — Elon Musk's frontier AI with real-time web access

xAI is Elon Musk's AI company, building the Grok model family. Grok 3 is a frontier-tier model with a 131K context window and strong vision capabilities. Grok 3 Mini is a cost-efficient reasoning model. The API is available via the xAI platform with competitive frontier pricing.

Unique access to real-time X/Twitter data and web search — the only frontier model with native social media grounding.

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

xAI

  • ▸Real-time web access and X/Twitter data integration
  • ▸Grok 3 Mini is a cost-efficient reasoning model
  • ▸Strong vision capabilities on Grok 3

Provider category context

Groq is a inference api, founded in 2016. xAI is a frontier lab, founded in 2023. Groq as an inference API provider hosts open-weight models — typically offering lower prices for equivalent capability tiers. xAI 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 xAI if you need real-time web access and x/twitter data integration. 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.