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Together AI vs xAI: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence

Full comparison of Together AI and xAI — live token pricing, latency, throughput, context window, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases. Updated July 2026.

Together AI

Open-source model hosting with competitive inference pricing

Together AI specialises in hosting open-weight models including the full Llama family, Mixtral, and DeepSeek variants. They offer live pricing via their public API and support fine-tuning workflows. A popular choice for teams that want open-source flexibility without managing their own GPU infrastructure.

Open-sourceFine-tuningCodingChatCost-efficiency
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

Cheapest input ($/1M)

Cheapest output ($/1M)

Peak throughput

Best latency (TTFT)

Intelligence score

Context window

Live token pricing

Strengths & weaknesses

Together AI

Largest selection of open-weight models
Fine-tuning support for custom model training
OpenAI-compatible API — easy migration
Competitive pricing on Llama 3.x models
Supports 405B parameter models
No proprietary frontier models
Throughput lower than Groq/Cerebras for speed-critical apps
Fine-tuning adds complexity vs. pure inference providers

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

Together AI

The broadest open-weight model catalog with fine-tuning support — ideal for teams that need model customisation without self-hosting.

xAI

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

Frequently asked questions

Together AI FAQs

What models does Together AI support?

Together AI hosts 100+ open-weight models including the full Llama 3.x family (8B, 70B, 405B), Mixtral, DeepSeek R1, Qwen, and many others. They also support custom fine-tuned model deployment.

How much does Together AI cost?

Llama 3.3 70B costs $0.88/1M tokens (input and output). Llama 3.1 405B is $3.50/1M tokens. Smaller models like Llama 3.2 11B Vision start at $0.18/1M tokens.

Does Together AI support fine-tuning?

Yes. Together AI offers supervised fine-tuning for Llama and other open-weight models. You can upload training data, run fine-tuning jobs, and deploy the resulting model via their inference API.

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

Together AIOpen-source model hosting with competitive inference pricing

Together AI specialises in hosting open-weight models including the full Llama family, Mixtral, and DeepSeek variants. They offer live pricing via their public API and support fine-tuning workflows. A popular choice for teams that want open-source flexibility without managing their own GPU infrastructure.

The broadest open-weight model catalog with fine-tuning support — ideal for teams that need model customisation without self-hosting.

xAIGrok 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

Together AI

  • Largest selection of open-weight models
  • Fine-tuning support for custom model training
  • OpenAI-compatible API — easy migration

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

Together AI is a inference api, founded in 2022. xAI is a frontier lab, founded in 2023. Together AI 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 Together AI if you need largest selection of open-weight models. 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.