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.
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.
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Live token pricing
Strengths & weaknesses
Together AI
xAI
Key differentiators
The broadest open-weight model catalog with fine-tuning support — ideal for teams that need model customisation without self-hosting.
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 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.
The broadest open-weight model catalog with fine-tuning support — ideal for teams that need model customisation without self-hosting.
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
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.