Groq vs Cerebras: free tiers compared

Both columns come from each provider’s own pages, with the day each line was read. Where a page does not state a value, the cell says so.

Groq and Cerebras free tiers side by side
Line	GroqFree tier	CerebrasTrial only
Free allowance	30 req/min · 1,000 req/day Chat models; 8K tokens/min and 200K tokens/day. 3 Oct	$5 trial credit, 30 days Granted “after adding a verified payment method”. 3 Oct
Requests / min	30 openai/gpt-oss-120b, openai/gpt-oss-20b, qwen/qwen3.8-27b. 3 Oct	5 Free Trial: gpt-oss-120b and qwen-3.8-27b. 3 Oct
Requests / day	1,000 Chat models. Prompt-guard models: 14,400/day. 3 Oct	Not published The Free Trial table lists no requests-per-day figure. 3 Oct
Tokens / min	8,000 3 Oct	30K Uncached tokens; 90K total tokens/min. 3 Oct
Tokens / day	200K 3 Oct	1M 3 Oct
Card to start	Not published The rate-limits page does not say whether a card is needed to sign up. 3 Oct	Required Credits are granted “after adding a verified payment method”. 3 Oct
Trains on your data	Not published The data page says “By default, Groq does not retain customer data for inference requests”. It does not address training. 3 Oct	Not verified
Commercial use	Not verified	Not verified
OpenAI SDK	Yes No logprobs, logit_bias or n > 1. 3 Oct	Yes 3 Oct
Image input	Yes qwen/qwen3.8-27b; up to 3 images per request. 3 Oct	Not verified

18 of 24 cells above were read on the provider’s own page in the last 30 days (oldest check: 3 Oct 2026). Each check mark opens that page. The other 6 say “not verified” instead of repeating a number from someone else’s article.

Where they differ

Groq has a recurring free offer; Cerebras offers a time-limited trial.
Groq allows 30 requests per minute, against 5 on Cerebras.
Groq publishes its requests per day (1,000); Cerebras does not publish that figure.
Image input is confirmed on Groq and not confirmed on Cerebras.

Only differences confirmed on both sides are listed. We do not rank speed or output quality: this site does not measure them.

Same code for both

Both expose an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Choose either provider below and compare the three values that change.

base_url: https://api.groq.com/openai/v1
model: openai/gpt-oss-120b
key from: $GROQ_API_KEY

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.groq.com/openai/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["GROQ_API_KEY"],
)

reply = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Reply with the word: ok"}],
)
print(reply.choices[0].message.content)

Endpoint read on 3 Oct 2026· console.groq.com

The key is read from an environment variable on your machine. This site has no field for keys and never asks for one.

Other comparisons

Questions and answers

Which has the higher free limit, Groq or Cerebras?

Groq: 30 req/min · 1,000 req/day. Cerebras: $5 trial credit, 30 days. The units differ between providers, so compare them against your own traffic.

Do Groq and Cerebras need a credit card?

Groq: not published (the rate-limits page does not say whether a card is needed to sign up). Cerebras: required.

Which one trains on my prompts?

Groq: not published (the data page says “by default, groq does not retain customer data for inference requests”. it does not address training). Cerebras: not verified on an official page.

Can I use both with the same code?

Yes. Both expose an OpenAI-compatible endpoint: https://api.groq.com/openai/v1 and https://api.cerebras.ai/v1. Only the base URL, the model name and the key change.