Cerebras vs Groq

Cerebras and Groq both compete on inference speed, but they use fundamentally different hardware to get there. Groq runs on custom LPU (Language Processing Unit) chips designed specifically for sequential token generation. Cerebras uses wafer-scale engines, massive single chips that eliminate the inter-chip communication bottleneck.

Both offer free tiers and OpenAI-compatible APIs, making them easy to try. In practice, both deliver noticeably faster time-to-first-token and throughput than standard GPU-based providers. The model selection differs: check each provider pricing page for current availability, as both are expanding their supported model lists regularly. For most developers, the choice comes down to which models you need and current pricing rather than raw speed, since both are fast enough that the difference is rarely the bottleneck.