Compare 25 free alternatives to Groq for AI / ML. Every one of their free tier limits side by side, with the read and catalogue dates we hold.

Best Groq Alternatives with Free Tiers (2026)

25 free alternatives in AI / ML. Sorted by pricing stability.

Current Groq Situation

Risk Level: caution
Why: effective 2026-08-16 — Groq shut down Llama 3.1 8B and Llama 3.3 70B on its free and developer plans. On the free plan Llama 3.1 8B had allowed 14,400 requests and 500,000 tokens a day; the free chat models left (gpt-oss-120b, gpt-oss-20b and a Qwen 27B model) allow 1,000 requests and 200,000 tokens a day each. Source ↗
Category: AI / ML
Pricing Page: groq.com/pricing

Recent Pricing Changes (1)

reduced effective 2026-08-16 medium impact
Groq shut down Llama 3.1 8B and Llama 3.3 70B on its free and developer plans. On the free plan Llama 3.1 8B had allowed 14,400 requests and 500,000 tokens a day; the free chat models left (gpt-oss-120b, gpt-oss-20b and a Qwen 27B model) allow 1,000 requests and 200,000 tokens a day each. Source ↗
📖 In-depth migration guide available

Read our detailed The Complete Free AI/ML Stack for 2026 guide with curated recommendations and service comparison.

All Free Alternatives (25)

12 of these carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold; their order rotates daily. 6 are demoted with the reason named, and 7 are listed last because they are not generally available or are not a free offer. How we rank.

Left out of this list: Pinecone (shares no subtype with this product), Qdrant (shares no subtype with this product), Deepgram (shares no subtype with this product), Kaggle (shares no subtype with this product), Roboflow (shares no subtype with this product), Scale AI (shares no subtype with this product), AssemblyAI (shares no subtype with this product), Replicate (shares no subtype with this product), Weights & Biases (shares no subtype with this product), Comet ML (shares no subtype with this product), Clarifai (we have not classified this record), Neptune.ai (we have not classified this record), Labelbox (shares no subtype with this product), Composio (shares no subtype with this product), DeepAR (none of this category's subtypes apply), OCR.Space (shares no subtype with this product), Parseur (shares no subtype with this product), Reducto (shares no subtype with this product), Tavily AI (shares no subtype with this product), paperspace (shares no subtype with this product), Arize AX (shares no subtype with this product), Audio Enhancer (none of this category's subtypes apply), Braintrust (shares no subtype with this product), Clair (none of this category's subtypes apply), Langfuse (shares no subtype with this product), LangSmith (shares no subtype with this product), Langtrace (we have not classified this record), LangWatch (shares no subtype with this product), Mediaworkbench.ai (none of this category's subtypes apply), Othor AI (none of this category's subtypes apply), Pollinations.AI (shares no subtype with this product), ReportGPT (none of this category's subtypes apply), Zenable (none of this category's subtypes apply), Exa (shares no subtype with this product), GPU-Bridge (we have not classified this record), Google Vertex AI Agent Engine (we have not classified this record), Google Vector Search 2.0 (shares no subtype with this product), Google Gemini Embedding 2 (shares no subtype with this product), Alibaba Cloud Qwen Code (none of this category's subtypes apply), E2B (shares no subtype with this product), Modal (shares no subtype with this product), ElevenLabs (we have not classified this record), Stability AI (we have not classified this record), Daytona (shares no subtype with this product), Blaxel (shares no subtype with this product), Novita Sandbox (shares no subtype with this product), Runloop (shares no subtype with this product), Mem0 (we have not classified this record), Zep (we have not classified this record), Letta (we have not classified this record), Supermemory (we have not classified this record), Cognee (we have not classified this record), Serper (shares no subtype with this product), Linkup (shares no subtype with this product), Parallel (shares no subtype with this product), Jina AI (shares no subtype with this product), You.com (shares no subtype with this product). Each is still listed in its category, with the vendor's own words we read that from on its page. How we decide this.

Free (Reduced)
AI / ML Read 2026-09-22 · catalogue date 2026-08-18
Keywords AI stable
Free
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-09-18
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-09-13 · catalogue date 2026-08-09
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-09-22 · catalogue date 2026-08-19
OpenRouter stable
Free
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-09-22
Maxim AI stable
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-07-30
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-09-18 · catalogue date 2026-08-12
Lumenfall.ai stable
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-09-13
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-09-21 · catalogue date 2026-09-05
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-09-13 · catalogue date 2026-08-09
Cohere stable
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-09-18 · catalogue date 2026-08-16
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-09-16 · catalogue date 2026-08-20
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-08-20 · tried again 2026-09-16 and did not read the page
−1 stale_verification We cannot confirm this offer: 1 consecutive re-check attempt has failed (most recently 2026-09-16 — the page never names Zhipu AI and is not served from its domain), never confirmed since it was indexed. This is our inability to verify, not a change by the vendor.
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-09-02 · catalogue date 2026-08-15
−1 stale_verification Our last read of the vendor's pricing page, on 2026-09-02, could read no amount, tier or rate on the page. This is our confidence in the record, not a change by the vendor.
Free
AI / ML Read 2026-08-17 · tried again 2026-09-16 and did not read the page
−1 stale_verification We cannot confirm this offer: 1 consecutive re-check attempt has failed (most recently 2026-09-16 — page content too short (likely JS-rendered SPA); the rendering client failed: the rendering client did not finish in time), never confirmed since it was indexed. This is our inability to verify, not a change by the vendor.
Fireworks AI stable
Free Credits
AI / ML Read 2026-09-24 · catalogue date 2026-08-25
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Basic (Free Credits)
AI / ML Read 2026-09-10 · catalogue date 2026-08-01
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Basic (Free Credits)" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Trial
AI / ML Read 2026-09-17 · catalogue date 2026-08-15
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Trial" is a trial that expires, not an ongoing free tier.
xAI
Pay-as-you-go
AI / ML Read 2026-08-14 · tried again 2026-09-05 and did not read the page
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Retired
AI / ML Read 2026-09-02 · catalogue date 2026-08-20
offer_retired GitHub Models's offer is recorded as Retired.
Pay-as-you-go
AI / ML Read 2026-09-21 · catalogue date 2026-08-18
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Pay-as-you-go
AI / ML Read 2026-08-24
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Pay-as-you-go
AI / ML Read 2026-09-12 · catalogue date 2026-07-09
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Pay-as-you-go
AI / ML Read 2026-09-26 · catalogue date 2026-09-10
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Pay-as-you-go
AI / ML Read 2026-08-15
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.
date
2026-09-30
query_key
alternative-to:Groq
seed
72a103c735600269d1e4228d7a757d78594d26d7f07fc18dc04633e585620ee1
tie_count
12

Category Trends

See the broader pricing landscape for this category.

↑ AI / ML Pricing Trends

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best free alternatives to Groq?
We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 25 free alternatives to Groq, each listed below with its tier, category and the read and catalogue dates we hold. Of those, 12 carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold, so they are listed in an order that rotates daily, 6 are demoted with the reason named, 7 are listed last behind a stated gate. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.
Is Groq's free tier still available?
Groq has a free tier (Free), but it's flagged as "caution" because of one specific recorded change, on 2026-08-16: Groq shut down Llama 3.1 8B and Llama 3.3 70B on its free and developer plans. On the free plan Llama 3.1 8B had allowed 14,400 requests and 500,000 tokens a day; the free chat models left (gpt-oss-120b, gpt-oss-20b and a Qwen 27B model) allow 1,000 requests and 200,000 tokens a day each. Source: https://console.groq.com/docs/deprecations
How many free alternatives to Groq exist?
There are 25 free alternatives to Groq tracked on AgentDeals across the AI / ML category.
Has Groq changed their pricing?
Groq has 1 recorded pricing change. The most recent was on 2026-08-16: Groq shut down Llama 3.1 8B and Llama 3.3 70B on its free and developer plans. On the free plan Llama 3.1 8B had allowed 14,400 requests and 500,000 tokens a day; the free chat models left (gpt-oss-120b, gpt-oss-20b and a Qwen 27B model) allow 1,000 requests and 200,000 tokens a day each. Source: https://console.groq.com/docs/deprecations

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