T
TGroq vs OpenRouter
Pricing, features, platforms and who each one suits — side by side.
G
Choose Groq if…
- you're in its core audience: ai application developers, startups building llm products
O
Choose OpenRouter if…
- you're in its core audience: software developers, ai app and agent builders
Side by side
Feature Groq OpenRouter
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starting price——
Free plan
Free trial
API
Open source
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, API
CompanyGroqOpenRouter
Full feature lists
G Groq
- OpenAI-compatible API endpoint
- Text generation and reasoning models
- Speech-to-text and text-to-speech
- Vision and OCR support
- Tool use with built-in, remote MCP and local tools
- Structured outputs and prompt caching
- Performance, Flex and Batch service tiers
- Dedicated bare-metal LPU capacity for enterprises
O OpenRouter
- OpenAI-compatible chat completions endpoint
- Access to 600+ models from 80+ providers
- Automatic fallbacks around provider outages and rate limits
- Image, video, text-to-speech and speech-to-text endpoints
- Bring your own provider keys
- Budgets, spend controls and activity log export
- EU and US in-region routing
- Hosted MCP server for agent tooling
Their home pages
What each vendor shows first: the pitch, the plans and the sign-up.
Groq · groq.com
OpenRouter · openrouter.aiWhat you'd pay
The cheapest plan that fits, per month, billed yearly where the plan offers it.
Groq
FreeFree
DeveloperUsage-based
OpenRouter
FreeFree
Standard5.5% fee on credit purchases
Business8% fee on credit purchases
EnterpriseCustom
Price changes we've recorded
We re-read each pricing page every month and log what changed.
Groq
No changes since we started tracking.
OpenRouter
- Nov 8, 2026Standard: Pay-as-you-go, 5.5% fee on credit purchases → 5.5% fee on credit purchases; Business: Pay-as-you-go, 8% fee on credit purchases → 8% fee on credit purchases
Strengths and limitations
Groq
- Drop-in OpenAI-compatible API
- Free plan available
- Covers text, speech, vision and tool use in one API
- 13 data centers across four continents
- Free plan has lower rate limits than Developer plan
- Batch and Flex processing require the Developer plan
OpenRouter
- No markup on provider token prices
- Free plan with 25+ free models
- BYOK fee-free up to $25,000 of monthly inference
- Payment by card, AliPay or USDC
- 5.5–8% platform fee on credit purchases
- Free plan limited to 50 requests per day
- SSO/SAML and SLAs only on Enterprise
More comparisons
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O
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Facts from each vendor's public pages, prices checked Nov 8, 2026. Editorial policy