Summary
Fast-inference providers: Groq (LPU hardware, extreme decode speed), Together (broad open-model support), Fireworks (production-grade serving of open models). All three serve Llama, Qwen, DeepSeek, and dozens more at prices below the frontier providers.
Objectives
- 01Distinguish the three providers.
- 02State when to prefer them over the frontier.
- 03Recognize the tradeoffs.
The Lesson
The providers
Groq: custom LPU hardware; hundreds of tokens per second on Llama-70B; latency champion. Together: broad model catalog, dedicated deployments, fine-tuning. Fireworks: production-grade with function calling, JSON mode, custom model hosting.
The tradeoff
Cheaper than frontier providers, faster than most, but you're serving open models with capability ceilings below GPT-4o/Claude/Gemini. Right choice for high-volume applications on open models; wrong choice when frontier capability matters.
Key Ideas
- Groq for latency, Together for breadth, Fireworks for production polish.
- Open-model capability ceiling is the ceiling.