Llama 3.3 70B Instruct API: Inference APIs vs Groq

Short answer

Cost: Groq listed it at a lower price, but it can no longer be called there, so the comparison that matters is between the options that still exist.
Availability: Retired from Groq free and developer tiers on 2026-08-16; requests return 404 model_not_found. Enterprise contracts only.
Not tied to this model? GPT-OSS 20B costs less here for the same workloads; keep Llama 3.3 70B Instruct only if your prompts and tests depend on it.

Side by side

	Llama 3.3 70B Instruct	Llama 3.3 70B on Groq
Served by	Inference APIs	Groq
Model author	Meta	Meta
Model id	`meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct-Turbo`	`llama-3.3-70b-versatile`
Input price	$0.20 / 1M tokens	$0.59 / 1M tokens
Output price	$0.50 / 1M tokens	$0.79 / 1M tokens
Context window	131K tokens	131K tokens
Capabilities	Chat, Tool calling, JSON mode, Multilingual	Chat, Tool calling, JSON mode
Weights	Open	Open
Status	Available	Retired
Limits	No per-minute or per-day request or token caps; usage draws on a prepaid balance	Retired from Groq free and developer tiers on 2026-08-16; requests return 404 model_not_found. Enterprise contracts only.
Time to first token	0.62 s	not measured by us
Output speed	98.2 tokens / s	not measured by us

What three workloads cost

List prices applied to the same work. The cheaper side of each row is in bold.

Workload	Llama 3.3 70B Instruct	Llama 3.3 70B on Groq	Difference
Chat assistant — 10,000 turns of 800 tokens in, 300 out	$3.10	$7.09	56%
Long prompts or RAG — 10,000 requests of 8,000 in, 500 out	$18.50	$51.15	64%
Generation-heavy — 10,000 requests of 500 in, 2,000 out	$11.00	$18.75	41%

Groq listed it at a lower price, but it can no longer be called there, so the comparison that matters is between the options that still exist. The Llama 3.3 70B on Groq column is its last list price, shown for reference only.

When to choose which

Choose Llama 3.3 70B Instruct here if

Llama 3.3 70B on Groq is no longer offered to self-serve accounts, so this is the one you can actually call
Cost is the deciding factor; it is cheaper in every workload above
Your prompts, evals or output formats were tuned on Llama 3.3 70B and you do not want to re-tune
You were on Groq: the llama-3.3-70b-versatile id is accepted unchanged

Llama 3.3 70B on Groq

Retired for self-serve accounts. There is no case for choosing it for new work.

Measured speed

Medians of three streamed runs on 2026-09-17, public endpoint, a prompt that asks for about 120 words. Time to first token is the first token of any kind, reasoning included; output speed counts every generated token from that point. Reasoning models then think before the visible answer starts: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct began answering after 0.62 s at default settings, which you can shorten with the reasoning controls on each model page. Expect ±30% with time of day. We did not measure Groq and do not quote other people's numbers; read "not measured" as unknown, not slow. Method and raw numbers: speed measurements.

Switching from Groq

The model id is accepted unchanged, so the edit is the base URL and the key.

Python · openai SDK

import os
from openai import OpenAI

# before: Groq
# client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.groq.com/openai/v1", api_key=os.environ["GROQ_API_KEY"])
# MODEL = "llama-3.3-70b-versatile"

# after: Inference APIs
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.inferenceapis.com/v1", api_key=os.environ["INFERENCE_API_KEY"])
MODEL = "llama-3.3-70b-versatile"   # alias of meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct-Turbo

resp = client.chat.completions.create(model=MODEL, messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}], max_tokens=500)

More detail, including Node, LangChain and LiteLLM: switching OpenAI-compatible providers.

FAQ

Which is cheaper, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct or Llama 3.3 70B on Groq?

Groq listed it at a lower price, but it can no longer be called there, so the comparison that matters is between the options that still exist. The table above uses list prices: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct $0.20 / 1M tokens input, $0.50 / 1M tokens output; Llama 3.3 70B on Groq $0.59 / 1M tokens input, $0.79 / 1M tokens output.

Can I still use Llama 3.3 70B on Groq?

Not on a self-serve account. Retired from Groq free and developer tiers on 2026-08-16; requests return 404 model_not_found. Enterprise contracts only. The same model is still served here, and the id llama-3.3-70b-versatile is accepted as an alias, so existing code needs only a new base URL and key.

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct API Playground

Spotted a price or limit that has changed? Tell us and we will re-check the provider page.

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct vs Llama 3.3 70B on Groq