Free-tier head-to-head comparison.
Pick OpenRouter when a/b testing models, multi-provider failover, building agents that pick model per task. the fastest way to try every frontier model with one key.
Pick Groq when latency-sensitive apps (sub-second response). chatbots, autocomplete, agents needing fast tool-use.
| Feature | OpenRouter | Groq |
|---|---|---|
| Top model | meta-llama/llama-3.3-70b-instruct:free | llama-3.3-70b-versatile |
| Free RPM | 20 | 30 |
| Free RPD | 200 | 14,400 |
| Free credit | — | — |
| Card required | No | No |
| OpenAI-compatible | Yes | Yes |
| API base | https://openrouter.ai/api/v1 | https://api.groq.com/openai/v1 |
| Best for | A/B testing models, multi-provider failover, building agents that pick model per task. The fastest way to try every frontier model with one key. | Latency-sensitive apps (sub-second response). Chatbots, autocomplete, agents needing fast tool-use. |
| Not for | Latency-critical use cases — adds a routing hop. Use Groq / direct provider when ms matter. | Vision, image generation, embeddings (Groq is text-only LLM inference). |