Provider free tier · Sources reviewed 2026-07-25

GroqCloud free tier

What GroqCloud publishes about its free allowance, which models it covers, and how to point an existing tool at it.

What GroqCloud's free tier allows

Free plan limits are per model and enforced per organization. llama-3.3-70b-versatile: 30 RPM, 1,000 RPD, 12K TPM, 100K TPD. llama-3.1-8b-instant: 30 RPM, 14,400 RPD, 6K TPM, 500K TPD. openai/gpt-oss-120b and openai/gpt-oss-20b: 30 RPM, 1,000 RPD, 8K TPM, 200K TPD. groq/compound: 30 RPM, 250 RPD, 70K TPM. Cached tokens do not count toward token limits. The RPM/RPD columns here quote llama-3.3-70b-versatile.

Published limits
30 requests per minute, 1000 requests per day
Free access type
Provider free tier
Credit card
Not required
Protocol
OpenAI-compatible at https://api.groq.com/openai/v1
Lifecycle
Active
Sources reviewed
2026-07-25

The Free Plan is available without a payment method; the account Limits page is authoritative for the quota actually active on your organization.

Where GroqCloud sits in this catalog

GroqCloud is one of 15 provider free tier entries among the 25 providers detailed here. It asks for no credit card, which is true of 23 of the 25. It publishes fixed numbers — 30 requests per minute, 1000 requests per day — which only 9 of the 25 do.

Compared withPublished limitsCardEndpoint
GroqCloud (this page) 30 requests per minute, 1000 requests per day Not required api.groq.com
SambaNova Cloud 20 requests per minute, 20 requests per day Not required api.sambanova.ai
Cohere 20 requests per minute Not required api.cohere.ai
Cloudflare Workers AI Published in compute units Not required api.cloudflare.com

Models GroqCloud lists as free

  • llama-3.3-70b-versatile — Llama, also free at 8 other providers here
  • llama-3.1-8b-instant — Llama, also free at 8 other providers here
  • openai/gpt-oss-120b — gpt-oss, also free at 9 other providers here
  • openai/gpt-oss-20b — gpt-oss, also free at 9 other providers here
  • groq/compound — not part of any family this catalog tracks across providers

9 other providers here also host the gpt-oss family on free terms, and the terms are not the same: SambaNova Cloud, Cloudflare Workers AI, Hugging Face Inference Providers, Fireworks AI, Ollama Cloud, Cerebras Inference, Vercel AI Gateway, Together AI, Scaleway Generative APIs. 8 other providers here also host the Llama family on free terms, and the terms are not the same: SambaNova Cloud, Cloudflare Workers AI, Fireworks AI, IBM watsonx.ai, Together AI, Nebius Token Factory, DeepInfra, Scaleway Generative APIs.

Checking a GroqCloud key

The CORS preflight allows any origin to send an Authorization header, so a browser can call this endpoint directly. That was measured against https://api.groq.com on 2026-07-25.

So a key can be checked in the browser checker without installing anything. If you would rather not paste a key into a web page, this does the same thing:

#!/usr/bin/env sh
set -eu

: "${GROQ_API_KEY:?Set GROQ_API_KEY to a key you created yourself at the provider console}"

# Prints the models this key can reach, then the HTTP status on its own line so
# 200, 401, and 429 stay distinguishable.
curl --silent --show-error \
  --write-out '\nHTTP %{http_code}\n' \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $GROQ_API_KEY" \
  'https://api.groq.com/openai/v1/models'

Using a GroqCloud key

GroqCloud serves the OpenAI chat completions protocol at https://api.groq.com/openai/v1. Point any client that accepts a custom base URL at it, and let the client read the key from GROQ_API_KEY so the value never lands in a config file:

# Merge this snippet into ~/.codex/config.toml.
# Project-level config cannot select a custom model provider.
model = "llama-3.3-70b-versatile"
model_provider = "groq"

[model_providers.groq]
name = "GroqCloud OpenAI-compatible gateway"
base_url = "https://api.groq.com/openai/v1"
env_key = "GROQ_API_KEY"
wire_api = "responses"

Questions about the GroqCloud free tier

Does GroqCloud ask for a credit card?

No. GroqCloud is one of 23 providers here that hand out free access without a card, so the only cost of trying it is the signup.

What are GroqCloud's free-tier rate limits?

GroqCloud publishes 30 requests per minute, 1000 requests per day. Those are the numbers in its own documentation as reviewed on 2026-07-25.

What happens when a GroqCloud key hits the limit?

The endpoint answers 429. That is a statement about the request that was refused, not about how much quota is left; only a reset header from the provider tells you when it clears.

Is the GroqCloud free tier going away?

Nothing in GroqCloud's own documentation says so as of 2026-07-25. The Free Plan is available without a payment method; the account Limits page is authoritative for the quota actually active on your organization.

Can GroqCloud be used with Codex, Cline, or Continue?

Yes. GroqCloud serves the OpenAI chat completions protocol at https://api.groq.com/openai/v1, so any client that accepts a custom base URL can use it. Claude Code is the exception, because it speaks the Anthropic protocol instead.

Official sources

Every figure above was read from those pages on 2026-07-25. Where a provider states a limit only inside a console, this catalog records that fact instead of a number. See the methodology for how an entry gets in and how it gets corrected.