# Groq API 58 Hacker News commenters recommended Groq API and 23 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** People recommend Groq for very fast, cheap model inference, especially open models like gpt-oss and Kimi K2. The most common caveat is inconsistent latency and reliability. ## Why people recommend it - Very fast LLM inference (9 comments): "When you use Cereberas (or Groq) to develop an API, the turn around speed of iterating on jobs is so much faster" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146586)) "Its inferencing speeds are faster than those of H200s, and it has the lowest costs in the industry." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46381429)) "Many hundreds of tokens per second of output is the norm, in my experience." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380715)) - Low cost per token (4 comments): "they offer something different to most other providers (cheaper, faster, and until recently "we don't store your data by default")" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405826)) "Its inferencing speeds are faster than those of H200s, and it has the lowest costs in the industry." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46381429)) "That's definitely much cheaper and much faster than anthropic models" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45838218)) - Runs large open models quickly (6 comments): "I use them heavily in production because OSS 120B on Groq/Cerebras is one of the fastest models available" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212085)) "They're running much larger models (orders of magnitude) and still reaching competitive speeds." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321392)) "Currently the best performance I can get is the gpt-oss models on Groq or Cerebras" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48028781)) - Low latency for voice and pipelines (3 comments): "We use Groq with gpt-oss-20b, which gives great results and only adds ~250ms to the processing pipeline." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46383741)) "TTFT with Groq and colocation are both real wins that don't get talked about enough" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47235885)) "inference is finally fast enough to be in the system loop" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46435170)) ## What people warn about - Inconsistent latency and reliability (3 comments): "Groq is very fast, but the latency wasn't always consistent and I saw some very strange responses on a few calls" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229121)) "My company had a really terrible experience trying to use Groq, and I would NOT recommend anyone use their service if you need reliability." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365674)) "response times would vary so wildly that it just about erased any benefit in their throughput" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48369273)) - Suspected quantization and caching issues (3 comments): "It is certainly fast, but I think there might be some caching issues somewhere." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47088168)) "I could swear they were doing some problematic quantization" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380599)) "they are quantizing the models underneath. And they dont even disclose it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48368289)) - Few recent models supported (2 comments): "Their website doesn't list them as offering any models that were released recently." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48366291)) "The problem with groq was they only allowed LORA on llama 8b and 70b" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47110951)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Cerebras Inference](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cerebras.md): 109 recommend - [Tinfoil](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tinfoil.md): 21 recommend - [Darkbloom](https://hackerapproved.com/p/darkbloom.md): 19 recommend - [Synthetic](https://hackerapproved.com/p/synthetic.md): 18 recommend - [GLM-4.7 on Cerebras](https://hackerapproved.com/p/glm-4-7-on-cerebras.md): 12 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://groq.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Groq API", https://hackerapproved.com/p/groq/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).