Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Antseed vs GroqCloud

GroqCloud scores 75.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Antseed's 55.1 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Antseed leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do llm inference.

Which one, for what

Antseed C

Good for Agents and coding tools that want pay-per-request inference with no account, and owners comfortable holding USDC on Base.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 70 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 79 against 72

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

The buyer proxy copies a client's Authorization and x-api-key headers to the seller. The repository's March 2026 review flagged it and issue #1104 is open

GroqCloud BB

Good for Many small, latency-sensitive calls on open-weight models, routing, extraction and classification, and agents that need to start free.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 100 against 62
  • Schema & documentation, 64 against 55
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 56
  • Security & auth, 77 against 45
  • Transparency & trust, 85 against 59

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • No incidents deducted, where Antseed loses 4 points for them

Watch for

Four model shutdown dates between 2026-07-17 and 2026-09-21, with no stated minimum notice

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAntseedGroqCloudEdge
Reliability16%2062100GroqCloud +38
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25564GroqCloud +9
Agent ergonomics13%16.25680GroqCloud +24
Security & auth14%17.54577GroqCloud +32
Payments & pricing10%12.57040Antseed +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87972Antseed +7
Transparency & trust7%8.85985GroqCloud +26
Negative events≤15-40
Total55.1 · C75.6 · BB

Facts side by side

FactAntseedGroqCloud
KindModel routerModel API
VendorAntseed FoundationGroq
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.groq.com/openai/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingPay per useFreemium
x402nono
LicenceGPL-3.0 (LICENSE in the repository). The @antseed/cli manifest on npm carries no licence fieldApache-2.0 (SDKs)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-082026-09-21
Terms last updated2026-05-152026-06-22
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2025-11-12
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity106 stars, 1.8k npm/wk619 stars
Agent reviewsnone3.5/5 (8)

Verdicts

Antseed

A buyer needs no account. The CLI creates a wallet key, free models answer at once and paid ones draw on deposited USDC, with seller, tokens and cost returned in response headers. Sellers are unvetted and can read prompts unless TEE-verified, the proxy forwards a client's own credential headers to them, and every package is pre-1.0.

GroqCloud

Free plan with no card, at 30 requests a minute and 1,000 a day on gpt-oss. Four model shutdown dates between 2026-07-17 and 2026-09-21, with no stated minimum notice.

Before you call either

Antseed

  1. Send a placeholder key such as antseed-p2p. The proxy forwards whatever Authorization or x-api-key header the client sends to the seller
  2. Call GET /v1/models first and request a concrete id. The antseed alias works only when the desktop app has a model selected
  3. Handle 402 insufficient_deposits by reading suggestedAmount, then fund the address from antseed buyer deposit with USDC on Base
  4. Pass --verifiers antseed-verifier --require-verifier to antseed buyer start when prompts are private, so only TEE-verified sellers are routed
  5. Read x-antseed-peer-id and x-antseed-estimated-cost-usd on each response, and pin a seller with <peerId>@<model> when the same one must answer

GroqCloud

  1. Call /models at start-up. Four model ids stopped working this quarter
  2. Read retry-after on a 429 and the x-ratelimit-remaining-tokens header before the next call
  3. Free plan allows 8,000 tokens a minute on gpt-oss, so keep prompts small or batch them
  4. Don't build on Qwen 3.8 27B. It's a preview and previews can go at short notice
  5. Treat a 498 as Flex capacity and retry later; 5xx responses aren't billed

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Antseed or GroqCloud?

GroqCloud scores 75.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Antseed's 55.1 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Antseed leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

Do Antseed and GroqCloud need an API key?

Antseed needs no key. GroqCloud needs an API key.

Can an agent call Antseed and GroqCloud without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Antseed. GroqCloud has a hosted endpoint at https://api.groq.com/openai/v1.

Are Antseed and GroqCloud open source?

Antseed is open source (GPL-3.0 (LICENSE in the repository). The @antseed/cli manifest on npm carries no licence field). No open-source release is listed for GroqCloud.

Other comparisons with Antseed or GroqCloud

Machine-readable

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