# GroqCloud vs xAI API (Grok) (slim)

> GroqCloud scores 74.5 (BB) to xAI's 71.7 (BB) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/groq-vs-xai-api.md (~6,650 tokens) · this version ~3,430 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/groq-vs-xai-api.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/groq-vs-xai-api
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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GroqCloud scores 74.5 (BB) on agent readiness against xAI API (Grok)'s 71.7 (BB), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. xAI API (Grok) leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do llm inference.

- GroqCloud: BB 74.5, rank #81 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/groq.min.md
- xAI API (Grok): BB 71.7, rank #152 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/xai-api.min.md
- GroqCloud, 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, 90 against 55; Payments & pricing, 40 against 20; Transparency & trust, 85 against 63. Also Free to start without a card.
- xAI API (Grok), good for Agents that want a capable model at a low per-token price with built-in web and X search, remote MCP and voice, and teams that need self-serve ZDR or US-only processing. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 88 against 64; Agent ergonomics, 90 against 80; Security & auth, 97 against 82; Maintenance & community, 77 against 72.

| Category | GroqCloud | xAI API (Grok) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 90 | 55 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 64 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 80 | 90 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 82 | 97 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 72 | 77 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 85 | 63 |

| Fact (where they differ) | GroqCloud | xAI API (Grok) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Groq | SpaceXSI (xAI) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.groq.com/openai/v1` | `https://api.x.ai/v1` |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) | Proprietary service under xAI's enterprise terms of service. The Python SDK is Apache-2.0 |
| Last release | 2026-10-15 | 2026-11-02 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-06-22 | 2026-10-27 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-11-12 | 2026-10-27 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 619 stars | 597 stars, 912k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, GroqCloud +35: GroqCloud 90 (Status page at groqstatus.com on incident.io, with components for the API, each production and preview model and the website (20). The page's RSS feed and the incident pages it links, read on 1 November, list three incidents in the 90-day window, all in October, and nothing since 12 October apart from a console maintenance on 18 October. On 10 October the enterprise-only preview MiniMax M2.7 had failed requests from data centre hardware issues from 10:09 to 16:14 UTC. The incident's header and impact record say degraded performance, while its Identified update set the model to partial outage and warned of failed requests. On 12 October console.groq.com returned 500 errors on metrics, /models and key creation from 03:17 to 03:38, and the vendor said inference requests were not affected. On 12 October MiniMax M2.7 had a partial outage from 18:17 to 18:36. None took down a core API for an hour, since the six-hour incident hit one enterprise preview model that the status page describes as for evaluation only, so minor incidents only (20). A stricter reading would count it as a major and give 10. Limits published per model, 30 requests a minute, 1,000 a day and 8,000 tokens a minute on gpt-oss for the free plan, re-read on 1 November (15). 429 carries `retry-after`, `x-ratelimit-*` headers come on every response, and the errors page says to wait before retrying a 503 and that a 502 may clear on retry (15). The Performance Tier, enterprise only, lists a 99.9% availability SLA with details in the offline agreement, per the 6 October check, not re-read on 1 November (10). gpt-oss and Whisper models are production, Qwen 3.8 27B, MiniMax M2.7 and Muse Spark Open are previews (10). 20+20+15+15+10+10 = 90.); xAI API (Grok) 55 (Status page at status.x.ai with components for the global and US API endpoints, voice, the consumer apps and, since the Cursor merger, Cursor's services, with an RSS feed (20). The feed, read on 6 November, now holds 267 incidents back to 11 August, so the whole 90-day window is readable. On the API components there were high error rates on grok-4.6 and grok-4.5 from 21:57 to 23:28 UTC on 17 August (about 90 minutes) and a models outage on the global and US endpoints from 13:30 to 17:09 UTC on 3 September (about 3 hours 40 minutes), so several majors. A 26-minute datacenter outage across the API on 22 September, voice disruptions of 12 and 28 minutes on 10 September and 6 October, a 63-minute voice and Imagine degradation on 30 October and a 37-second model degradation on 24 October add to the record (0). Rate limits published per model and tier, grok-4.7 at Tier 0 is 150 requests a second and 50M TPM, with the per-second cap derived as RPM divided by 48 (15). The rate-limits page shows exponential backoff on 429, but no Retry-After header or overload guidance was found (10 of 15). No SLA found in the docs or llms.txt (0). The Responses API has been GA since September 2025 and grok-4.7 carries no preview label (10).)
- Schema & documentation, xAI API (Grok) +24: GroqCloud 64 (No OpenAPI document in the docs, and the SDK's .stats.yml carries only an endpoint count of 17, no spec URL (0). llms.txt at console.groq.com/llms.txt (10). Reference not read in full this run (15 of 20). Structured outputs have a Strict mode as well as Best-effort (15). The errors page lists 15 status codes with recovery advice, including 498 for Flex capacity and 424 for remote MCP auth, and the `error` object with `message` and `type` (14 of 15). The changelog at console.groq.com/docs/changelog, read on 1 November, is dated, but its newest entry is 18 April 2026 and it doesn't record the four shutdowns since July, which only the deprecations page carries (10 of 15).); xAI API (Grok) 88 (OpenAPI 3.1 document at docs.x.ai/openapi.json, 39 paths and 205 schemas on 6 November, covering Responses, Chat Completions, files, images, videos and models. The batch endpoints documented in the REST reference still aren't in it (20 of 25, applied as for gemini-api's missing Interactions API). llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every page, plus a docs MCP server (10). The models page says which model to use for code, chat, images, video and voice, and reference pages list each parameter. Reference not read in full (18 of 20). Structured outputs are guaranteed to match the schema for supported keywords, and tool arguments always conform with `strict` implicitly true (15). Examples in Python, JavaScript and curl on every guide. The debugging page lists status codes with fixes, but the cause cells for 400, 403, 404 and 415 are still empty (13 of 15). Release notes are grouped by month without day dates, and model slugs come as aliases and dated versions (12 of 15).)
- Transparency & trust, GroqCloud +22: GroqCloud 85 (Closed service with clear terms, SDKs Apache-2.0 (15). The data page agrees with the listing on retention and adds detail, batch files kept 30 days unless deleted, fine-tuning data kept until the customer deletes it, and SCCs for transfers. The services agreement bars training on inputs and outputs, and the DPA gives 15 days' notice of sub-processor changes to subscribers, both read on 6 October. The agreement extends zero retention to 'Eligible Customers' where the data page says all customers may enable it (26 of 30). Deprecations page with announcement and shutdown dates (20). All customer data in Google Cloud buckets in the US, per the data page. The DPA points to a sub-processor list at trust.groq.com/subprocessors, which needs JavaScript and wasn't read (10 of 20).); xAI API (Grok) 63 (Closed service under xAI's enterprise terms, with the Python SDK under Apache-2.0 (15). The docs agree with each other on no training, 30-day abuse retention, 30-day storage of stateful responses and the ZDR route, but the privacy policy, enterprise terms and DPA at x.ai/legal answered a Cloudflare block page on 6 October and again on 6 November, so they couldn't be compared (15 of 30). Dated migration guides and redirect tables for each retirement, but no written deprecation policy, and Chat Completions, Anthropic compatibility and grok-voice-2.0 are labelled deprecated with no date (12 of 20). The US regional endpoint states what stays in the US, the global endpoint guarantees no region, and no subprocessor list was readable (10 of 20).)
- Payments & pricing, GroqCloud +20: GroqCloud 40 (No machine payment protocol (0). Per-token prices on the models page, read without a login, such as gpt-oss-120b at $0.15 in and $0.60 out per million (20). Free plan with no card (20). Console sign-up in a browser (0).); xAI API (Grok) 20 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-token and per-call prices published without a login on docs.x.ai/developers/pricing (20). No free tier found for the text API, and the quickstart says to load the account with credits (0). Sign-up is in the browser at console.x.ai. The Management API can create keys and top up prepaid credit, but only with a management key made by a person in the console, so no line credit (0).)
- Security & auth, xAI API (Grok) +15: GroqCloud 82 (Model reading. Bearer keys scoped to a project, with custom request limits per project and model permissions at organisation and project level. The security onboarding page advises rotating keys periodically and revoking them at once if compromise is suspected (30). The services agreement, read first-hand on 6 October and not re-read on 17 October, says Groq is not permitted to use inputs or outputs for training unless the customer grants permission (20). No retention by default, up to 30 days for reliability and abuse monitoring, and zero retention as a setting any customer can turn on in Data Controls, per the data page (15). Request logs, usage per project and a read-only Reader role (12 of 15). groq.com's security.txt holds a Contact line and nothing else, and the trust centre at trust.groq.com is a Vanta page that renders only with JavaScript, so certifications and any bug bounty are unchecked (5 of 20).); xAI API (Grok) 97 (Model reading. Team API keys with ACLs per endpoint and per model, QPM and TPM caps, expiry, and create, rotate, disable and delete through the Management API, plus documented mTLS. GitHub secret scanning disables leaked keys and emails the owner (30). The security FAQ says SpaceXSI never trains on API inputs or outputs without explicit permission (20). Requests and responses are kept 30 days for abuse auditing, then deleted, and team admins can switch on zero data retention themselves, confirmed by an `x-zero-data-retention` header on every response (15). Console audit log and a Management API audit-events endpoint, plus optional per-key request logging (15). security.txt valid to 2027-06-29 with a HackerOne bug bounty and a separate safety contact for prompt-injection issues. SOC 2 Type 2 is claimed in the security FAQ with the reports behind an NDA in the trust centre, so 17 of 20. Remote MCP doesn't support `require_approval`, which the model checklist doesn't score but reviewers should see. New in October, a `guidelines` array lets the caller make the model decline nsfw, violence or profanity content, which the checklist doesn't score.)
- Agent ergonomics, xAI API (Grok) +10: GroqCloud 80 (Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). Tool use documented, parallel calls and forced choice not checked (15 of 20). Strict structured outputs (15). Automatic prompt caching at 50% off cached input, with a 2-hour cache life, on gpt-oss-20b, gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-safeguard-20b only (10 of 15). 131,072-token context on every self-serve model; only MiniMax M2.7, a preview on enterprise pricing, reaches 196,608 (5 of 15). Batch at half price (10). Official SDKs for Python and JavaScript (10). Errors page with codes, recovery advice and a typed error object (15).); xAI API (Grok) 90 (Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). Function calling with parallel calls on by default and `tool_choice` of auto, required, none or a named function (20). Guaranteed structured outputs (15). Automatic prompt caching, cached input at 0.25x on grok-4.7 ($0.50 per million) and 0.16x on grok-4.3 (15). 500,000-token context on grok-4.7 and 1,000,000 on grok-4.3, 13 of 15 for the default model's 500K. The Batch API is now 20% off on grok-4.7, 4.6 and 4.5 as well as the older models, with batch requests outside the rate limits (10 of 10, up from 5 on 6 October). One first-party SDK, `xai-sdk` for Python, with the OpenAI SDKs and Vercel's AI SDK documented as alternatives (5 of 10). Status codes documented with fixes, no Retry-After header found (12 of 15).)

| Task | GroqCloud | xAI API (Grok) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Research a product and write a sourced report | $0.85 | $21.76 |
| Build a small four-page website | $0.21 | $4.85 |
| Find and fix a bug in a large codebase | $0.05 | $1.07 |