Cerebras Inference
Wafer-scale chips serving open models at thousands of tokens per second.
Visit Cerebras Inference Free tier with daily limits; pay per million tokens
Quick verdict
- Best for
- Real-time agents and voice where latency matters
- Pricing
- Free tier with daily limits; pay per million tokens
- Not ideal if
- Narrow model list compared with Together or Fireworks
What is Cerebras Inference?
Cerebras Inference runs open-weight models such as Llama and Qwen on its wafer-scale processors, delivering the fastest token generation available for many models, through an OpenAI-compatible API with a free tier for developers.
Key features
- Thousands of output tokens per second on supported models
- OpenAI-compatible API
- Free developer tier
- Popular open-weight models including Llama and Qwen
- Enterprise dedicated capacity
Pros
- Speed is genuinely in a different class — reasoning steps feel instant
- Simple to swap in behind an OpenAI-style client
- Free tier is generous for prototypes
Cons
- Narrow model list compared with Together or Fireworks
- Capacity limits and queues on the free tier
- No fine-tuning or custom model hosting for most customers
Best for
Real-time agents and voice where latency mattersReasoning models that burn many tokens per answerDevelopers comparing fast-inference options
Read more
Related comparisons
Alternatives to Cerebras Inference
Groq
4.5
Chat with open models like Llama at speeds that feel almost instant.
FreemiumFree chat playground, API pay-as-you-go from a few cents per million tokens
Released July 2026
Fireworks AI
Production inference for open-source LLMs — function calling, structured output, fine-tuning.
FreemiumFree $1 credit, then $0.20-$5/M tokens
Released September 2022
Together AI
Fastest inference for open-source models — Llama 4, Qwen3, DeepSeek V3 at low cost.
FreemiumFree credits, then $0.20-$5/M tokens
Released June 2022