Cerebras Inference
World’s fastest AI inference delivering 2,000+ tokens/sec on Llama 3
About Cerebras Inference
Cerebras Inference is the world's fastest AI inference platform, powered by the revolutionary Cerebras CS-3 Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE-3). Delivering unprecedented speeds exceeding 2,100 tokens per second on Llama 3.1 8B and over 450 tokens per second on Llama 3.1 70B, Cerebras runs AI inference up to 20x faster than traditional NVIDIA GPU clusters. By replacing traditional GPU memory bandwidth bottlenecks with 44 Gigabytes of on-chip SRAM across a monolithic silicon wafer, Cerebras achieves instantaneous response times that transform conversational AI, real-time code synthesis, and multi-step agentic reflection loops into fluid, zero-latency interactions.
Traditional GPUs are limited by external HBM/DRAM bandwidth, forcing token generation to stall while weights are retrieved across PCIe buses. The Cerebras WSE-3 features 900,000 AI-optimized compute cores and 21 Petabytes/sec of memory bandwidth directly on a single silicon wafer. Cerebras Inference provides a 100% OpenAI-compatible API, allowing developers to switch their application endpoints with zero code modifications. It supports streaming completions, tool calling, JSON structured schemas, and massive token context lengths with guaranteed instantaneous time-to-first-token.
Create an account on the Cerebras Cloud Portal to generate your API key.
Review the available models including Llama 3.1 8B, Llama 3.1 70B, and DeepSeek variants.
Configure your OpenAI SDK base URL to https://api.cerebras.ai/v1.
Execute prompts and stream back responses at speeds exceeding 2,000 tokens per second.
Integrate into real-time voice agents or multi-agent loops to eliminate latency bottlenecks.
Capabilities & Features
Common Use Cases
real-time-voice-agents
instant-code-generation
autonomous-agentic-loops
large-scale-synthetic-data
zero-latency-chat-interfaces
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Cerebras Inference so much faster than GPUs?
Cerebras runs models on the Wafer-Scale Engine with 44GB of on-chip SRAM and 21 PB/s memory bandwidth, eliminating external memory transfer bottlenecks.
Is Cerebras API compatible with the OpenAI SDK?
Yes, Cerebras API adheres strictly to the OpenAI specification. You can use standard openai-python and openai-node libraries.
What is the free tier limit on Cerebras Inference?
Cerebras provides 1 million free tokens per day for developers to test and build applications.
Free Plan
Free developer tier with 1M tokens/day access to Llama 3.1 8B and 70B models.
Paid Plan
Developer Pro starts at $0.10 / 1M tokens for Llama 3.1 8B and $0.60 / 1M tokens for Llama 3.1 70B with dedicated rate limits.
Direct link · Verified & reader-supported
Pros & Cons
Unmatched inference velocity: 2,100+ tokens/sec on 8B models and 450+ tokens/sec on 70B
Up to 20x faster than NVIDIA H100 GPU clusters with sub-10ms time-to-first-token
Extremely generous free tier (1,000,000 tokens free per day)
100% OpenAI API compatible with native streaming and function calling
Transforms real-time voice agents and multi-step autonomous workflows into instant responses
Dedicated to open-weights models supported on the Wafer-Scale Engine
Context windows currently optimized for 8k–32k tokens depending on model architecture
Looking for the best alternatives to Cerebras Inference?
Side-by-side feature matrix, pricing models, and decision frameworks.
Alternatives to Cerebras Inference
Deep comparison hubGroq
The fastest AI inference in the world
An AI infrastructure company that uses LPU (Language Processing Unit) technology to deliver LLM responses at near-instant speeds.
Together AI
The fastest cloud for open-source AI
A cloud platform for fine-tuning and running the world's leading open-source AI models at scale.
Fireworks AI
Production-grade serverless inference platform for open AI models
Fireworks AI is an enterprise AI inference and model serving platform built to run open-weights LLMs, vision models, and multimodal architectures with lightning-fast speeds and lowest cost. Created by former Meta AI and PyTorch infrastructure engineers, Fireworks powers millions of daily AI requests with sub-100ms time-to-first-token (TTFT) and high token throughput. Fireworks allows developers to seamlessly deploy, fine-tune, and serve models like Llama 3.1/3.3, DeepSeek-R1/V3, Mixtral, Qwen 2.5, and Flux.1 with zero cold starts. It uniquely supports instant LoRA fine-tuning switching on shared GPU infrastructure, allowing thousands of custom fine-tuned adapters to run without paying for dedicated hardware.
Modal Labs
Serverless cloud for AI models, batch jobs, and GPU workloads in Python
Modal Labs is a high-performance serverless cloud platform that enables AI engineers and developers to run Python code in the cloud with instant access to thousands of CPUs, GPUs, and persistent network volumes. Founded by former Spotify CTO Erik Bernhardsson, Modal reimagines cloud computing with sub-second cold starts and zero infrastructure configuration. With Modal, you define your container image, dependencies, and GPU hardware directly inside standard Python code using simple decorators (e.g. `@app.function(gpu="H100")`). Modal handles container building, volume mounting, GPU scheduling, and automatic scaling down to zero in milliseconds, making it the premier choice for running generative AI models, ComfyUI video pipelines, and massive parallel batch jobs.
LlamaIndex
Leading data framework for connecting custom data sources to LLMs and Agentic RAG workflows.
LlamaIndex is the premier open-source data framework designed to bridge private, enterprise, and unstructured data with large language models. By providing sophisticated data connectors, automated parser modules, semantic chunking algorithms, and multi-document index structures, LlamaIndex enables developers to build context-augmented LLM applications and autonomous knowledge retrieval engines with minimal boilerplate. From parsing complex multi-page PDF documents and financial spreadsheets to orchestrating complex Agentic RAG workflows that query multiple disparate databases, LlamaIndex handles the complete data ingestion, indexing, and query evaluation lifecycle.
Kestra
Declarative event-driven workflow orchestrator for microservices, AI agents, and data pipelines
Kestra is an open-source, event-driven orchestration platform built to automate and coordinate complex data pipelines, microservices, and multi-agent AI systems. With a modern declarative YAML-first architecture, Kestra enables engineering teams to manage scheduled tasks, webhook triggers, distributed compute jobs, and LLM agent pipelines through code or a rich interactive UI. The platform provides over 600+ pre-built plugins spanning major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure), databases (Postgres, Snowflake, BigQuery), and modern AI ecosystems (OpenAI, LangChain, Hugging Face, Vector DBs). Workflows can execute parallel compute tasks, branch conditionally, manage secrets securely, and handle automated retries with exponential backoff. Kestra eliminates the operational overhead of legacy orchestrators by running statelessly on top of modern container runtimes and Kubernetes, providing real-time workflow visualizers, sub-millisecond execution triggers, and enterprise-grade role-based access control.
Compare Cerebras Inference with Alternatives
Side-by-side feature, pricing, and pros & cons breakdowns
Cerebras Inference vs Groq
Side-by-side comparison
Cerebras Inference vs Together AI
Side-by-side comparison
Cerebras Inference vs Fireworks AI
Side-by-side comparison
Cerebras Inference vs Modal Labs
Side-by-side comparison
Cerebras Inference vs LlamaIndex
Side-by-side comparison
Cerebras Inference vs Kestra
Side-by-side comparison
