rate limits

Beyond Groq alone: route past rate limits

Groq is fast. Its free tier is capped at around 30 req/min per key. When you hit that cap, requests fail with a 429. FreeLLM includes Groq as one of 8 providers and routes elsewhere when Groq rate-limits, so you keep getting responses.

What FreeLLM adds on top of Groq

FreeLLM does not replace Groq. It wraps it along with 7 other providers and adds three things that make the free tier actually usable at scale.

Multi-key rotation Add 3 Groq API keys and FreeLLM round-robins across them. You get roughly 90 req/min from Groq alone, without any changes to your application code.

Automatic failover When Groq returns a 429, the next request goes to Gemini, Mistral, Cerebras, or whichever provider has capacity. Your app sees a successful response.

Circuit breakers If Groq has an outage or sustained rate-limiting, FreeLLM sidelines it until it recovers. Other providers absorb traffic in the meantime.

By the numbers

Feature	FreeLLM + Groq	Groq direct
Rate limit (single key)	~30 req/min per key	~30 req/min
Max throughput with key stacking	~450 req/min (8 providers, 3 keys each)	~90 req/min (3 keys, manual rotation)
Failover on 429	Yes, automatic	No
Circuit breakers	Yes	No
Providers	8 (Groq, Gemini, Mistral, Cerebras, and more)	1
Dashboard	Yes, real-time	No

If you only need Groq

If you never hit rate limits and only want Llama models via Groq, using Groq directly is the simpler choice. There is no gateway to deploy, no extra latency from an intermediate service, and no configuration to maintain. Keep it simple when simple works.

If rate limits are your problem

FreeLLM routes around rate limits automatically. You add your Groq keys (and keys for other providers), deploy in 2 minutes, and change one line of code. After that, a Groq 429 is invisible to your application.

Stack multiple Groq keys. FreeLLM rotates across them without any logic in your app.
When Groq is saturated, Gemini, Mistral, and Cerebras take over. Same model family, similar output quality.
Response caching cuts repeat requests to around 23ms. Groq never sees them.

The code change is one line

If you are already calling Groq directly with the OpenAI SDK, the change is a base URL swap. Your model names and message format stay the same.

python — before (Groq direct)

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.groq.com/openai/v1",
    api_key="gsk_..."
)

python — after (FreeLLM, routes through Groq + 7 others)

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://your-freellm-instance/v1",  # only change
    api_key="your-freellm-key"
)

Deploy FreeLLM in 2 minutes. Add your Groq keys and 7 other providers. Route past rate limits automatically.

Deploy FreeLLM in 2 minutes

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