AI Tool Comparison
Comparing as AI Code Generation & AutocompleteZed vs Groq
Zed
VS
Groq
Verdict by Category
Detailed Comparison
Feature
Zed
Groq
Pricing
FreemiumZed offers three tiers. Personal is $0 forever, including 2,000 accepted edit predictions per month and unlimited use with your own API keys or external agents like Claude Agent and Codex CLI. Pro is $10/month with unlimited edit predictions, $5 of included tokens, and usage-based billing beyond that at API list price plus 10%, billed either at month-end or per $10 of overage incurred, whichever comes first; a two-week free trial with $20 of token credits is available (Anthropic's Opus models are excluded from the trial). Business is $30 per seat per month with no minimum seat count, adding org-wide AI model policies, data governance controls, role-based access controls, and unified spend visibility across the organization; order form contracts are available at 25+ seats. Business does not currently offer a free trial, and SSO, SAML, and SCIM are planned but not yet available.
FreemiumGroqCloud uses pay-as-you-go pricing per million tokens with no seat license or minimum spend. Rates range from roughly $0.05 input / $0.08 output for Llama 3.1 8B Instant up to about $1.00 input / $3.00 output for Kimi K2, with the flagship Llama 3.3 70B Versatile priced at $0.59 input / $0.79 output and GPT-OSS 120B at $0.15 input / $0.60 output. Whisper v3 Turbo transcription is priced at $0.04 per hour of audio. A free tier is available to all registered users with no credit card required, offering access to every model at 30 requests per minute. The Batch API and prompt caching each cut rates by roughly 50%, and can be combined for an effective rate of about 25% of on-demand pricing on eligible workloads. Enterprise pricing, including GroqAssured governance features and dedicated GroqMetal infrastructure, is available by contacting Groq's sales team.
Categories
AI Coding Assistants
AI Developer APIs & PlatformsAI Coding Assistants
Summary
A minimal, GPU-accelerated code editor built for speed and AI collaboration
The fastest inference cloud for open-source LLMs, powered by custom LPU chips
Zed Pros & Cons
Pros
- Exceptionally fast, GPU-accelerated Rust editor with near-instant startup and low input latency
- Free Personal plan allows unlimited AI usage with your own API keys at no extra cost to Zed
- Native real-time multiplayer collaboration built into the core editor, not a plugin
- Open Agent Client Protocol (ACP) lets developers bring virtually any agent or model into the editor
- Fully open source, so the codebase can be inspected, extended, and self-hosted
Cons
- Much smaller extension ecosystem (roughly 800) compared to VS Code's 50,000+
- No codebase-wide AI indexing like some competitors, limiting AI context to file-level and open project scope
- SSO, SAML, and SCIM are planned but not yet available, limiting appeal for larger regulated enterprises
- Pro's $5 included token credit is modest and can be exceeded quickly with heavy agentic use, triggering usage-based billing
- Business plan has no free trial, unlike the Pro plan's two-week trial
Groq Pros & Cons
Pros
- Consistently ranks among the fastest LLM inference providers thanks to purpose-built LPU hardware
- OpenAI-compatible API makes migration from existing integrations fast
- Generous free tier with no credit card required and access to every hosted model
- Batch API and prompt caching can stack to roughly 25% of on-demand pricing
- Proven at scale with 3M+ developers and demanding real-time customers like McLaren F1
Cons
- Only hosts open-source models (Llama, Mixtral, Gemma, Qwen, DeepSeek distills), so there's no access to proprietary models like GPT or Claude through the platform
- The December 2025 NVIDIA licensing deal and departure of founder Jonathan Ross as CEO introduce some uncertainty about the platform's long-term technical direction
- No self-serve fine-tuning; customization requires contacting Groq's sales team or submitting an Enterprise request
- Free tier is limited by requests-per-minute (30 RPM) rather than a generous token allowance, which can bottleneck bursty workloads
- Full pricing isn't published for every capability, and Enterprise/GroqAssured governance features require a custom conversation