Together AI API
Together AI's inference API for running open-source LLMs (Llama, Mistral, Mixtral, etc.) with OpenAI-compatible endpoints for chat, completion, and embedding tasks.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
API key auth. OpenAI-compatible interface for open-source models. No data training on user inputs by default. Standard bearer token in headers.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
An agent needs access to open-source LLMs via an OpenAI-compatible API at competitive pricing, especially for high-throughput or fine-tuned model inference.
Avoid When
You need the absolute fastest inference (Groq), or are limited to frontier proprietary models.
Use Cases
- • Running open-source LLMs with OpenAI-compatible API format
- • Generating embeddings for semantic search and RAG pipelines
- • Fine-tuning open-source models on custom datasets
- • High-throughput inference with open-source models at lower cost
- • Building agents that need diverse model options without vendor lock-in
Not For
- • Teams needing only proprietary frontier models (use OpenAI/Anthropic directly)
- • Sub-10ms inference requirements (for those, use Groq)
- • Teams without technical knowledge to evaluate open-source models
- • Applications requiring model output guarantees and SLAs
Interface
Authentication
Simple bearer token authentication. One API key grants access to all models. Keys from Together AI dashboard. No scopes. Very easy for agents.
Pricing
Generally 3-10x cheaper than OpenAI for comparable model sizes. Pricing is competitive for open-source models. Credit card required after free credit.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ OpenAI SDK compatibility is high but not 100% — some parameters may be ignored or behave differently
- ⚠ Model availability changes — models can be deprecated without long notice
- ⚠ Context window sizes vary significantly between models — agents must handle model-specific limits
- ⚠ Streaming responses require handling SSE format correctly
- ⚠ Fine-tuned models require additional setup time before availability
- ⚠ No function calling support for all models — check per-model capabilities
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for Together AI API.
Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.