An LLM inference provider hosts open-weight models like Llama, DeepSeek, and Qwen behind a pay-per-token API, handling GPUs, scaling, and serving for you. The same Llama 3.3 70B model ranges from $0.10 to $1.04 per million input tokens depending on who serves it, so provider choice is a pricing decision. Top picks as of September 2026: Groq and Cerebras for speed, DeepInfra for price, Together and Fireworks for breadth, Baseten for custom models.