Together AI

Together AI is a cloud service for running open-source and openly licensed AI models rather than one proprietary model family. Developers call its serverless API to use models such as Meta's Llama, DeepSeek, Qwen, and Google's Gemma, with no servers to manage and payment only for tokens used. Teams that need more control can reserve dedicated GPU capacity, rent full GPU clusters by the hour, or fine-tune an open model on their own data using Together's training tools. Access is by API key, and the request format matches OpenAI's, so many existing tools work with only a small configuration change. Pricing is public and listed per model, with some small open models priced under $0.20 per million tokens.

This fits a team that wants to run open-source models rather than depend on a closed vendor's model, whether to control cost, keep the option to self-host later, or fine-tune on private data without sending it to a big-lab vendor. A reasonable pilot is swapping one existing OpenAI-based feature for a comparable open model on Together's serverless API, since the interface is compatible and the cost is usually lower. As a planning figure, budget from a few cents to a few dollars per million tokens depending on model size, with dedicated capacity and fine-tuning billed by the GPU hour. The tradeoff is more decisions about which open model fits the task, and open models can lag the largest closed models on complex reasoning, so confirm current versions before committing.