Getting a free Groq API key
Groq is a way to do the cleanup step — the part that turns a raw transcript into finished text — without paying anything. It has a real free tier, it is quick to set up, and unlike most free things it does not use what you send to train anyone's model. That combination makes it the option to start with if you would rather Vito cost you nothing.
First, the confusing part: Groq is not Grok
This is Groq — with a q — the inference company at groq.com. It is a different company from Grok, the model made by xAI. The names are almost identical and people mix them up constantly, so if you went looking for "Grok's free tier" and landed here, this is the one that actually has one. Grok (xAI) does not.
Why it is a good free option
The free tier is real, and enough for daily use
Groq's free tier needs no credit card. It is capped rather than metered: there are limits on how many requests and how many tokens you can send per minute, and a ceiling per day. Cleaning up dictation is light work — the transcript of a spoken paragraph is not much text — so for normal, everyday dictation the free limits are comfortably enough: emails, notes, messages and documents through the day stay well within them. You would have to be dictating more or less non-stop, or running long back-to-back jobs, to bump into a limit at all.
It does not train on what you send
By Groq's own terms, it is "not permitted to use Inputs or Outputs for training or fine-tuning" its models, and by default it does not retain your requests at all. It keeps usage metadata that does not include your text, and may log requests only briefly — up to 30 days — to troubleshoot faults or investigate abuse, with a zero-retention setting available on top. For a free service that is an unusually clean deal, and it is the main reason Groq is worth recommending rather than just tolerating. The precise wording is on Groq's data page.
It plugs straight in
Groq speaks the same API dialect as OpenAI, which is exactly what Vito's cleanup step expects, so Groq is a built-in choice — you pick it and paste a key, nothing more to configure.
Creating the key
- Sign in at console.groq.com. You can sign in with Google, GitHub or an email address. No card is asked for on the free tier.
-
Open API Keys and create one. Give it a name you will
recognise later, such as
vito. - Copy it immediately. The full key is shown once, at the moment you create it. Afterwards you can see that it exists but not read it back.
- Paste it into Vito. Settings → AI cleanup, and choose Groq. Vito checks the key before you rely on it.
Prefer to read it from the source?
Groq documents all of this at console.groq.com/docs. Where a screen here doesn't match what you see, theirs is the authority.
The free tier, honestly
A free tier is a good deal, not a free lunch, so it is worth knowing where the edges are:
- The limits are per-minute and per-day. Requests per minute, tokens per minute, and a daily cap — you hit whichever arrives first. Normal dictation stays well under them; a burst of very long jobs is what would bump into them. Your current limits are shown in the Console.
- The models are open-weight ones — Llama and similar — running on Groq's own hardware. For tidying transcripts they are more than good enough. If you want the most polished rewriting, Claude via Anthropic still has an edge, at a price.
- A free tier can change. Limits and terms are Groq's to adjust. What is written here was checked in July 2026; the Console is always the live version.
What it costs
Within the free tier, nothing. If you ever outgrow it — which for one person's dictation is unlikely — Groq also sells pay-as-you-go usage at low per-token rates, billed by how much text the model reads and writes. Current figures are on Groq's pricing page; we don't reprint prices here, because they change and a stale number quoted on someone else's behalf helps nobody.
Paired with a free speech engine — AssemblyAI gives new accounts starting credit — this is the combination that lets Vito run without costing you anything at all.
Looking after your key
Shorter here than for the paid providers, because there is no balance to drain — but a key is still a key.
Treat it like a password, because that is what it is
Anyone holding your key can send requests as you. Don't paste it into a chat, a forum post, a bug report or a screenshot, and never commit it to a repository — bots scan public code for keys and find them within minutes.
Make a key that only Vito uses
If you already use Groq for something else, create a separate key rather than reusing one. It costs nothing, it shows you on the usage page what Vito actually does, and if you ever need to revoke it you won't break anything else.
If it leaks, revoke it
Deleting a key in the Console makes it useless immediately — there's no grace period and no way for anyone to keep using it. Create a fresh one, paste that into Vito, and carry on.
If you add a card later, set a limit
The free tier can't run up a bill, so there is nothing to cap while you stay on it. The moment you add a payment method for pay-as-you-go, though, set a spending limit in the Console — it is the one step people skip and the one that actually protects them.
Where Vito keeps it
On your own machine, in Vito's settings, and it is sent only to Groq. Nobody at Vito can read it — which is the point, and has one consequence worth knowing: nobody can recover it for you either. Lose it and you make a new one.
If something doesn't work
Cleanup pauses, then catches up ("rate limit" or error 429)
You have touched a free-tier limit — too many requests or tokens in a short window. It clears on its own as the minute or the day rolls over. If you hit it routinely rather than rarely, that is the sign you'd want the paid tier or Claude.
Vito says the key is invalid
Usually a copy-paste problem — a character clipped from the front, or a trailing space. Paste it again cleanly. Failing that, make a new key; that's quicker than working out what went wrong with the old one.
Cleanup stopped but transcription still runs
The two keys are independent, which is the useful part: it tells you the problem is on the Groq side, not the speech engine. Check the key and your current limits in the Console.
After this
Groq handles the tidying, for free. The listening is a separate service with its own key — if you haven't set that up yet, start with Soniox, or with AssemblyAI if you'd like to begin on free credit.