Fastest AI API from US (Central)

Last verified October 22, 2026 · edge + inference latency

As of October 22, 2026, measured from US (Central), the fastest AI inference API by edge latency (time-to-first-byte) is fireworks at 28 ms p50 (n=289).

Which AI API is fastest from US (Central)?

Endpoint response (TTFB) · last 24 hours · milliseconds (ms) · lower is faster.

fireworks leads by 18 ms over baseten here. The median provider measured from US (Central) answers in 166 ms, so the spread between the fastest and a typical option is 138 ms on every single request — before the model has produced anything.

Inference latency (time-to-first-token)

Each provider is measured on the model named below — model size affects TTFT far more than the network does, so these numbers are not a like-for-like ranking of providers. Use the edge-latency table above for that. Coverage is limited to providers we hold an API key for.

First model token (TTFT) · last 24 hours · milliseconds (ms) · lower is faster.

Why measure from US (Central) separately?

Latency is a property of a route, not of a company. The same provider can lead in one region and trail in another, so a ranking produced from a single location tells you very little about what your users will experience somewhere else. This page reports only what was measured from US (Central); the other regions are ranked independently and often disagree — see the cross-region summary for how far apart they get.

How should these numbers be read?

p50 is the typical request and p95 is the slow tail: if p95 is far above p50, that provider is inconsistent from here, which usually hurts more than a slightly higher median. Uptime counts a probe as failed only on a genuine service failure — an authentication error means the endpoint answered correctly and counts as up. All figures cover the last 24 hours and are recomputed continuously; the methodology page states the limits of this data plainly.