Create a Cerebras account at console.cerebras.ai, generate your API key, set up billing for production, then integrate with Bifrost for ultra-fast WSE-powered inference with cost tracking. Complete in minutes.
Bifrost supports Cerebras models through OpenAI-compatible HTTP APIs. Cerebras uses specialized Wafer-Scale Engine hardware for ultra-fast, low-latency inference on leading LLMs.
| Property | Details |
|---|---|
| Description | Cerebras provides ultra-fast LLM inference using specialized Wafer-Scale Engine hardware for chat, reasoning, and code generation workloads. |
| Provider route on Bifrost | cerebras/<model> |
| Provider doc | Cerebras Documentation |
| API endpoint for provider | https://api.cerebras.ai/v1 |
| Supported endpoints | /v1/models, /v1/completions, /v1/chat/completions, /v1/responses |
Use these Cerebras-hosted links for console access, API documentation, and authentication details.
Before you begin, you will need:
[ QUICK START ]
Use the Cerebras Console.
Go to console.cerebras.ai and sign up with your email address.
In the Cerebras console, click "API Keys" in the left sidebar to manage your credentials.
Your key is displayed once. Copy it immediately and store it securely.
Click "Create API Key" and give it a descriptive name. Copy your key immediately and store it as an environment variable.
export CEREBRAS_API_KEY="csk_..."
Add a payment method when ready for higher limits.
Cerebras offers free credits for testing. When you're ready for production use or exceed free credits, add a payment method in the Billing section.
Authenticate with Bearer tokens per Cerebras's OpenAI-compatible API.
Cerebras's API is OpenAI-compatible and uses Authorization: Bearer CEREBRAS_API_KEY for REST calls:
$ curl https://api.cerebras.ai/v1/chat/completions \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $CEREBRAS_API_KEY" \ -d '{ "model": "llama-2-70b", "messages": [{"role":"user","content":"Hello!"}] }'
[ MODELS ]
| Model | API ID | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.3 70B | llama-3.3-70b | Flagship open model at Cerebras speed. |
| Llama 3.1 8B | llama-3.1-8b | Fast, efficient chat and completion. |
| Llama 3.1 70B | llama-3.1-70b | Strong reasoning on wafer-scale inference. |
| Qwen 3 32B | qwen-3-32b | Dense Qwen3 for coding and reasoning. |
| Qwen 3 235B | qwen-3-235b-a22b | Large MoE Qwen3 when available. |
| GPT OSS 120B | gpt-oss-120b | OpenAI open-weight model on Cerebras. |
Models and availability change over time. See the Cerebras' models documentation for the latest list and pricing.
[ TROUBLESHOOTING ]
| Error | Likely Cause | What to Do |
|---|---|---|
401 Unauthorized | Invalid or missing API key. | Verify your API key is correct. Generate a new key if needed. |
400 Bad Request | Invalid request format or unsupported model. | Check request format against OpenAI API reference. Verify model ID. |
429 Rate Limited | Rate limit exceeded for your plan. | Upgrade your plan or implement exponential backoff. Use Bifrost for intelligent load distribution. |
502/503 Service Error | Temporary Cerebras service unavailability. | Retry after a delay. Check Cerebras status page. Configure failover with Bifrost. |
[ PRODUCTION-READY ]
Bifrost is a drop-in replacement for Cerebras SDKs. Update your base URL and keep your client code. Bifrost handles cost tracking, virtual keys, budgets, and intelligent failover.
Run the Bifrost gateway and configure your Cerebras credentials in the Web UI.
$ npx -y @maximhq/bifrost
✓ Bifrost started ├─ HTTP server listening on http://localhost:8080 ├─ Web UI available at http://localhost:8080 └─ Configure providers and virtual keys in the dashboard
Update your SDK to route through Bifrost's OpenAI-compatible gateway.
from openai import OpenAI client = OpenAI( api_key="sk-bf-your-virtual-key", base_url="http://localhost:8080/openai" ) response = client.chat.completions.create( model="cerebras/llama-3.3-70b", messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello from Bifrost!"}] ) print(response.choices[0].message.content)
x-bf-vk or Authorization: Bearer sk-bf-* per the Bifrost documentation.[ WHAT'S NEXT ]
You have your API key. Add governance, guardrails, and MCP controls for production.
[ BIFROST FEATURES ]
Everything you need to run AI in production, from free open source to enterprise-grade features.
01 Governance
SAML support for SSO and Role-based access control and policy enforcement for team collaboration.
02 Adaptive Load Balancing
Automatically optimizes traffic distribution across provider keys and models based on real-time performance metrics.
03 Cluster Mode
High availability deployment with automatic failover and load balancing. Peer-to-peer clustering where every instance is equal.
04 Alerts
Real-time notifications for budget limits, failures, and performance issues on Email, Slack, PagerDuty, Teams, Webhook and more.
05 Log Exports
Export and analyze request logs, traces, and telemetry data from Bifrost with enterprise-grade data export capabilities for compliance, monitoring, and analytics.
06 Audit Logs
Comprehensive logging and audit trails for compliance and debugging.
07 Vault Support
Secure API key management with HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Google Secret Manager, and Azure Key Vault integration.
08 VPC Deployment
Deploy Bifrost within your private cloud infrastructure with VPC isolation, custom networking, and enhanced security controls.
09 Guardrails
Automatically detect and block unsafe model outputs with real-time policy enforcement and content moderation across all agents.
[ SHIP RELIABLE AI ]
Change just one line of code. Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Vercel AI SDK, LangChain, and more.
[ FAQ ]
Cerebras uses specialized Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE) hardware designed specifically for AI workloads, delivering significantly faster inference speeds and lower latency than GPU-based providers.
Cerebras offers free credits for testing and evaluation. For production use, switch to a paid plan with flexible pricing based on compute usage.
Cerebras provides access to leading open-source models like Llama 2, Code Llama, and others, optimized to run on their WSE hardware for maximum performance.
Cerebras provides an OpenAI-compatible API format. You can use OpenAI SDKs with Cerebras by changing the base URL and providing your Cerebras API key.
Cerebras offers generous rate limits. Implement exponential backoff for safety. Use Bifrost to intelligently distribute requests across multiple providers.
Bifrost provides cost tracking, virtual keys, budget governance, and automatic failover, making it simple to use Cerebras alongside other providers at scale.