xAI Grok API Pricing (April 2026) — Grok 4 Per-Token Costs
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How much does xAI Grok cost? xAI Grok API pricing spans $0.20 to $15.00 per million tokens. Grok 4 flagship is priced at $3 / $15 per 1M, the current Grok 4.20 SKU at $2 / $6 per 1M, and Grok 4.1 Fast at just $0.20 / $0.50 per 1M. Older tiers include Grok 3 ($2 / $10), Grok 3 Mini ($0.30 / $0.50), Grok 2 Vision ($2 / $10), and legacy Grok Beta ($5 / $15). Grok 4 ships with a 256K context window and unique real-time X search grounding.
Key facts about xAI Grok pricing
- Grok 4 flagship at $3.00 / $15.00 per 1M tokens with 256K context window.
- Grok 4.20 current SKU at $2.00 / $6.00 per 1M tokens — 60% cheaper on output than GPT-5.4.
- Grok 4.1 Fast at $0.20 / $0.50 per 1M tokens, one of the cheapest frontier-tier APIs available.
- Grok 3 at $2.00 / $10.00 and Grok 3 Mini at $0.30 / $0.50 per 1M tokens still available for legacy compatibility.
- Grok 2 Vision at $2.00 / $10.00 per 1M tokens for multimodal workloads.
- Real-time X search grounding is unique to Grok — no other frontier lab offers live social-graph retrieval.
- xAI API is independent of X Premium — pay-per-token with no subscription required.
- Cached-input discount available on Grok 4.20 at $0.20 per 1M tokens — 90% off standard input rate.
How much does each xAI Grok model cost per million tokens?
| Model↕ | Provider↕ | Input $/1M↑ | Cached $/1M↕ | Output $/1M↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Grok 4.20 Grok 4 | xAI | $2.00 | $0.20 | $6.00 |
- xAIGrok 4.20Grok 4
- Input
- $2.00
- Cached
- $0.20
- Output
- $6.00
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Why choose xAI Grok over OpenAI or Anthropic?
xAI's pitch comes down to three things: real-time knowledge, aggressive pricing on newer SKUs, and frontier reasoning. On knowledge freshness, Grok is the only frontier model with direct grounding to live X posts — for social monitoring, news agents, or anything that needs today's information, this is hard to replicate. On pricing, Grok 4.1 Fast at $0.20 / $0.50 per 1M tokens is the cheapest frontier-adjacent model available in April 2026, and Grok 4.20 at $2.00 / $6.00 undercuts GPT-5.4 by 60% on output.
On reasoning, Grok 4 is competitive with GPT-5.4 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet on math and STEM benchmarks. The 256K context window is larger than GPT-5.4's 128K, which matters for repository-scale code analysis and long-document synthesis. The cached-input discount on Grok 4.20 brings input cost down to $0.20 per 1M — useful for high-volume RAG workloads with repeated system prompts.
When xAI is not the right choice
Grok trails Claude on code generation quality and long-context recall above 128K. It also trails OpenAI on function-calling reliability in multi-turn agent loops. Enterprise data-residency options are narrower than OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google. If your workload is code-heavy or agentic, those providers are still the safer default.
Price History
Track how xAI Grok API pricing has changed over time.
Grok 4.20
Grok 4.1 Fast
Price history tracking started April 2026. Charts will appear after the first price change is detected.
View pricing changelog →
Frequently asked questions
How much does xAI Grok cost per token?
xAI Grok API pricing ranges from $0.20 per million input tokens for Grok 4.1 Fast up to $15.00 per million output tokens for Grok 4. The current Grok 4.20 SKU is priced at $2.00 input / $6.00 output per 1M tokens, while Grok 4.1 Fast is $0.20 input / $0.50 output per 1M tokens — making it one of the cheapest frontier-tier APIs available in April 2026.
Does Grok have a free tier?
xAI offers a limited free developer tier on the API with daily token caps suitable for prototyping. X Premium+ subscribers get Grok access through the X app at no additional per-token cost, but that is a separate product from the developer API. Paid API tiers are pay-as-you-go.
How does Grok compare to GPT-5?
Grok 4.20 at $2.00 / $6.00 per 1M tokens is 20% cheaper on input and 60% cheaper on output than GPT-5.4 ($2.50 / $15.00). On benchmark reasoning Grok 4 is competitive with GPT-5.4 on STEM and math, but trails on long-context recall and some code benchmarks. Grok uniquely offers real-time search grounded in X posts, which no other frontier lab provides.
What models does xAI offer?
xAI offers Grok 4 (flagship), Grok 4.20 ($2 / $6 per 1M), Grok 4.1 Fast ($0.20 / $0.50 per 1M), Grok 3 ($2 / $10), Grok 3 Mini ($0.30 / $0.50), Grok 2 Vision ($2 / $10), and the legacy Grok Beta ($5 / $15). Grok 4 and 4.20 support multimodal input (images + text) and function calling.
What's Grok 4's context window?
Grok 4 supports a 256K token context window, making it competitive with Claude 3.5 Sonnet (200K) and larger than GPT-5.4 (128K). Grok 4.1 Fast ships with 128K context. Long-context performance on needle-in-a-haystack recall matches other frontier labs at depths up to 128K.
Can I access Grok without X Premium?
Yes. The xAI developer API is a separate product from the X Premium consumer chatbot. You can sign up at docs.x.ai with just an API key and pay per token — no X account or Premium subscription required. X Premium+ does, however, bundle consumer Grok access for $16/month.
Methodology
Pricing sourced from https://docs.x.ai/docs/models on . All prices expressed in USD per 1 million tokens. We track 7 Grok SKUs covering flagship, fast, vision, mini, and legacy tiers.
Compare xAI to other providers
Further reading: Full AI API pricing comparison · Cheapest AI APIs in 2026.