xAI Grok API Pricing (May 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 4.3 Grok 4.3 | xAI | $1.25 | — | $2.50 |
- xAIGrok 4.3Grok 4.3
- Input
- $1.25
- Cached
- —
- Output
- $2.50
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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 May 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 1 Fast Non Reasoning
Grok 4 1 Fast Reasoning
Grok 4.1 Fast
Grok 4.20
Grok 4.3
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 May 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.