Grok (xAI)
Frontier tokens at a tenth of peer prices with the widest modality spread after Google — and a guardrails record that forces you to bring your own safety layer.
Element scores
Strengths
Price-performance is the story: a 2M-token context at $0.20/M input undercuts frontier peers by 5-15x, caching drops it to $0.05/M, and the Agent Tools API (web/X search, code execution, Collections RAG, remote MCP) posts state-of-the-art agentic-search numbers on xAI's own benchmarks. The modality spread is the widest after Google — text, vision, $0.02 images, $0.05/s video, full voice stack with cloning — and real-time X data is a differentiator nobody else has. 2026 shipping velocity is real: Grok 4.5, Grok Build (open-sourced), Automations, Office add-ins, Amazon Bedrock and Databricks distribution.
Honest dings
Guardrails are the record, not the promise: in January 2026 Grok Imagine generated sexualized imagery of minors and nonconsensual deepfakes at scale (~200k such requests logged in a single day), restrictions came only after public exposure, and Ofcom, French prosecutors and the European Commission opened files — EU deployers should check their DSA exposure. No customer fine-tuning, no hosted evals, constant model churn (4.1 → 4.20 → 4.3 → 4.5 in eight months, Grok 5 slipped past two announced windows), and xAI lost $6.4B on $3.2B revenue in 2025 — the SpaceX balance sheet is now the backstop.
Sources
Every audit lists the research it rests on — transparency and traceability are the product. Tools evolve: each audit is a snapshot of its audit date, and re-audits supersede older versions (kept below for reference).
- docs.x.ai/docs/models — Official model list and API pricing: grok-4.5 $2/$6 (500k context, knowledge cutoff 01/02/2026), grok-4.3, grok-4.20 SKUs incl. multi-agent, grok-build-0.1, Imagine and Voice pricing, long-context threshold rules (accessed 2026-07-22)
- x.ai/news — Official announcement stream: Grok 4.5 (16/07/2026), Automations, Grok Build open-sourced (15/07), Grok for Word/PowerPoint/Excel/Outlook, Bedrock and Databricks availability, Anthropic compute agreement on Colossus 1, xAI joins SpaceX (02/02/2026) (accessed 2026-07-22)
- x.ai/news/grok-4-1-fast — Agent Tools API official: web_search, x_search, code_execution, collections_search, remote MCP in xai_sdk; vendor benchmarks on Research-Eval/FRAMES/X-Browse; 2M context; halved hallucination rate vs Grok 4 Fast (accessed 2026-07-22)
- docs.x.ai/developers/files/collections — Collections hosted RAG official docs: embedding index (grok-embedding-small), configurable chunking, metadata filtering, contextual embeddings, semantic search across files (accessed 2026-07-22)
- pulse2.com/spacex-grok-reaches-117-million-users-as… — 117M Grok MAU as of March 2026 (21% of 550M X users), disclosed in SpaceX's IPO filing — reputable reporting of an official SEC disclosure (accessed 2026-07-22)
- aichatdaily.com/ai-business/xai-burned-6-4b-2025-sp… — xAI 2025 financials from the S-1: $3.2B revenue ($365M subscriptions, $88M data licensing, $116M ads), $6.4B operating loss, $7.7B Q1 2026 AI capex (accessed 2026-07-22)
- etedge-insights.com/technology/artificial-intellige… — January 2026 Grok Imagine scandal: sexualized imagery of minors and nonconsensual deepfakes, ~200k such requests peak day (02/01/2026), Ofcom investigation, French prosecutorial action, EC retention order under DSA, reported internal loosening of guardrails and safety-staff resignations (accessed 2026-07-22)
- felloai.com/grok-pricing — Consumer tier breakdown July 2026: Free / X Premium $8 / SuperGrok Lite $10 / SuperGrok $30 / X Premium+ $40 / SuperGrok Heavy $300; staged Grok 4.5 rollout by tier; up to $175/mo free API credits (accessed 2026-07-22)
- suprmind.ai/hub/grok/pricing — Pricing changelog: SuperGrok Heavy launch 09/07/2025, SuperGrok Lite 25/03/2026, Grok 4.3 API GA 01/05/2026; tier-to-model assignment opacity documented (accessed 2026-07-22)
- techjacksolutions.com/ai-tools/grok/grok-for-enterp… — Grok Business $30/seat (SOC 2 Type II, RBAC, no-training default, 128K context) and Enterprise (SSO/SCIM, audit logs, Enterprise Vault with CMEK); Heavy positioned as overkill for most teams (accessed 2026-07-22)
- ofox.ai/blog/grok-api-pricing-setup-access-guide-20… — Server-side tool fees ($2.50-5.00 per 1k successful calls, files $10/1k), automatic caching discounts (75-90% off), OpenAI-compatible migration path — verified April 2026 (accessed 2026-07-22)
- x.ai/grok — Official consumer feature list: multi-agent mode with auditable per-agent reasoning, live web/X search, memory across chats, canvas, file analysis, 30+ languages, 2K image / 15 s video generation (accessed 2026-07-22)