xAI pricing details and 27 free alternatives in AI / ML. Catalogue date August 2026.

xAI Pricing 2026

not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request. How we use this.

A verdict here is not a fixed property of the vendor. A one-off pricing event demotes a vendor while its recorded date falls in the last 180 days and then lapses on its own, with nothing about the vendor having changed; a standing condition — a free tier withdrawn and not restored, a product retired — does not lapse with time. This one rests on a standing condition, so it does not lapse.

Subtypes in AI / ML: llm_api — the vendor runs language or multimodal models on its own infrastructure and sells calls to them by model name; you send a prompt and receive a completion. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://docs.x.ai/developers/models, where it says: “Compare all current Grok models: capabilities, context windows, and per-token API pricing” How we use this.

Limits, pricing history, and 27 alternatives. Catalogue date August 2026. Last updated 2026-11-02.

Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request. Grok API, pay as you go: sign up at console.x.ai, then load it with credits… xAI warrants caution — on 2024-12-31: xAI's $25 a month of free API credits was a public beta offer that ran until the end of 2024. Since then xAI has not offered API credits to every account; API usage is billed per token. Source: https://x.ai/news/api Monitor for further changes.

One of 89 AI / ML services we track. See our full AI / ML Free Tier Comparison →

⚠️ Pricing change: xAI's API keeps running. xAI retired the grok-imagine-image-quality image model on 2026-11-02. Requests to grok-imagine-image-quality and grok-imagine-image-pro are now served by grok-imagine-image-2.0 at low quality, at a lower per-image price, and need no changes. Source ↗ (effective 2026-11-02) View in changelog →

Tier

Pay-as-you-go

Free Tier Details

Grok API, pay as you go: sign up at console.x.ai, then load it with credits. grok-4.7 $2.00/$6.00 (per 1M tokens, under 200k prompt tokens). grok-4.3 $1.25/$2.50 (under 200k prompt tokens). grok-build-0.1 $1.00/$2.00 (under 200k prompt tokens). grok-4.6 and grok-4.5 cost the same as grok-4.7 ($2.00 input and $6.00 output per 1M tokens under 200k prompt tokens), and grok-4.20 (0309 reasoning, non-reasoning and multi-agent) the same as grok-4.3 ($1.25 input and $2.50 output). A request whose prompt reaches 200k tokens is billed at the long-context rate for all its tokens, twice the standard rate: grok-4.7 and grok-4.6 go from $2.00 input and $6.00 output per 1M tokens to $4.00 and $12.00; grok-4.3 and grok-4.20 from $1.25 and $2.50 to $2.50 and $5.00; grok-build-0.1 from $1.00 and $2.00 to $2.00 and $4.00. Cached input costs $0.50 on grok-4.7 and grok-4.6, $0.30 on grok-4.5, and $0.20 on grok-4.3, grok-4.20 and grok-build-0.1. These cached rates also double from 200k prompt tokens. Context windows: 500k tokens for grok-4.7, grok-4.6 and grok-4.5; 1M for grok-4.3 and grok-4.20; 256k for grok-build-0.1. The US endpoint costs 10% more than the global endpoint. Priority Processing (service_tier "priority" on Chat Completions and the Responses API) bills text requests at 2x standard rates. A request xAI's system finds in violation of its usage guidelines is still charged for its generation; one caught before generation in the Responses API costs a $0.05 violation fee. On 2026-05-15 xAI retired eight model names, which still resolve, so code that calls them keeps working: requests to Grok 4.1 Fast (grok-4-1-fast-reasoning, grok-4-1-fast-non-reasoning), Grok 4 Fast (grok-4-fast-reasoning, grok-4-fast-non-reasoning), grok-4-0709 and grok-3 are served by grok-4.3 (low reasoning effort for the reasoning names and grok-4-0709, none for the non-reasoning names and grok-3) and billed at grok-4.3 rates; grok-code-fast-1 is served by grok-build-0.1; grok-imagine-image-pro is served by grok-imagine-image-2.0 at low quality. grok-voice-transcribe-1.0 reached end of life on 2026-10-02; its requests are served by grok-voice-transcribe-2.0 at the same price. Image generation: grok-imagine-image $0.02 per image; grok-imagine-image-2.0 $0.04 per image at 1K resolution and low quality, up to $0.08 per image at 2K resolution and medium quality; $0.01 per input image when editing. grok-imagine-image-quality was retired on 2026-11-02, and its requests are served by grok-imagine-image-2.0 at low quality. Voice API: speech-to-text costs $0.10 per hour of audio (REST) or $0.20 per hour (streaming), text-to-speech $15.00 per 1M characters, and speech-to-speech with grok-voice-3.0 $0.08 a minute ($4.80 an hour). grok-voice-3.0 replaced grok-voice-2.0 on 2026-10-14 at the same price; grok-voice-2.0 is deprecated, and the grok-voice-latest alias now points to grok-voice-3.0. Video generation: grok-imagine-video-1.5 $0.08 per second at 480p, $0.14 at 720p, $0.25 at 1080p. grok-imagine-video-1.5-lite $0.02 per second at 480p, $0.03 at 720p, $0.14 at 1080p. grok-imagine-video $0.05 per second at 480p, $0.07 at 720p. Batch API discounts: 20% off input, cached input, output and reasoning tokens on grok-4.7, grok-4.6, grok-4.5, grok-4.3, grok-4.20-0309-reasoning, grok-4.20-0309-non-reasoning and grok-4.20-multi-agent-0309. grok-4.7 under 200k prompt tokens: $1.60 input, $0.40 cached input, $4.80 output per 1M tokens. grok-build-0.1 does not support Batch API. Image and video generation in Batch API are at standard rates. Server-side tools cost extra, per call, on top of tokens: web_search, code_execution and attachment_search $5 per 1,000 calls, collections_search $2.50 per 1,000, and x_search $5 per 1,000 posts and $10 per 1,000 profiles it returns. view_image, view_x_video and remote MCP tools are billed for their tokens only.

We read that on 2026-11-02 from https://docs.x.ai/developers/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names xAI as "xai" and states "$2.00" and "$0.50" and "$6.00" and "$4.00". A source check reads the cited page for the service's name and a price; the limits above are from our own record.

xAI's API FAQ says it never trains on API inputs or outputs without your explicit permission. (From docs.x.ai/developers/faq/security, read 2026-10-04.)
xAI stores API requests and responses for 30 days to audit for abuse, then deletes them; teams can turn on Zero Data Retention. (From docs.x.ai/developers/faq/security, read 2026-10-04.)
Grok Build is xAI's coding agent for the terminal and is not the grok-build-0.1 API model. It can be used without a paid plan, with limited usage, on The X Subscription's $0 plan. Paid plans, Plus $8 to Ultra $200 a month, include it. (From x.ai/pricing, read 2026-10-29.)
The X Subscription's $0 plan does not include Grok API access. Paid plans include it, but API usage is billed separately at the standard rates and does not draw from the plan's usage pool. (From x.ai/pricing, read 2026-10-21.)
Grok 4.7 Fast is grok-4.7 on faster infrastructure. It is available only in Cursor and Grok Build, billed through the plan there, and not on the public xAI API; Grok Build on the $0 plan does not include it. Its rates are 2x standard: $4.00 input, $1.00 cached input, $12.00 output per 1M tokens below 200k prompt tokens. (From docs.x.ai/developers/pricing, read 2026-10-21.)
With the default $0 invoiced billing limit, xAI rejects API requests once prepaid credits run out. Auto top-up (minimum $5) or a higher invoiced billing limit keeps requests running. (From docs.x.ai/console/billing, read 2026-10-21.)
xAI's API needs credits loaded in console.x.ai, which takes a payment method, before the first request. (From docs.x.ai/developers/quickstart, read 2026-10-22.)
xAI's Grok for Startups programme gives credits to startups with venture backing, a live product and a company email matching their website. The credits pay for Grok, Grok Build, Grok Bot and the Grok API from one balance, and xAI sizes them by funding, revenue and AI spend to about six months of use. xAI applies 20% on approval and the rest after onboarding. (From x.ai/startups, read 2026-10-29.)
Grok for Startups credits expire six months after they are applied unless the approval says otherwise. One grant is given per company, and usage after the credits run out is billed at standard rates. (From x.ai/legal/startup-program-terms, read 2026-10-29.)
xAI's docs now call this API the SpaceXSI API. Accounts and API keys are still created at console.x.ai. (From docs.x.ai/developers/quickstart, read 2026-10-22.)
Every xAI API team has per-model rate limits on requests per second and tokens per minute. Tier 0 is default at $0, Tier 1 at $50, Tier 2 at $250, Tier 3 at $1,000, Tier 4 at $5,000, Enterprise on request. Tiers unlock automatically by cumulative spend since January 1, 2026, including prepaid credit purchases. Tiers never downgrade. Tier 0 allows 150 RPS and 50M TPM for grok-4.7, 37 RPS and 10M TPM for grok-4.3. A request over a limit returns HTTP 429. A team can request higher limits in the console. (From docs.x.ai/developers/rate-limits, read 2026-11-04.)
The global endpoint api.x.ai may route requests between regions, so the processing location is not guaranteed. The US endpoint is us.api.x.ai/v1. It serves grok-4.7 and grok-4.6 only, and a request for another model returns 404 there. It does not serve image, video, or voice APIs. Token usage costs 1.1 times global rates: grok-4.7 is $2.20 input and $6.60 output per 1M tokens under 200k prompt tokens. The US guarantee covers request handling, inference, moderation, and retained request data. Files, Collections, and server-side tools are outside it. xAI's docs describe no other regional endpoint. (From docs.x.ai/developers/advanced-api-usage/regions, read 2026-11-04.)
Zero Data Retention is a team-wide setting turned on by a team admin in the xAI Console. It disables the stateful Responses API, Files, Collections, the Batch API, deferred completions, and xAI-hosted image and video outputs. xAI does not recommend enabling it for most customers. (From docs.x.ai/developers/faq/security, read 2026-11-04.)
Batch API requests do not count toward rate limits. Most complete within 24 hours. Processing time varies by system load and batch size. Completion time is best effort and not guaranteed. (From docs.x.ai/developers/advanced-api-usage/batch-api, read 2026-11-04.)
xAI says it is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant. For a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement, xAI asks customers to fill in its BAA Questionnaire, reviews the answers and replies with next steps. (From docs.x.ai/developers/faq/security, read 2026-11-04.)
File storage costs $0.025 per GiB per day. Collection storage costs $0.10 per GiB per day. File downloads and collection downloads cost $0.20 per GiB downloaded. (From docs.x.ai/developers/pricing, read 2026-11-04.)
xAI partners with GitHub's Secret Scanning program to detect leaked keys. If a leak is found, xAI disables the key and notifies you by email. (From docs.x.ai/developers/faq/security, read 2026-11-04.)

Pricing Change History (4 recorded)

deprecated effective 2026-11-02 low impact

xAI's API keeps running. xAI retired the grok-imagine-image-quality image model on 2026-11-02. Requests to grok-imagine-image-quality and grok-imagine-image-pro are now served by grok-imagine-image-2.0 at low quality, at a lower per-image price, and need no changes. Source ↗

Before: grok-imagine-image-quality cost $0.05 per image at 1K resolution, and requests to grok-imagine-image-pro were served by it.

After: "Requests to grok-imagine-image-quality and grok-imagine-image-pro are now served by grok-imagine-image-2.0-low: grok-imagine-image-2.0 with quality set to low, at a lower per-image price. No request changes are needed." (docs.x.ai/developers/release-notes, November 2, read 2026-11-05)

corrected effective 2026-09-27 low impact

Data correction - xAI's $25 monthly API credit ended on 2024-12-31, when its public beta closed, not on 2026-04-13, the day we typed the record. It stays in force: xAI has not offered API credits to every account since, so our 2026-09-05 withdrawal of that record was wrong. Source ↗

Before: Recorded 2026-04-13 as free_tier_removed dated 2026-04-13, with no source, and withdrawn on 2026-09-05

After: free_tier_removed dated 2024-12-31 from xAI's beta announcement, in force

model change discovered 2026-09-02 · effective date unknown high impact

Retracted — this record was our error (2026-09-27). The difference this record reports was our own out-of-date listing text, not a change xAI made on 2026-09-02. Its previous state is our catalogue description: xAI's free credits had ended in 2024 and 2025, and Grok 4.1 Fast was retired on 2026-05-15. Source ↗

removed effective 2024-12-31 low impact

xAI's $25 a month of free API credits was a public beta offer that ran until the end of 2024. Since then xAI has not offered API credits to every account; API usage is billed per token. Source ↗

Before: "We will run a public beta program until the end of 2024 during which everyone will get $25 of free API credits per month." (xAI announcement, 2024-11-04)

After: "API usage is billed per token rather than free, but the Playground comes with every Console account, so you can test the latest Grok models before adding billing." (x.ai/api, read 2026-09-27)

View all 513 pricing changes across all vendors →

Alternatives in AI / ML

How xAI compares against every one of the 27 we list, not against a selection of them. A surface with room for every member of a tied set may rotate their order. A surface with room for only some of them names none of them, because which ones it named would be the claim, and a claim seeded on the date is not the one we serve tomorrow. How we decide this.

Service	Free Tier	Stability
xAI	Pay-as-you-go	not_a_free_offer
Hetzner Inference API	Free Hetzner's experimental Inference API: an OpenAI-compatible API for open-weight models, free while it stays experimental. Base URL: https://inference.hetzner.com/api/v1.	stable
Lumenfall.ai	Free AI media gateway: one OpenAI-compatible API to image and video generation models from several providers, billed at each provider's price with no markup, platform fee or subscription. One model, FLUX.1 [schnell] FP8, is listed free per image ("Free to try", served through Fireworks AI).	stable
Hugging Face	Free ML model hub. Since 2026-10-07, free accounts get no included Inference Providers credits: free users buy credits or upgrade to PRO to call Inference Providers, which serves 200+ models.	caution
LLM7.io	Free LLM inference gateway. With a free token from dash.llm7.io: 1 request a second, 60 a minute, 250 an hour and 100,000 tokens per 24 hours, counting input and output tokens; LLM7 says free quotas may be reduced without notice.	caution
Groq	Free Fast LLM inference on Groq's LPU hardware. Free plan: gpt-oss-20b, gpt-oss-120b and Qwen3.8 27B, each at 30 requests a minute, 1,000 requests and 200,000 tokens a day, plus Whisper speech-to-text at 2,000 requests a day.	caution
Maxim AI	Free Simulate, evaluate, and observe your AI agents — The 'OSS' tier is free forever for developers, small teams, and self-managed deployments. It includes features like a drop-in replacement, OTel compatibility, metrics & traces, built-in observability, budget management, and more.	stable
Keywords AI	Free Rebranded to Respan; keywordsai.co redirects to respan.ai. Free plan: full platform, 100k logs, 1k scores, 5 datasets, 2 evaluators, 5 prompts.	source unconfirmed
Cloudflare Workers AI	Free Workers AI runs AI models on Cloudflare's global network. Every account gets 10,000 Neurons per day at no charge, reset daily at 00:00 UTC; on the Workers Free plan, requests beyond that fail until the reset.	caution
NVIDIA NIM	Free Free inference endpoints on build.nvidia.com: models marked Free Endpoint, including DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GLM 5.3 Flash, gpt-oss-20b, Gemma 4 31B and NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra, can be called at no cost. Their model IDs are deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4.1-flash, z-ai/glm-5.3-flash, openai/gpt-oss-20b,…	stable
Pollinations.AI	Free Keyless Classic API: one image model and GPT-OSS 20B text, free, no sign-up, rate-limited per IP. Every other model needs an API key and Pollen, and free Pollen comes only from quests.	caution
Cohere	Free AI model API for Command chat models, Embed, Rerank, Transcribe and Parse. Every account starts with a Trial API key: calls made with it are free and limited to 1,000 API calls a month.	stable
Google Gemini API	Free (Reduced) Free tier: Gemini 4 Hydrogen, Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite, Gemini 3 Flash Preview, Gemini Embedding 2 and Gemma 4 are free of charge. Also free of charge are Gemini 3.8 Live (real-time voice), Gemini 3.5 Live Translate (translation), Gemini 3.5 Transcribe…	stable
OpenRouter	Free AI model router. Free plan: 50 requests a day, no BYOK.	stable
Zhipu AI	Free China-based GLM model API. The price list marks these models free: GLM-4.7-Flash, GLM-4-Flash-250414 and GLM-Z1-Flash (text); GLM-4.6V-Flash, GLM-4V-Flash and GLM-4.1V-Thinking-Flash (vision); CogView-3-Flash (image); CogVideoX-Flash (video).	source unconfirmed
Portkey	Free Control panel for Gen AI apps featuring an observability suite & an AI gateway. Send & log up to 10,000 requests for free every month.	unrated
SiliconFlow	Free Pay-as-you-go model inference. siliconflow.cn, run by a Beijing company, lists these models at no charge: the chat models Qwen3-8B, Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct (Free), Qwen3.5-4B, GLM-4-9B-0414, GLM-Z1-9B-0414, DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B (Free) and Xing4.0-29B; the translation model Hunyuan-MT-7B; the OCR…	unrated
Fireworks AI	Free Credits Inference platform for open models, with serverless per-token pricing and on-demand GPU deployments billed per GPU second. Fireworks offers $1 in free credits to get started.	unrated
Baseten	Basic (Free Credits) ML model deployment platform. New workspaces receive credits for testing and deployment; Baseten does not state the amount.	unrated
Cerebras	Trial Ultra-fast LLM inference API — no permanent free tier. New accounts get $5 in free credits after adding a verified payment method, expiring 30 days after they are granted.	risky
Together AI	Pay-as-you-go Inference API for open-source models, billed per token. Together AI does not currently offer free trials; access requires a minimum $15 credit purchase for an organization's first purchase ($5 for later purchases), and the platform is fully prepaid.	unrated
GitHub Models	Retired GitHub retired GitHub Models on 2026-07-30, so there is no free tier. GitHub's own documentation states "GitHub Models has been retired."	source unconfirmed
Mistral AI	Pay-as-you-go Since about 2026-11-05, Mistral's Free plan covers Vibe and Studio and does not include API access. Creating API keys and calling the API require billing activation and pay-as-you-go with prepaid credits.	unrated
DeepSeek API	Pay-as-you-go Pay-as-you-go LLM API with no free tier, billed from a prepaid balance. DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash (deepseek-flash): $0.30/M input, $1.20/M output at peak.	unrated
MiniMax	Pay-as-you-go MiniMax sells API access pay-as-you-go on platform.minimax.io. Its pricing pages list no free API allowance; one docs page mentions a free quota for new pay-as-you-go users but gives no amount.	unrated
Ollama Cloud	Pay-as-you-go Cloud-hosted Ollama for running open-source LLMs. Between October 26 and 27, 2026, Ollama replaced its Free plan, which included starter usage credits, with a $0 Pay as you go plan.	unrated
OpenAI	Pay-as-you-go AI API platform. One model is priced Free in OpenAI's own table: the moderation model omni-moderation-latest.	unrated
Anthropic API	Pay-as-you-go Claude API with usage-based pricing per million tokens (input/output). Claude Fable 5.2 $8/$40.	unrated

Left out of this list: Brave Search API (shares no subtype with this product), Pinecone (shares no subtype with this product), Qdrant (shares no subtype with this product), Deepgram (shares no subtype with this product), Kaggle (shares no subtype with this product), Roboflow (shares no subtype with this product), Scale AI (shares no subtype with this product), AssemblyAI (shares no subtype with this product), Replicate (shares no subtype with this product), Weights & Biases (shares no subtype with this product), Comet ML (shares no subtype with this product), Clarifai (we have not classified this record), Neptune.ai (we have not classified this record), Labelbox (shares no subtype with this product), Google Colab (shares no subtype with this product), Composio (shares no subtype with this product), DeepAR (none of this category's subtypes apply), OCR.Space (shares no subtype with this product), Parseur (shares no subtype with this product), Reducto (shares no subtype with this product), SerpApi (shares no subtype with this product), Tavily AI (shares no subtype with this product), paperspace (shares no subtype with this product), Arize AX (shares no subtype with this product), Audio Enhancer (none of this category's subtypes apply), Braintrust (shares no subtype with this product), Clair (none of this category's subtypes apply), Langfuse (shares no subtype with this product), LangSmith (shares no subtype with this product), Langtrace (we have not classified this record), LangWatch (shares no subtype with this product), Mediaworkbench.ai (none of this category's subtypes apply), Othor AI (none of this category's subtypes apply), ReportGPT (none of this category's subtypes apply), Zenable (none of this category's subtypes apply), Exa (shares no subtype with this product), GPU-Bridge (we have not classified this record), Google Vertex AI Agent Engine (we have not classified this record), Google Vector Search 2.0 (shares no subtype with this product), Google Gemini Embedding 2 (shares no subtype with this product), Alibaba Cloud Qwen Code (none of this category's subtypes apply), E2B (shares no subtype with this product), Modal (shares no subtype with this product), ElevenLabs (we have not classified this record), Stability AI (we have not classified this record), Daytona (shares no subtype with this product), Blaxel (shares no subtype with this product), Novita Sandbox (shares no subtype with this product), Runloop (shares no subtype with this product), Mem0 (shares no subtype with this product), Zep (shares no subtype with this product), Letta (we have not classified this record), Supermemory (shares no subtype with this product), Cognee (shares no subtype with this product), Serper (shares no subtype with this product), Linkup (shares no subtype with this product), Parallel (shares no subtype with this product), Jina AI (shares no subtype with this product), You.com (shares no subtype with this product), Cloudflare AI Search (we have not classified this record), Valyu (shares no subtype with this product). Each is still listed in AI / ML, with the vendor's own words we read that from on its page. How we decide this.

See full comparison →

Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The list above is every one of the 27 entries in that order, not a prefix of it. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.

date: 2026-11-14
query_key: alternatives:AI / ML:xAI
seed: 54e349eb519a5b1c31da081dce753ebf973679852d42c0af5ddc31a2e912e86f
tie_count: 13

Featured in Monthly Reports

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Watch xAI for Pricing Changes

We do not push notifications. Every change we record is readable the moment it lands, and the JSON answer carries an ETag — send it back as If-None-Match and an unchanged answer costs one 304.

curl https://agentdeals.dev/api/changes?vendor=xAI
curl https://agentdeals.dev/pricing-changes/feed.xml?vendor=xAI

API docs →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is xAI free?

Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request. Grok API, pay as you go: sign up at console.x.ai, then load it with credits. grok-4.7 $2.00/$6.00 (per 1M tokens, under 200k prompt tokens). grok-4.3 $1.25/$2.50 (under 200k prompt tokens). grok-build...

Is xAI's free tier good for production?

Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request. There is no free tier here to run in production.

What changed in xAI's pricing?

xAI has had 2 recorded pricing changes. Most recently: xAI's API keeps running. xAI retired the grok-imagine-image-quality image model on 2026-11-02. Requests to grok-imagine-image-quality and grok-imagine-image-pro are now served by grok-imagine-image-2.0 at low quality, at a lower per-image price, and need no changes. Source: https://docs.x.ai/developers/release-notes (2026-11-02).

What are the best free alternatives to xAI?

We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 27 free alternatives to xAI in AI / ML, each listed above with its tier. Of those, 13 carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold, so they are listed in an order that rotates daily, 6 are demoted with the reason named, 8 are listed last behind a stated gate. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.

What category is xAI in?

xAI is categorized under AI / ML on AgentDeals. We list 27 other AI / ML services alongside it, every one of them on this page with its free tier and the stability we publish for it.

xAI Pricing 2026

Free Tier Details

Pricing Change History (4 recorded)

Alternatives in AI / ML

Featured in Monthly Reports

Watch xAI for Pricing Changes

Related Guides

Frequently Asked Questions