Grok 4 — Specifications
| Developer | xAI |
|---|---|
| Type | Large language model (reasoning) |
| Modality | Text + image input, text output |
| Parameters | Undisclosed |
| Context window | 256,000 tokens |
| Max output | Undisclosed |
| License | Proprietary |
| Open weights | No |
| Released | July 9, 2025 |
| Input price | $3 /1M |
| Output price | $15 /1M |
| API providers | xAI API, OpenRouter, Vercel AI Gateway |
Grok 4 is xAI’s flagship reasoning model, launched on 9 July 2025 as the successor to Grok 3. It pairs native chain-of-thought reasoning with multimodal understanding, accepting both text and image input and returning text. The model ships with a 256,000-token context window and was, at release, xAI’s most capable system, posting strong results on reasoning and tool-use benchmarks such as Humanity’s Last Exam and ARC-AGI, aided by real-time access to X and the web.
Access is entirely proprietary: there are no open weights, and the model runs through the xAI API, the Grok apps, and the SuperGrok subscription. API pricing sits at $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, placing it in the same bracket as frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic rather than the budget tier.
Verdict: Grok 4 is a genuine frontier-class reasoner with strong benchmarks and live search, but it is not cheap and has since been joined by faster, lower-cost variants (Grok 4 Fast, 4.20, 4.3). Choose it for hard reasoning inside xAI’s ecosystem; reach for a newer variant when latency or price matters more than peak capability.
Grok 4 pricing: API cost per 1M tokens
| Input (per 1M tokens) | $3.00 |
|---|---|
| Output (per 1M tokens) | $15.00 |
| Output/input ratio | 5× |
| Blended (4:1 in:out) | $5.40 per 1M tokens |
What Grok 4 costs per month
Real monthly spend at a 4:1 input-to-output mix — the ratio a typical chat or RAG workload actually produces.
| Workload | Tokens / month | Cost / month |
|---|---|---|
| Side project | 1M in / 0.25M out | $6.75 |
| Small team | 20M in / 5M out | $135 |
| Production | 200M in / 50M out | $1,350 |
Run your own numbers in the AI API cost calculator.
Cheaper alternatives to Grok 4
| Model | Blended $/1M | You save |
|---|---|---|
| Mistral 7B open | $0.0220 | 100% cheaper |
| Llama 3.1 8B open | $0.0220 | 100% cheaper |
| Mistral NeMo 12B open | $0.0240 | 100% cheaper |
Frequently asked questions
How much does Grok 4 cost per 1M tokens?
Grok 4 costs $3.00 per 1M input tokens and $15.00 per 1M output tokens. At a typical 4:1 input-to-output mix that blends to about $5.40 per 1M tokens.
How much does Grok 4 cost per month?
A small-team workload of 20M input and 5M output tokens a month costs about $135 on Grok 4. A side project (1M in / 0.25M out) costs roughly $6.75.
What is a cheaper alternative to Grok 4?
Mistral 7B is the strongest cheaper option in our database at $0.0220 per 1M blended — about 100% less than Grok 4. It is also open-weight, so self-hosting is an option.
Can I run Grok 4 locally?
No. Grok 4 is a closed, API-only model — the weights are not released, so it cannot be self-hosted.
Why does Grok 4 charge more for output than input?
Output tokens are generated one at a time and cannot be batched the way a prompt can, so they cost the provider more to serve. Grok 4 charges 5× more for output, which is why prompt-heavy workloads are far cheaper to run than generation-heavy ones.
See every Grok model priced side by side: Grok API pricing.
Prices are the published list rates for the model's primary API and are reviewed as providers change them. Volume, batch and cached-input discounts are not included. Compare every model side by side in the AI models database or the LLM leaderboard.
