Models and Pricing

Requests which make use of xAI provided server-side tools are priced based on two components: token usage and server-side tool invocations. Since the agent autonomously decides how many tools to call, costs scale with query complexity.

All standard token types are billed at the rate for the model used in the request:

• Input tokens: Your query and conversation history
• Reasoning tokens: Agent's internal thinking and planning
• Completion tokens: The final response
• Image tokens: Visual content analysis (when applicable)
• Cached prompt tokens: Prompt tokens that were served from cache rather than recomputed

For the view image and view x video tools, you will not be charged for the tool invocation itself but will be charged for the image tokens used to process the image or video.

For Remote MCP tools, you will not be charged for the tool invocation but will be charged for any tokens used.

For more information on using Tools, please visit our guide on Tools.

The Batch API lets you process large volumes of requests asynchronously at 50% of standard pricing — effectively cutting your token costs in half. Batch requests are queued and processed in the background, with most completing within 24 hours.

The 50% discount applies to all token types — input tokens, output tokens, cached tokens, and reasoning tokens. To see batch pricing for a specific model, visit the model's detail page and toggle "Show batch API pricing".

The Voice Agent API enables real-time voice conversations over WebSocket, billed at a flat rate per minute of audio duration.

For more details on how to get started, see the Voice Agent API documentation.

The Text to Speech API converts text into natural speech, billed per input character.

The Speech to Text API transcribes audio into text, available as both a REST endpoint for batch transcription and a streaming endpoint for real-time transcription.

Files and collections stored on the xAI platform are billed based on the amount of storage used. These charges will take effect starting on April 20th, 2026.

Downloading data from files and collections is charged at a flat rate based on the amount of data transferred:

You can view and manage your files and collections through the xAI console or the xAI API.

When your request is deemed to be in violation of our usage guideline by our system, we will still charge for the generation of the request.

For violations that are caught before generation in the Responses API, we will charge a $0.05 usage guideline violation fee per request.

• No access to realtime events without search tools enabled
  • Grok has no knowledge of current events or data beyond what was present in its training data.
  • To incorporate realtime data with your request, enable server-side search tools (Web Search / X Search). See Web Search and X Search.
• Chat models
  • No role order limitation: You can mix system, user, or assistant roles in any sequence for your conversation context.
• Image input models
  • Maximum image size: 20MiB
  • Maximum number of images: No limit
  • Supported image file types: jpg/jpeg or png.
  • Any image/text input order is accepted (e.g. text prompt can precede image prompt)

Some models have aliases to help users automatically migrate to the next version of the same model. In general:

• <modelname> is aliased to the latest stable version.
• <modelname>-latest is aliased to the latest version. This is suitable for users who want to access the latest features.
• <modelname>-<date> refers directly to a specific model release. This will not be updated and is for workflows that demand consistency.

For most users, the aliased <modelname> or <modelname>-latest are recommended, as you would receive the latest features automatically.

Your model access might vary depending on various factors such as geographical location, account limitations, etc.

For how the bills are charged, visit Manage Billing for more information.

For the most up-to-date information on your team's model availability, visit Models Page on xAI Console.

Each model can have one or multiple input and output capabilities. The input capabilities refer to which type(s) of prompt can the model accept in the request message body. The output capabilities refer to which type(s) of completion will the model generate in the response message body.

This is a prompt example for models with text input capability:

[
  {
    "role": "system",
    "content": "You are Grok, a chatbot inspired by the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
  },
  {
    "role": "user",
    "content": "What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?"
  }
]

This is a prompt example for models with text and image input capabilities:

[
  {
    "role": "user",
    "content": [
      {
        "type": "image_url",
        "image_url": {
          "url": "data:image/jpeg;base64,<base64_image_string>",
          "detail": "high"
        }
      },
      {
        "type": "text",
        "text": "Describe what's in this image."
      }
    ]
  }
]

This is a prompt example for models with text input and image output capabilities:

// The entire request body
{
  "model": "grok-4",
  "prompt": "A cat in a tree",
  "n": 4
}

The context window determines the maximum amount of tokens accepted by the model in the prompt.

For more information on how token is counted, visit Consumption and Rate Limits.

If you are sending the entire conversation history in the prompt for use cases like chat assistant, the sum of all the prompts in your conversation history must be no greater than the context window.

Trying to run the same prompt multiple times? You can now use cached prompt tokens to incur less cost on repeated prompts. By reusing stored prompt data, you save on processing expenses for identical requests. Enable caching in your settings and start saving today!

The caching is automatically enabled for all requests without user input. You can view the cached prompt token consumption in the "usage" object.

For details on the pricing, please refer to the pricing table above, or on xAI Console.