What is Grok Build? xAI's terminal coding agent explained

Grok Build is xAI's coding agent for the terminal. You run it with the grok command in a project folder, give it a task, and it reads your code, plans the work and edits files. xAI launched it as an early beta on May 25, 2026, and describes it as built for professional software engineers doing complex work.

It is a tool in the same category as Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex CLI, not a chatbot and not a new model. This page covers what it does, how to get it, and what xAI has and hasn't said about cost and limits, as of November 6, 2026.

What Grok Build is

According to xAI, Grok Build works in three ways, per the Grok Build docs:

• An interactive terminal interface, started with grok.
• Headless mode, started with grok -p "<prompt>", for scripts and automations. Adding --output-format streaming-json streams the output.
• The Agent Client Protocol (ACP), an open standard that lets other apps and editors drive an agent. xAI says it supports ACP fully, so you can build your own bots on top of it.

The launch post lists these features:

• Plan mode. For a complex task, the agent writes a plan first. You can approve it, comment on steps or rewrite it before anything runs. Approved changes show up as diffs.
• Your existing setup. It reads AGENTS.md files, and works with plugins, hooks, skills and MCP servers (a standard way to connect an agent to outside tools).
• Subagents. It can split a large task across specialized subagents that run in parallel, including each in its own git worktree.
• A /feedback command that sends bugs and requests to xAI.

The docs also list a status line, a plugin marketplace, enterprise deployment, and Grok Bot, xAI's cloud-based AI teammate. We cover that product in How to use Grok Bot.

Who it is for

Developers who already work in a terminal and want an agent that edits a real repository. xAI's own wording is "professional software engineering and complex coding work." If you want a chat window to ask coding questions, the Grok app does that without any of this.

How to get Grok Build

1. Install it. On macOS or Linux, xAI's launch post gives curl -fsSL https://x.ai/cli/install.sh | bash. The docs also point to a PowerShell script for Windows.
2. Run grok in your project directory. The first launch opens a browser so you can sign in with your account.
3. On a machine with no browser, set the XAI_API_KEY environment variable instead.
4. Pick a model with /model <name> in the interface, or -m in headless mode. You can also define custom models in ~/.grok/config.toml. grok inspect shows the skills, plugins, hooks and MCP servers it found.

We did not run the installer. The steps above come from xAI's pages.

Who can use it and what it costs

At launch, xAI said Grok Build was available to all SuperGrok and X Premium Plus subscribers. The launch post lists no separate price for Grok Build.

Since then, xAI has folded its plans into The X Subscription. As of October 12, 2026, its page lists these plans:

That page links to Grok Build but does not say which plans include it, so check your plan's page before you pay for it. xAI's pricing page does mention a Grok Build free tier, but only to say that it does not include Grok 4.7 Fast. We could not find xAI text describing what the free tier does include.

Usage limits

xAI has not published a number of tasks or tokens for Grok Build. What it has published is the system around it. Paid plans draw from one weekly usage pool shared across Grok and Cursor, and the pool resets weekly. Different activities use different amounts, and a long coding task uses far more than a chat message. When the pool runs out, you can buy extra usage credits, upgrade, or turn on auto top-up. The usage limits page sends you to x.ai/pricing for the included amounts per plan. Our explainer on the Grok weekly limit covers how the pool works.

Models and API prices

Grok Build runs on xAI models. The API pricing page lists grok-build-0.1, a text model with a 256,000-token context window:

Prices are as listed on November 6, 2026. They matter if you call the model through the API. Inside Grok Build on a subscription, your plan's usage pool pays instead.

xAI also lists Grok 4.7 Fast, a faster version of Grok 4.7 that is available only in Cursor and Grok Build, and is billed through your plan. It is not on the public API.

What we don't know

• Which X Subscription tiers include Grok Build, and what the free tier allows.
• The absolute usage allowance per plan.
• Whether the beta label will come off, and when.
• Independent benchmarks. xAI's launch post gives none, so how it compares with other coding agents on real tasks is untested here.

For a view of what xAI charges elsewhere, see Grok Imagine plans, pricing and limits.