Is Grok free? Yes, with limits, and paid plans start at $8

Is Grok free? Yes. xAI's own plan table lists a Free plan at $0 a month, and its Grok help pages say free users keep limited access to chat and voice. The company does not publish how many messages that allows. Paid plans start at $8 a month, according to xAI's pricing page, as of October 27, 2026.

The details matter because Grok's plans changed twice this year. A weekly usage system for paid users began rolling out in June, and on October 12 xAI folded Grok, Cursor and X Premium into one lineup called The X Subscription.

What the free plan includes

xAI's announcement of October 12 describes the Free plan as "Daily access to Grok, a starter allowance for Cursor's coding agents, and standard X." The pricing table marks its included usage as "Limited" and gives no numbers.

The Grok help center says the same in different words. When paid users hit their weekly limit, they "will still have access to Grok's free tier limits on Chat and Voice". Those free limits are separate from the paid weekly pool and reset on their own schedule. The page does not say how large they are or when they reset.

That is the honest answer to "how many free prompts do I get". xAI does not say. Older guides quote figures such as 10 prompts every two hours, but we found no such number on xAI's current pages, so we don't repeat it.

The help center also does not list image or video generation (Grok Imagine) as part of the free tier. Its only Imagine details are a Grok watermark on every output and a fall back from 720p to 480p video once you reach the 720p cap for your tier.

What the paid plans cost

As of October 27, 2026, The X Subscription lists these prices, with usage measured against a "base" amount that xAI does not define in dollars or messages:

Usage is a shared pool that covers Grok models and Grok Bot, xAI's agent, across Grok and Cursor. Grok Bot comes with Premium, Super and Ultra, not with Plus. Prices exclude sales tax. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor and X Premium subscribers can keep their current plan and price, and can switch later for a prorated refund. For what the Cursor side of the bundle gives you, see our guide on whether Cursor is free.

The new weekly limit

"Rolling out in June 2026, Grok will now use a simpler, more flexible system for paid users," the help center says. Paid plans get one weekly pool that you can spend on any Grok product, and different products draw it down at different rates. The reset time shows in the Usage tab in Settings.

Reaching the limit pauses paid features until the reset, but xAI says it is "not a hard stop". You can buy Extra Usage Credits (from $5, web only, expiring after a year), upgrade, or turn on Auto Top Up with a monthly cap you choose.

Is the Grok API free?

Not as far as xAI's docs show. The models and pricing page lists per-token prices and mentions no free credits. For example, grok-4.3 costs $1.25 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens, and grok-4.7 costs $2 and $6. Rate limits depend on a tier set by cumulative spend, and Tier 0 is the default at $0 spent.

What xAI has not said

xAI has not published the free tier's message counts, its reset schedule, or which models free users get. If those numbers matter to you, check the Usage tab in your own account, since the limits are likely to keep changing.