Is Grok free? Yes on the web, the apps, X and in a Tesla, but video and Expert mode start at $10

Is Grok free to use? Yes, in five places

No xAI page puts a number on free Grok. The figure you'll see quoted most, 10 prompts every 2 hours, comes from an X user's post, not from xAI, that TechCrunch reported on 6 December 2024, the day Grok opened to every X user. Grok is free in five places today. This is what each vendor's own page says, read on 12 October 2026 unless the row gives another date:

xAI's pricing page sums up the free plan in one line: "Get to know Grok and its capabilities for free within generous limits." That's the whole published allowance. The Grok FAQ adds only that free Chat and Voice limits reset "on their own schedule". It doesn't say when.

Two of the rows in that table tend to surprise people. The phone apps are free to download, but Apple's listing shows 10 in-app purchases, from $5 credit packs to the $300 Heavy plan. And the API has no free tier at all. xAI's billing docs, published 29 September 2026, offer prepaid credits or, if you ask sales, a monthly invoice. On the default $0 invoice limit, your requests are "automatically rejected once your prepaid credits are depleted."

Is Grok free now, or did it go paid? It has been free since December 2024

Grok hasn't gone paid-only at any point since X opened it to everyone. What moves is the line between free and paid features, and xAI's own posts show the free side growing.

xAI's Grok 3 post on 19 February 2025 rolled that model out "to all Grok users with usage limits". Its July 2026 post says Grok 4.5 "now powers Grok wherever you use it", naming grok.com, X and both apps. Then on 19 August 2026, Grok Build, which makes apps and games from a prompt, came to "every plan". In July it had been a beta for $300 Heavy subscribers only.

Grok Bot went the other way. xAI's always-on agents joined SuperGrok on 26 August 2026, and the pricing page lists them only from $30. If you searched "is Grok free again" after a refusal, you most likely hit the free limit, not a paywall. It refills on its own.

What does free Grok get, and what does SuperGrok add?

Free Grok gets you chat, voice, live search and Grok Build. xAI lists images, video and its best model only on paid plans. xAI's pricing page and its checkout page list the tiers this way as of 12 October 2026:

The 2x and the 5x are the only multipliers xAI prints, and it never says 2x of what. Free is the only plan below Lite, so free is the likely baseline. The pricing page names a model only under SuperGrok. The checkout's headline, meanwhile, still reads "Chat with Grok 4.6", so xAI doesn't commit to one model for free accounts.

So the free plan covers text answers, voice and live X search. Pay $10 if you want Expert mode or a first try at video. Pay $30 for 720p clips and Grok Bot. Is SuperGrok worth it weighs the $30 tier against X Premium+ in detail.

Grok free limits: what happens when you hit one?

When a free account runs out, you wait for the free Chat and Voice limits to refill, on a schedule xAI doesn't publish, or you pay. There's no counter to watch on the free plan. The "about two hours" you'll read in guides traces back to that 2024 post by an X user, and xAI hasn't confirmed it since.

Paid accounts land on the same free limits when their own allowance runs dry. Since June 2026, paid plans draw on one weekly pool shown in Settings > Usage, and the FAQ calls hitting it "not a hard stop". Once it's spent, "paid features will pause until your weekly limit resets", while the free Chat and Voice limits keep working.

You can buy past a wall, too. Extra Usage Credits start at $5 and expire a year after purchase. The FAQ says they "can currently only be purchased on the web", yet the App Store already lists credit packs of $5, $20, $50 and $100. Grok usage limit reached explains each meter and its reset clock.

Is Grok free on X, in a Tesla, or for developers?

Grok is free on X with any X account, in every country where X is available, per X's help page on Grok. X sells more of it in two tiers. Premium at $8 a month ($84 a year) adds "increased usage limits on Grok". Premium+ at $40 ($395 a year) includes SuperGrok access and Grok Bot, per X's Premium page as of 10 October 2026. The $3 Basic tier lists no Grok benefit. Skip it for Grok.

One catch with Premium+: the SuperGrok benefit doesn't reach grok.com by itself. You link the two accounts in grok.com Settings > Account. xAI's FAQ says "X Premium+ access only applies to the account linked with your X account." How to cancel SuperGrok sorts out which of the two companies is billing you.

In a Tesla, Grok doesn't cost anything extra. Tesla's support page, as archived on 11 June 2026, says "A Grok account or subscription is not required to enable Grok on your vehicle at this time." The car does need an AMD processor, software 2025.26 or later, and either Premium Connectivity or a Wi-Fi connection. Tesla adds that availability "is subject to change or end at any time".

For developers, nothing is free by default. The xAI API bills prepaid credits unless you ask for an invoice, and xAI's newest model, announced on 21 September 2026, costs $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output. OpenRouter listed 8 Grok entries on 12 October 2026 (seven models and one batch variant), and none of them was a free variant. The free route xAI offers is Grok Build: its launch post says "Try it in Grok Build for free".

What does free Grok cost you instead of money?

Free Grok on X can train on what you type unless you switch it off. X's help page says your interactions, inputs and results with Grok on X "may be used to train and improve" xAI's models. The switch is in Settings, under Privacy & Safety > Data sharing and personalization > Grok & Third-party Collaborators. On grok.com the controls live under Settings > Data Controls.

Every image and video Grok makes carries a watermark, and the FAQ says "There is no setting to remove the watermark." The apps also carry age ratings: 16+ on the App Store and Teen on Google Play, where Grok passed 100 million downloads.

Whizi, which publishes this page, isn't a free way to Grok. A free Whizi account can't reach it. It runs only Whizi AI, Auto and Claude Haiku 5.5, and it stops at 10 messages a day. Grok starts on Whizi Pro at $29.99 a month, where each Grok message costs 6 credits, about 416 messages from 2,500 credits, next to Claude and GPT in the same chat (Grok in Whizi). For free Grok, use grok.com.