Grok Review 2026: The Chatbot From X Is Now a SpaceX Product, Five Paid Tiers Deep, and Trying to Be Your Coworker
Grok is no longer "Elon's chatbot on X". xAI joined SpaceX on Feb 2, 2026, the company now trades as SpaceXAI, and SpaceX closed its reported $60 billion purchase of Cursor on Aug 14. The product you would sign up for today has a free tier, four paid SuperGrok plans from $10 to $300 a month, a flagship model (Grok 4.7, Sept 21) priced at $2 / $6 per million tokens, an open-source coding agent, and Grok Bot, a team of cloud-based AI coworkers. It also has a 1.4 out of 5 Trustpilot score, open regulator investigations over sexualised deepfakes, and a privacy policy that lets it train on your chats unless you switch that off. This review checks each claim against SpaceXAI's own pages, then adds what real users say.
| Owner | SpaceX (as SpaceXAI LLC) |
| Free tier | Real -- web and X search, voice |
| Cheapest paid plan | $10/mo (SuperGrok Lite) |
| Grok MAU (SpaceX S-1, Mar 2026) | ~117M |
| Trustpilot record | 1.4/5, 506 reviews |
A genuinely broad and fast-moving assistant with a real edge in live X data and agents, held back by price, limits, billing complaints and trust.
"Grok's real strength in 2026 is range plus speed of shipping: chat with live web and X search, image and video generation, voice, a terminal coding agent, and now cloud coworkers, all from one company that shipped three flagship models (Grok 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7) in about ten weeks. The weakness is the experience around it. The loudest consumer complaints are about burning through usage and about billing, several Hacker News commenters say the chat personality is the weakest of the big assistants, and the company is under open investigation in Europe and the UK over the January deepfake scandal."
My honest read: the Free plan is worth trying for anything that benefits from live X posts. SuperGrok at $30 only makes sense if you will use Imagine, Voice or Grok Bot, because ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini cost less for chat alone. For developers, the API price ($2 in, $6 out per million tokens) and the open-source Grok Build agent are the more interesting products than the chatbot. And if your employer cares who owns the vendor, remember that Grok, Cursor and X-adjacent data now sit under one SpaceX umbrella.
Chat, Imagine, Voice, Build and Bot, sold as one subscription ladder and one API.
As of this check SpaceXAI describes its products as Chat (Grok on web, iOS, Android and inside X, with search of the live web and X, multi-agent mode, memory, canvas and file analysis), Imagine (image and video generation), Voice (conversation, transcription and a voice-agent builder), Build (Grok Build, a coding agent and terminal UI, free on every plan and open source), and Bot (Grok Bot, launched in beta on Aug 11: AI teammates with their own cloud computer). Underneath is one API with text, image, video and voice models, also sold through Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Foundry, Google's Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and GitHub Copilot.
Worth knowing before you sign up: SpaceXAI's privacy policy says SpaceXAI LLC is a US company and "a separate company from X Corp.", yet the iOS App Store listing for the Grok app still names X Corp. as the developer. Both are accurate as written; they just show how entangled the Musk companies are.
A top-tier consumer AI app by downloads, a mid-sized one by web share, and now a developer platform through Cursor.
SpaceX S-1 as reported by TechCrunch, March 2026: 117M MAU for Grok AI features out of 550M combined across Grok and X. Not paying users.
Google Play bucket for the Grok app, Oct 3. Installs, not active users.
1.5M iOS ratings; 3.92M Google Play reviews, read from the store listings Oct 3.
Similarweb, May 2026, via search-aggregated summaries (peak 326M in March). Visits, not people; second-hand.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-01-06 | xAI announces a $20B Series E | x.ai company timeline |
| 2026-01-26 | European Commission opens a DSA probe into Grok-made sexualised deepfakes; Ofcom opens its own | Al Jazeera; press |
| 2026-02-02 | "xAI joins SpaceX" -- SpaceX announces it acquired xAI | x.ai news |
| 2026-05-06 | New compute partnership with Anthropic announced | x.ai news |
| 2026-07-06 | xAI rebrands as SpaceXAI (reported) | press |
| 2026-07-15 | Grok Build open-sourced | x.ai news |
| 2026-08-11 | Grok Bot launches in beta | x.ai news |
| 2026-08-12 | Grok 4.6 released | x.ai news |
| 2026-08-14 | SpaceX completes the Cursor acquisition; Grok 4.6 lands in GitHub Copilot | Cursor blog; x.ai news |
| 2026-09-21 | Grok 4.7 released | x.ai news |
| 2026-09-28 | Team Bots announced | x.ai news |
App-store raters give it near-perfect scores. Trustpilot reviewers and many Hacker News commenters are far less kind.
1.4 out of 5; 8% five-star, 80% one-star. Complaints: "if you talk to grok for 5 minutes it burns up your tokens like crazy" (Oct 3); "stupid expensive for what you get, limits on everything even chat" (Sep 19); one reviewer says they were "charged $100 the following day for SuperGrok Plus" after downgrading. These are single-reviewer claims I could not verify.
Split. "Having used grok for personal chat: it's by far the worst one amongst Claude, ChatGPT and even Deepseek, Gemini" -- and a reply: "Grok will end tasks almost immediately and claim 'Done!'". Against that: "grok cursor is highly superior results" for coding, and another user found Grok "does good research and produces less bullshit" when asked to be critical.
The debate was about trust, not features: "Musk's personal brand is so poisonous that I would never let him anywhere near my data", versus "like a hosted OpenClaw with, I assume, more guardrails". Several commenters worried about agents with account access and prompt injection.
Free, then $10, $30, $100 and $300 a month -- and the API is priced separately.
Free
Get to know Grok within "generous limits".
- Real-time web and X search
- Voice mode
- Connectors
SuperGrok Lite
Entry paid tier (App Store listing).
- Shown on the pricing comparison table
- Press says basic Imagine at 480p (unverified)
SuperGrok
Higher rate limits and frontier models.
- Expert, image and video generation
- Grok Bot access and connectors
- Pricing page names Grok 4.6
$100 and $300
Plus: significantly higher usage, 1080p video, priority at peak. Heavy: highest usage at the fastest speed.
- Plus: early access to features
- Heavy: most powerful intelligence, dedicated support
| Plan | Price (USD, App Store list) | What SpaceXAI says it adds | Grok Bot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Real-time web + X search, voice, connectors, SOC 2 (Type I and II) listed | No |
| SuperGrok Lite | $10/mo | Paid entry; details not extractable from the page | Not listed |
| SuperGrok | $30/mo | Grok 4.6 (as listed), Expert, higher limits, image and video generation | Yes |
| SuperGrok Plus | $100/mo | Everything in SuperGrok plus 1080p video, significantly higher usage, priority access, early features | Yes |
| SuperGrok Heavy | $300/mo | Highest usage at the fastest speed, hardest problems, dedicated support | Yes |
| Business / Enterprise | Business: see pricing page; Enterprise: sales | Seat management, RBAC, SSO, SCIM, no-training, custom retention, customer-managed keys (Enterprise) | Yes (Enterprise GA) |
| Extra usage credits | $5, $20, $50, $100 (App Store) | Pay-as-you-go top-ups | - |
Grok Bot also comes bundled with Cursor Pro ($20/month), Pro+, Ultra and Teams (shown at $40 per seat) per x.ai/bot. Bot usage is separate from your Grok or Cursor plan allowance and extra usage is billed at token cost, per SpaceXAI's FAQ.
Pick by whether you want live X data, creative tools, or an agent.
Free. Judge the answers on a news topic you know.
SuperGrok at $30; check whether Lite at $10 covers your volume first.
Plus at $100, but compare it with your usage and with a rival's top plan before paying.
Use the free Grok Build agent or the API at $2 / $6 per million tokens, or use Grok inside Cursor.
Grok Bot is in beta; read the security section before connecting accounts.
Look at ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity in Alternatives.
Grok 4.7 is SpaceXAI's flagship for coding and knowledge work, priced at half of some rivals.
SpaceXAI's Sept 21 post calls Grok 4.7 its most capable model for coding and knowledge work: a new, larger base model, a longer reinforcement-learning run, better self-checking, and a "best-calibrated" new safeguard stack. It is priced at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output, with a fast variant at twice the output speed for twice the price. It is available in Cursor, Grok Build, the Grok API, third-party coding harnesses and cloud platforms. SpaceXAI's own table, reproduced below, is more mixed than the headline: Grok 4.7 beats its predecessor everywhere but trails the most expensive rival on several tests.
| SpaceXAI's Grok 4.7 table | Grok 4.7 xHigh | Grok 4.6 High | GPT-5.6 Sol Max | Fable 5.1 Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Input / output price per 1M tokens | $2 / $6 | $2 / $6 | $4 / $20 | $10 / $50 |
| CursorBench 4.0 | 46.3% | 40.4% | 41.7% | 51.8% |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | 71.0%* | 65.2% | 72.7% | 70.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | 37.6% | 20.3% | 37.3% | 57.9% |
| AA Briefcase v1.1 (multi-hour office work) | 1,657 | 1,546 | 1,487 | 1,678 |
| HealthBench Professional | 56.7% | 48.5% | 60.5% | 62.1% |
On the consumer side, Imagine generates images and video (SpaceXAI's chat page says up to 2K images and 15-second videos), with Imagine Image 2.0 launched Aug 7 and Imagine Video 1.5 earlier. Voice now includes Grok Voice Transcribe 2.0 (Sept 18) and 21 new flagship voices (July 6). A heads-up from the API docs: Imagine Image Quality is scheduled for retirement on Nov 2, 2026.
- The API price is public, checkable on docs.x.ai, and the lowest of the flagship models SpaceXAI chose to compare.
- Developers on Hacker News report strong results from Grok inside Cursor.
- One commenter found Grok does "good research" and less filler when asked to be critical.
- Benchmarks are SpaceXAI's own, and the comparison set is chosen by SpaceXAI.
- Several HN users call Grok's chat "bland" or "lazy" compared with rivals; this is opinion, not measurement.
- Token price is not cost per finished task; a commenter noted token efficiency matters.
Ask with live context, let it reason or delegate, then review what it did -- especially if it acted.
The practical rule from SpaceXAI's own product pages: Grok Build starts complex tasks in a plan mode in which every edit is blocked until you approve it, and Grok Bot can route sensitive actions through "Auto Review" before they run. In chat there is no such guardrail, so verification of answers is on you, and SpaceXAI's FAQ itself warns that Grok "may provide inaccurate or inappropriate information" and may include "hallucinations".
AI teammates with a computer of their own, working in your apps around the clock.
Grok Bot launched in beta on Aug 11. A "Bot" is a worker you create for a specific job; each Bot works from a persistent cloud computer, signs into the apps and websites you give it, runs routines on a schedule, and can learn a workflow by watching you do it once. SpaceXAI says it started as an internal prototype and that "thousands of organizations" adopted it after launch, with "millions" of Bots created; those are company claims I cannot verify. It is available on desktop (macOS, Windows) and the iOS app, included with SuperGrok, Plus and Heavy and with Cursor Pro, Pro+, Ultra and Teams plans, and generally available to Enterprise since Sept 3. Team Bots (Sept 28) add shared Bots with per-person private context and Slack access.
- Work that lives in apps without a clean API: the Bot signs in like a person.
- Recurring jobs: morning briefs, pipeline research, expense or support-queue triage, with drafts left for your approval.
- All of a user's Bots share one persistent cloud computer (files, browser, logins), per SpaceXAI's FAQ; isolation is per user, not per Bot.
- It is a beta; I have not run it. HN commenters raised prompt-injection and account-access worries. A Trustpilot reviewer says they paid for Grok Bot, got no response and was refused a refund (single claim, unverified).
An open-source terminal agent, Cursor under the same owner, and Grok models in the other major coding tools.
Grok Build is SpaceXAI's coding agent and terminal UI. It was open-sourced on Jul 15 under Apache-2.0 (the GitHub repo had about 27.2K stars on Oct 3), can run "fully local-first" against your own inference via a config.toml, and supports skills, plugins, hooks, MCP servers and subagents, with a plugin marketplace. SpaceXAI says Grok Build is available on every plan, including web and mobile. Cursor, which SpaceX now owns, offers Grok models and Grok Bot; for the Cursor side see the JAVIS Cursor review. Grok models are also in GitHub Copilot (Grok 4.5 on Jul 28, 4.6 on Aug 14; see the GitHub Copilot review), plus OpenCode, OpenClaw, Kilo Code, Warp and Hermes Agent per SpaceXAI's timeline.
| Integration | What it does | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Grok API tools | Function calling, web search, X search, code execution, collections (RAG), remote MCP tools | docs.x.ai |
| Cloud platforms | Grok 4.6 on Amazon Bedrock (Aug 19), Microsoft Foundry (Aug 26), Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (Aug 26), Databricks | x.ai news |
| Office and Google | Grok for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook; Grok in Google Workspace (Jun-Jul) | x.ai company timeline |
| Coding tools | Cursor, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode, OpenClaw, Kilo Code, Warp, Hermes Agent | x.ai news |
| Grok Bot plugins | Salesforce, Notion, GitHub and more; Slack access for Team Bots | Team Bots post |
| Google OAuth | Content from connected Google apps is not used for training | Privacy policy |
Per-token API prices are public and low; the consumer plans meter usage in ways that annoy users.
| Model (docs.x.ai, Oct 3) | Input / cached / output per 1M tokens | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Grok 4.7 and 4.6 (<200k tokens) | $2.00 / $0.50 / $6.00 | 500K |
| Grok 4.7 and 4.6 (≥200k tokens) | $4.00 / $1.00 / $12.00 | 500K |
| Grok 4.5 (<200k) | $2.00 / $0.30 / $6.00 | 500K |
| Grok 4.3 and 4.20 family (<200k) | $1.25 / $0.20 / $2.50 | 1M |
| Grok Build 0.1 (<200k) | $1.00 / $0.20 / $2.00 | 256K |
| Imagine image / video | $0.04-$0.05 per image; $0.08 per second of video | - |
| Voice | Speech-to-speech $0.08/min; text-to-speech $15 per 1M characters | - |
| Per 1M tokens (list, input / output) | Grok 4.7 | GPT-5.6 Sol Max | Fable 5.1 Max | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (off-peak) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $2 / $6 | $4 / $20 | $10 / $50 | $0.15 / $0.60 |
Your chats may train Grok unless you switch it off; business plans do not train on your data; regulators are still investigating.
| Control | What SpaceXAI's policy and FAQ say |
|---|---|
| Who runs it | SpaceXAI LLC, a US company "separate from X Corp."; privacy policy effective Aug 24, 2026 |
| Training on your chats | "We may use your content and interactions with Grok ... to train our models"; you control it via Settings > Data Controls > "Improve the model" |
| Private Chat | Not saved to history, not used for training, deleted from systems within 30 days |
| Logged-out use | In some regions (not EU/UK) you cannot opt out of training when not logged in |
| Human review | "A limited number of our authorized personnel may review your conversations" for model improvement, security and legal reasons |
| Deleting data | Delete conversations or the account; data deleted within 30 days unless retained for legal, compliance or safety reasons |
| Share links | Public links may be indexed by search engines; revoke at grok.com/share-links |
| Business and Enterprise | Content not used to improve models; SSO, SCIM, audit controls, customer-managed keys, SOC 2 (Type I and II) listed |
On safety, the January 2026 episode matters. Reports in early January said Grok's image tools were used to "undress" photos of women and minors. The European Commission opened a Digital Services Act probe on Jan 26, the UK's Ofcom opened a formal investigation under the Online Safety Act, Indonesia temporarily and Malaysia blocked access, and X restricted image generation and editing to paying customers. As of today I found no published final outcome. Separately, SpaceXAI says Grok 4.7 has its strongest safeguards yet and cites a third-party biosecurity benchmark; those are the company's claims. The privacy policy also states that Grok may produce suggestive dialogue or crude humor, and the stores rate the app 16+ (iOS) and 18+ (Play).
Best for X power users, creators and developers who like Cursor; weaker for people who want a calm, predictable assistant.
| Situation | Why Grok fits | Likely plan |
|---|---|---|
| News and social-trend watcher | Live search of X and the web is built in | Free, then SuperGrok |
| Creator making images and short video | Imagine Image 2.0, video up to 15 seconds, 1080p on Plus | SuperGrok or Plus |
| Developer in Cursor or the terminal | Grok 4.7 in Cursor and Grok Build; open-source agent; low API price | Cursor Pro or API; Build is free |
| Team wanting AI coworkers in apps | Grok Bot, Team Bots, enterprise controls | SuperGrok+ / Cursor Teams / Enterprise |
| Employer with strict vendor-ownership rules | Check legal review of SpaceX / X-adjacent ownership first | Business or Enterprise only, after review |
| Someone who wants cited sourced answers or a calm style | Not its sharpest edge to many HN users; compare Perplexity or Claude | Free to test |
Six real gaps, not manufactured ones.
Trustpilot reviewers say tokens or limits run out quickly and one says a $100 renewal hit after a downgrade. SpaceXAI sells $5 to $100 extra-usage credit packs, which suggests metering is a real feature of the plans. I verified none of the individual billing claims.
The pricing page hides prices behind JavaScript, grok.com/plans could not be read directly, and the page still names Grok 4.6 for SuperGrok after Grok 4.7 launched. Check what your plan includes in the app before paying.
On HN, several heavy users call Grok's chat the weakest of the big assistants ("lazy", "bland"), while others rate it highly for research and for coding inside Cursor.
EU and UK investigations over the Grok-generated deepfakes were still open when I checked, and trust in the Musk brand is a recurring objection in HN threads about Grok Bot.
Grok Bot is a beta with a shared cloud computer per user; prompt-injection risk is the standard worry and is not unique to Grok.
xAI, X and Cursor have all changed corporate status or name in 2026; pages and apps still mix SpaceXAI, xAI and X Corp. A Sept 22 outage across API, Grok.com and Grok Build was reported on HN.
Grok is the real-time, creative and agent-heavy one. Others win on polish, citations or privacy posture.
| If you mostly need... | Compare Grok with... |
|---|---|
| The most complete all-round assistant | ChatGPT |
| Careful writing and strong coding | Claude |
| Google Workspace integration and a big free tier | Google Gemini |
| Cited, search-first answers | Perplexity |
| The IDE that now shares Grok's owner | Cursor, GitHub Copilot |
| A very cheap open-weights API model | DeepSeek (deepseek.com) |
| Microsoft 365-integrated assistant | Microsoft Copilot (copilot.microsoft.com) |
| Entry-to-top consumer pricing | Grok | ChatGPT (per JAVIS review) |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes | Yes (ads possible) |
| Cheapest paid | $10 (Lite, App Store) | $8 (Go, US; ads) |
| Standard paid | $30 (SuperGrok) | $20 (Plus) |
| Top plans | $100 (Plus), $300 (Heavy) | $100 / $200 / $500 (Pro tiers) |
No affiliate relationship shapes this review.
JAVIS has no publisher affiliate program with SpaceXAI. Every CTA in this article points to the official product. This is a VERIFIED EDITORIAL REVIEW: I did not hands-on test Grok, and everything about Grok Bot in particular comes from SpaceXAI's own pages and user discussions.
Go to the official site.
Open GrokRead the alternative that matches your real question.
Choose the next articleGrok sits between the big consumer assistants and the AI coding-tool cluster.
All six cards link to reviews that are already live on JAVIS.
Card images are official assets from each product's own site or from the product's already-published JAVIS page.
Questions people are actually searching right now
How much does Grok cost in October 2026?
Free is $0. SuperGrok Lite is $10 per month, SuperGrok $30, SuperGrok Plus $100 and SuperGrok Heavy $300, per Grok's official App Store listing. Business is priced on SpaceXAI's pricing page and Enterprise by sales. Web prices may differ from App Store prices.
Is Grok free?
Yes, there is a free plan with web and X search and voice mode within "generous limits". Image, video, Grok Bot and higher limits need a paid plan.
Who owns Grok now?
SpaceX acquired xAI on Feb 2, 2026, and the AI business now operates as SpaceXAI. SpaceX also closed its acquisition of Cursor on Aug 14. SpaceXAI's privacy policy says SpaceXAI LLC is separate from X Corp.
What is the latest Grok model?
Grok 4.7, released Sept 21, 2026, at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output. SpaceXAI's pricing page still names Grok 4.6 for SuperGrok, so confirm in-app which model your plan uses.
What is Grok Bot?
A beta product that gives you AI teammates, each working on a cloud computer, that can sign into apps and run tasks and routines. It is included with SuperGrok, Plus, Heavy and several Cursor plans, with its own usage meter.
Does Grok train on my chats?
It may, unless you turn off "Improve the model" in Data Controls or use Private Chat. Business and Enterprise content is not used to improve models, per SpaceXAI.
Is Grok safe to use?
Controls exist, but the EU and UK investigations into the January deepfake scandal were unresolved when I checked, and the policy warns that output can be unsuitable for some ages. Avoid sharing sensitive data in the consumer app.
What are the best alternatives?
ChatGPT for breadth, Claude for writing and code, Gemini for Google integration, Perplexity for citations, and Cursor or GitHub Copilot for coding. See Alternatives above.
Where this came from, and when it was checked.
Pricing and plans: Grok App Store listing (in-app purchases: Lite $10, SuperGrok $30, Plus $100, Heavy $300, credits $5 to $100), x.ai/pricing feature comparison, x.ai/bot FAQ; read Oct 3, 2026. Web plan prices were not extractable (prices load in the browser, and grok.com/plans could not be read directly).
Models and API: docs.x.ai/docs/models (prices, context), x.ai/news/grok-4-7 (Sept 21), x.ai/news/grok-4-6, x.ai/news, x.ai/company timeline.
Ownership: x.ai/news/xai-joins-spacex (Feb 2, 2026), footer "SpaceXAI LLC"; cursor.com/blog/joining-spacex (Aug 14, 2026); rebrand date (Jul 6) from press, not read on an official page.
Products: x.ai/grok, x.ai/bot, x.ai/build, x.ai/news/introducing-grok-bot, grok-bot-for-enterprise, team-bots, grok-build-open-source; GitHub data for xai-org/grok-build (Apache-2.0, ~27.2K stars).
Privacy and data: x.ai/legal/privacy-policy (effective Aug 24, 2026) and x.ai/legal/faq.
Market: 117M Grok MAU from SpaceX S-1 via TechCrunch (May 20, 2026); Google Play and App Store listings; grok.com visits and traffic share from Similarweb via search-aggregated summaries (second-hand).
Real users: Trustpilot grok.com (1.4/5, 506 reviews, read Oct 3); Hacker News threads 49788838 (Grok 4.7) and 49261514 (Grok Bot) on Hacker News; App Store and Play ratings. Reddit not read directly.
Regulatory: Al Jazeera (Jan 26, 2026), plus press summaries of Ofcom and Indonesian/Malaysian actions; no final outcome found.
Official video: none embedded; no SpaceXAI-owned YouTube channel could be confirmed, and launch livestreams ran on X.
Fit Score (65/100): editorial composite of five criteria scored out of 20: value for money 13, model capability 15, product breadth 16, privacy and governance 10, user sentiment and stability 11. A judgement, not a benchmark.
