grok-4.6
Input price$2
Output price$6
xAITextVision
grok-4.5
grok-4.5 is xAI's model at $2.00 input and $6.00 output per million tokens, with a 500K context window. On a typical 3:1 input-to-output mix that blends to roughly $3.00 per million tokens, placing it in the premium band of the 89 models tracked here — cheaper than 30% of them.
Context window500K
Input price$2 / 1M
Output price$6 / 1M
Output speed91 tok/s
Quality score91
Data updatedUpdated Jul 2026
Price verified2026-08-19 · Official
By price, grok-4.5 ranks 61st cheapest of 89 on input and 58th on output. Its quality score of 91 ranks 23rd of 89, and on value (quality score ÷ output price) it ranks 55th of 89. Its blended rate sits 3% below the catalog average.
In real billing terms: a support chatbot handling 50,000 turns a month (2,000 input / 500 output tokens each) costs about $350 per month on grok-4.5, while a RAG workload of 20,000 queries (8,000 input / 800 output tokens each) runs about $416. Because output is priced 3.0× input here, long-generation tasks scale cost fastest — cap output length before you optimise anything else.
A 500K context window holds roughly 667 pages of A4 text (at ~750 tokens per page), ranking 50th of 89 here. That is enough to drop in an entire technical manual or several source files at once, which suits long-document summarization and codebase-wide analysis. Output runs at about 91 tok/s (48th fastest of 89), acceptable interactively, though long responses will feel slow.
We track 5 xAI models, and grok-4.5's blended rate sits 24% above that provider's average. If your task tolerates a little less headroom, qwen3.5 (Alibaba) blends about 96% cheaper at a quality score of 91, and is worth benchmarking first. Going the other way, deepseek-reasoner-v4 scores 92 on quality for about 82% less.
The closest model in xAI's line-up is grok-4.7 ($2.00 input / $6.00 output, quality —). Against it, grok-4.5 scores 91 points higher on quality. When two models sit this close on price, the deciding factor is usually the quality ceiling — run both against your real prompts before picking.
Our read on it
A 1:3 output ratio is rare restraint in this tier, and the 500K context is the part nobody talks about.
A 1:3 input-to-output ratio is rare up here
grok-4.5 charges $2 in and $6 out — output at three times input. gemini-3.1-pro scores the same 91 and charges $2/$12, a 1:6 ratio: identical input rate, double the output. A tier up, Alibaba's qwen3.8-max (quality 94) also holds 1:3 at $2/$6. xAI and Alibaba made the same pricing choice here and Google did not.
That ratio decides what the model is good for. Output-heavy work — long-form generation, full-text translation, bulk code emission, conversational agents — produces a visibly smaller bill here than on same-scoring rivals. If your workload is huge input and a two-line answer, the output advantage barely registers and you should weight other columns.
500K context sits between two worlds
It is not the largest available — several models in this catalog exceed a million, including xAI's own grok-4.3 and grok-4.20 — but it is far beyond the common 131K and 200K tiers. In practice that means a mid-sized repository, a complete annual report, or several dozen papers fit in one request.
Add 91 tokens/second and a Fast latency rating and you get something unusual: large enough context, quick enough response, and cheap enough output, all at once. Most models let you pick two.
Two things to settle before choosing it
Modalities. grok-4.5 does text and vision only. A product with a speech pipeline needs gpt-5.6-luna or gpt-5.6-sol alongside it.
And its own sibling grok-4.3, at $1.25/$2.50 and quality 89 — nearly half the price, faster at 100 tokens/second, and carrying 1,000K of context, twice what 4.5 offers. What it gives up is two points of quality and the reasoning and coding tags; long context is not on the list of trades. That puts the entire case for 4.5 on reasoning quality. If your workload is not decided by those two points, 4.3 is almost certainly the better financial call, and it hands you the larger window as well.
Estimated monthly cost
Monthly API spend across four common workloads, next to the cheapest model we track.
| Workload | Usage assumption | This model | Cheapest model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot | 2,000 input / 500 output tokens per turn, 50,000 turns per month | $350 | $3.00 |
| RAG document Q&A | 8,000 input / 800 output tokens per query, 20,000 queries per month | $416 | $3.84 |
| Coding assistant | 12,000 input / 2,000 output tokens per request, 10,000 requests per month | $360 | $3.20 |
| Batch summarization | 4,000 input / 400 output tokens per item, 200,000 items per month | $2,080 | $19 |
Derived directly from the rates on this page. Excludes prompt caching, batch discounts and free tiers.
How it compares
The alternatives worth benchmarking alongside it, from the same dataset.
| Model | Provider | Blended /1M | Quality | Price delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| grok-4.5 | xAI | $3.00 | 91 | — |
| qwen3.5Cheaper option | Alibaba | $0.11 | 91 | -96% |
| deepseek-reasoner-v4Higher quality | DeepSeek | $0.54 | 92 | -82% |
| grok-4.7Same provider | xAI | $3.00 | — | +0% |
| qwen3.7-flashBest value overall | Alibaba | $0.055 | 82 | -98% |
Best for
ReasoningCodingChatbot
Modalities
TextVision
Where it fits — and where it doesn't
Good fit
- Coding: writing, refactoring and debugging across multi-file project context.
- Reasoning: multi-step decomposition, planning and tasks that need rigorous inference.
- Chat and support: natural multi-turn conversation for user-facing products.
- Long documents: a 500K window ingests a full contract, paper or large codebase in one pass.
- Multimodal input: handles images, screenshots and scanned documents directly.
Poor fit
- High-frequency batch jobs: at $3.00 blended per million tokens, bills scale quickly at volume.
Frequently asked questions
How much does the grok-4.5 API cost?
grok-4.5 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $6.00 per million output tokens. On a 3:1 input-to-output mix that blends to about $3.00 per million tokens.
What does grok-4.5 cost per month?
It depends on volume. Using the four worked scenarios on this page: a support chatbot runs about $350/month, RAG document Q&A about $416/month, a coding assistant about $360/month, and batch summarization about $2,080/month. Plug your own token counts into the cost calculator for a tailored figure.
How large is the grok-4.5 context window?
500K tokens — roughly 667 pages of A4 text at ~750 tokens per page, ranking 50th of the 89 models tracked here.
grok-4.5 or qwen3.5 — which is better value?
qwen3.5 blends to about $0.11 per million tokens versus $3.00 for grok-4.5 — roughly 96% cheaper — at a quality score of 91 against 91. If that quality gap does not show up on your task, take the cheaper one; if it does, stay with grok-4.5. Benchmark both on your own data before deciding.
What is grok-4.5 best suited for?
Tagged use cases: reasoning, coding, chatbot. Coding: writing, refactoring and debugging across multi-file project context. Less suitable: High-frequency batch jobs: at $3.00 blended per million tokens, bills scale quickly at volume.
How current is this grok-4.5 pricing?
Pricing here was last verified on 2026-08-19 against official documentation. llmprice.app runs a daily collection job, but providers can change rates between runs — confirm against xAI's official pricing page before you commit.
Estimate the real cost of this model
Bring tokens per request and monthly volume into the calculator to compare total model costs.
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Pricing, speed and quality scores change over time. Confirm official documentation before production use.