Every xAI model that replaced another in 2026 costs more — text, image, video and voice alike

In a market that talks constantly about the falling cost of intelligence, xAI spent 2026 moving in the opposite direction — and it did so in every product line it sells. Text. Grok 4.3, released on 30 April 2026, is priced at $1.25 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens. Grok 4.5 arrived on 8 July at $2.00 and $6.00 — 60% more for input, 140% more for output. Grok 4.6, released on 12 August, kept those numbers unchanged, so the flagship rate has not come back down. Both newer models double their rate again above a 200,000-token prompt, and the higher rate applies to the whole request, not just the part above the threshold. Images. Grok Imagine Image, from 28 January, generates a picture for $0.020 at both 1K and 2K. Grok Imagine Image 2.0, from 7 August, charges $0.04 for the same job — twice as much. The separate quality tier introduced on 3 April sits at $0.05. Video. The original Grok Imagine Video, also from 28 January, costs $0.050 per second of output at 480p. Version 1.5, released on 31 July, costs $0.080 per second — 60% more, and, as we reported earlier this week, it is the one model xAI's own batch discount refuses to cover. Voice. Grok Voice Think Fast 1, from 23 April, is $0.05 per minute of audio. Think Fast 2, from 29 July, is $0.08 per minute — again 60% more, on top of the same $0.004 text input charge. The cheapest text model xAI sells is not the newest one either: Grok Build 0.1, from 29 May, runs at $1.00 and $2.00 per million tokens, below every general-purpose Grok on the list. None of this makes xAI unusual on quality; it makes the industry's assumed direction of travel worth checking. Anthropic has held the Opus rate steady across five releases since November. Mistral's own mid-tier moved the other way in dramatic fashion — Medium 3.5 costs 3.75 times what Medium 3 costs — but its larger Mistral Large 3 is cheaper still, at $0.50 and $1.50. Reading a price list by version number is the fastest way to overpay.