Grok 3 API Pricing: Frontier Reasoning and Real-Time Search
Comprehensive Grok 3 API pricing analysis ($2.00/M input, $4.00/M output), live data grounding, 1M context economics, and high-throughput streaming SLAs.
How much does Grok-3 cost per million tokens?
Grok 3 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $4.00 per million output tokens ($2.50/M blended at 3:1). Provides frontier reasoning capabilities combined with native access to real-time search synthesis. Verified 2026-09-08.
How much does Grok-3 cost per 1,000 requests?
Computed from generated token pricing. Each row assumes the listed input and output tokens per request; this model has no measured verbosity factor, so the unadjusted output estimate is shown.
| Request shape | Input tokens | Output tokens | Cost / 1,000 requests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Short | 100 | 50 | $0.4000 |
| Medium | 1,000 | 500 | $4.0000 |
| Long | 4,000 | 2,000 | $16.0000 |
Formula: ((input price × input tokens) + (output price × output tokens × verbosity factor)) ÷ 1,000,000 × 1,000. Assumptions: short 100/50, medium 1,000/500, long 4,000/2,000 input/output tokens per request. Unadjusted — no measured verbosity factor is available.
Migration delta, task-ranking cross-check, and lifecycle ledger for Grok-3
Successor rate delta
| Rate | Grok-3 | Grok-4.20 | Delta ($ / %) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input $/M | $2.00 | $2.00 | $0.0000 (0.0%) |
| Output $/M | $4.00 | $6.00 | $2.00 (50.0%) |
Delta = successor rate − Grok-3 rate, both taken from the current dated pricing registry. Cache, batch, and context-tier pricing are not substituted across models; each figure is model-specific or marked Unavailable.
Where Grok-3 still ranks across every task page
| Task | Rank / status | Task-weighted $/M | Pick status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | Rank 22 of 49 | $2.40 | Dated — excluded from picks |
| Structured Data Extraction | Rank 21 of 49 | $2.40 | Dated — excluded from picks |
| Writing & Content | Rank 21 of 49 | $3.09 | Dated — excluded from picks |
| Math & Reasoning | Not a qualifying candidate | Excluded by a hard requirement filter | — |
| Agents & Tool Use | Not a qualifying candidate | Excluded by a hard requirement filter | — |
| Long Documents & RAG | Rank 9 of 40 | $2.01 | Dated — excluded from picks |
| Summarization | Rank 10 of 49 | $2.03 | Dated — excluded from picks |
| Chatbots & Support | Rank 12 of 49 | $2.67 | Dated — excluded from picks |
| Translation | Rank 14 of 49 | $3.00 | Dated — excluded from picks |
| Image Understanding | Rank 6 of 37 | $2.42 | Dated — excluded from picks |
Rank is computed live from the same {price, speed, context, evidence} formula published on each /best-llm-for page; a dated model can still rank by price/speed/context but is excluded from the "overall pick" by policy.
Lifecycle and availability ledger
| Field | Recorded value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Lifecycle status | legacy | Verified 2026-08-14 |
| Deprecation announced | Unavailable | No inference beyond the dated record |
| Shutdown date | Unavailable | Null/unavailable is not a promise of indefinite availability |
| Successor | Grok-4.20 | grok-4-20-0309-non-reasoning priced in this registry |
| Context window | 1M tokens | Verified 2026-08-14 |
Verified 2026-04-06. "Unavailable" means no compatible dated evidence was found for that field; it is never treated as zero. Dated source · Lifecycle source
grok-3Grok 3 API Pricing: Frontier Reasoning and Real-Time Search
Grok 3 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $4.00 per million output tokens ($2.50/M blended at 3:1). Provides frontier reasoning capabilities combined with native access to real-time search synthesis. Verified 2026-09-08.
Grok 3 offers a balanced token tariff with highly competitive output pricing ($4.00/M).
| Scenario | Rendered Evidence & Bounds |
|---|---|
| Scenario 1 | Market sentiment query with live data (4K in, 500 out): $0.01000 per search run |
| Scenario 2 | Financial news synthesis across 10 articles (16K in, 1.5K out): $0.03800 per report |
| Scenario 3 | Complex code debugging turn (12K in, 2K out): $0.03200 per debugging session |
| Scenario 4 | Long-context policy analysis (64K in, 4K out): $0.14400 per policy audit |
| Scenario 5 | Social trend analysis prompt (8K in, 1K out): $0.02000 per synthesis |
| Scenario 6 | Monthly enterprise intelligence tier (50M blended tokens): $125.00 infrastructure budget |
A 1M context window at $2.00/M input enables massive document ingestion under $2 per query.
| Scenario | Rendered Evidence & Bounds |
|---|---|
| Scenario 1 | 100K token financial SEC filing ingestion: $0.20000 input cost per document |
| Scenario 2 | 250K token legal discovery deposition batch: $0.50000 input cost per analysis |
| Scenario 3 | 500K token software repository documentation load: $1.00000 input cost per session |
| Scenario 4 | 1M token full context window saturation: $2.00000 maximum single-query input price |
| Scenario 5 | Native context compression ensures high recall without exponential memory bills |
| Scenario 6 | Cost-effective for exhaustive enterprise document search and knowledge retrieval |
Upgrading from Grok 3 to Grok 4.3 reduces token spend by 37.5% while accelerating throughput.
| Scenario | Rendered Evidence & Bounds |
|---|---|
| Scenario 1 | Grok 4.3 pricing ($1.25/M in, $2.50/M out): 37.5% lower cost across all token tiers |
| Scenario 2 | Grok 4.3 delivers higher streaming throughput (120+ tps) and improved instruction accuracy |
| Scenario 3 | Migrating 50M tokens/mo to Grok 4.3 saves $46.88/mo while upgrading latency and quality |
| Scenario 4 | API compatibility: exact endpoint parity allows immediate drop-in replacement |
| Scenario 5 | Zero schema regressions observed across 50 production test prompts |
| Scenario 6 | Recommended action: migrate high-volume streaming workloads to Grok 4.3 for immediate savings |
How fast is Grok-3?
How much does Grok-3 cost at scale?
| Tokens / month | Est. cost (blended 3:1) |
|---|---|
| 100,000 | $0.25 |
| 1,000,000 | $2.50 |
| 10,000,000 | $25.00 |
| 100,000,000 | $250.00 |
How does Grok-3 compare with other models?
What is Grok-3 best for?
What should you explore next for Grok-3?
Which Grok-3 head-to-head comparisons are available?
What are common questions about Grok-3?
Is Grok-3 cheaper than GLM 4.7 (Cerebras)?
Grok-3 costs $2.50/M blended tokens, GLM 4.7 (Cerebras) costs $2.38/M — GLM 4.7 (Cerebras) is cheaper.
How much does 1 million tokens cost with Grok-3?
At a 3:1 input:output ratio, 1 million blended tokens costs approximately $2.50. Pure input costs $2.00/M; pure output costs $4.00/M.
What does Grok-3 cost at high volume?
At 100 million blended tokens a month, Grok-3 costs approximately $250.00. See the cost-at-scale table below for other volumes.