Grok 4.5: the price shot heard round the labs.
On July 8, SpaceXAI launched Grok 4.5 — its strongest model, built for coding, agentic tasks, and knowledge work, and trained alongside Cursor. The headline isn't a benchmark crown. It's the invoice: $2 per million input tokens, $6 per million output, served at fast-model speeds. Here's what shipped, what SpaceXAI's own charts actually show, and where you can (and can't) use it today. Updated August 13, 2026: Grok 4.6 landed on August 12 at the same $2/$6 price — jump to section 04.
01 What launched
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Announced | July 8, 2026, with public rollout continuing July 9 |
| Built for | Coding, agentic tasks, knowledge work — trained alongside Cursor |
| Price | $2 in / $6 out per million tokens |
| Speed | ~80 tokens per second — flash-model speed for a frontier-class model |
| Efficiency | Roughly 2x the token efficiency of comparable leading models; on SWE Bench Pro tasks it used ~4.2x fewer output tokens than Claude Opus 4.8 (max) |
| Where | Default model in Grok Build; available in Cursor (all plans) and via the SpaceXAI API |
02 The honesty layer: read their own charts
SpaceXAI calls Grok 4.5 its smartest model — and Elon Musk calls it "Opus-class." Both can be true while the fine print stays interesting. On the benchmark charts in SpaceXAI's own announcement:
- Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 (max) still leads on DeepSWE 1.0 and 1.1, Terminal Bench 2.1, and SWE Bench Pro — with Grok 4.5 close behind, ahead of Opus 4.8 on several.
- Grok 4.5 takes first on SWE Marathon (long-haul software tasks), beating both Opus 4.8 and Fable.
- And July 9 muddied the water further: OpenAI's GPT-5.6 family launched the next day with its own state-of-the-art claims.
03 Where you can use it today
Three doors, all open now — plus one closed one:
- Grok Build — Grok 4.5 is now the default model, and SpaceXAI is offering free Grok 4.5 usage in Build for a limited time. It handles more than code: multi-sheet Excel models with web research, PowerPoint decks with native shapes, and Word drafting via the Office add-ins (see our Grok in Office lesson).
- Cursor — available on all Cursor plans, also with free usage for a limited time.
- The API — model ID
grok-4.5from the SpaceXAI console. - The EU caveat — at launch Grok 4.5 was not available in the EU in any SpaceXAI product or the API, and SpaceXAI pointed at mid-July 2026. That window has since passed; we have not independently confirmed current EU status, so check the model picker in your own region rather than trusting a launch-day note.
04 August 12, 2026: Grok 4.6 lands — same price
Five weeks after 4.5, SpaceXAI and Cursor released Grok 4.6 together. The pitch is narrower and more useful than "smartest model": it is built to stay on a job across many steps — long research runs, working across a codebase, turning a rough product idea into something that actually opens in a browser.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Released | August 12, 2026, jointly by SpaceXAI and Cursor |
| Built for | Long-running agents; interactive and visual work |
| Price | $2 in / $6 out per million tokens — unchanged from 4.5. A fast variant costs twice that. |
| Benchmark claim | Matches GPT-5.6 Sol on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (a composite of nine benchmarks) |
| Where | Cursor, Grok Build, the SpaceXAI API, and partners including OpenRouter, Vercel and Cloudflare |
| Launch offer | 2x included usage in Cursor and Grok Build for the first week |
Two things changed under the hood that you can actually feel. Cursor reports 4.6 does more self-checking on long runs — testing its own work before moving on — and produces stronger first passes on visual and interactive projects, establishing structure and visual language in one go instead of three.
Should you switch? If you are running agents that work for minutes rather than seconds, 4.6 is the one to test — that is precisely what it was trained for. For short one-shot prompts, 4.5 at the same price is unlikely to feel different, and the model ID you already have keeps working. See what Grok actually costs for how these rates sit against the subscription tiers.
Try it this week
- If you use Grok Build or Cursor: check the model picker for 4.6 — the 2x-usage window ran for the first week from August 12
- Re-run a task that a pricier model handles for you today, and compare output and token count
- API users: the ~2x token efficiency means the real cost gap vs. list price is bigger than it looks — measure per completed task, not per token
This week's challenge
Take one real coding or document task you ran recently on Claude, GPT, or Gemini. Run the identical prompt through Grok 4.5 in Grok Build (free right now). Score three things: quality, speed, and — if you're on the API — total tokens consumed. You're not looking for a new religion; you're building your own price-performance table instead of trusting anyone's launch charts. Including SpaceXAI's. Including ours.