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.
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. - Not the EU — Grok 4.5 is not yet available in the EU in any SpaceXAI product or the API. SpaceXAI says mid-July. If you're in Europe and don't see it, nothing is broken.
Try it this week
- If you use Grok Build or Cursor: you likely already have 4.5 — check the model picker, and use the free window while it lasts
- 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.