xAI has announced the global expansion of its latest artificial intelligence (AI) model, Grok 4, making it available to all users, regardless of subscription status. Previously, the Grok 4 model, which was released last month, was exclusive to paid subscribers.
The official xAI account on X (formerly Twitter) confirmed the global availability of Grok 4. For a limited duration, free-tier users will benefit from “generous usage limits” to explore the capabilities of the large language model (LLM). This expansion comes just three days after xAI owner Elon Musk made the Grok Imagine video generation feature accessible to all US users for free.
Free-tier users will gain access to Grok 4’s Auto and Expert modes. The Auto mode intelligently assesses prompts to determine if a more extensive reasoning budget is required for a precise and detailed response, or if a faster mode suffices. The Expert mode provides users with manual control to switch to reasoning mode when they deem Grok’s default response insufficient.
However, free users will not have access to Grok 4 Heavy, which is the most performant model within the Grok family. Furthermore, access to Grok Imagine’s image and video generation capabilities will be restricted to users residing in the US. Paid subscribers will continue to receive higher rate limits across all models and features.
In a recent Spaces discussion, Elon Musk outlined plans to integrate advertisements within Grok’s interface, spanning both the website and mobile applications. This initiative aims to establish a new revenue stream for the chatbot, which currently relies on subscriptions and application programming interfaces (APIs). Musk emphasized that these funds are necessary to cover the costs of the “expensive” GPUs that power Grok.
