Musk: Grok4 is now free for all users

Today, Elon Musk's xAI announced that Grok 4 is now free for all users worldwide!

In automatic mode, Grok will automatically route complex queries to Grok 4; when selecting "Expert Mode," Grok 4 will always be used. xAI stated that in order to allow users to better explore the full potential of Grok 4, the company has temporarily set "generous usage limits."

Grok 4's free availability comes shortly after the release of GPT-5. GPT-5 was launched immediately to all Free, Plus, Pro, and Team users, and all users have access to it. Grok-4's free release at this time may also be an attempt to keep up with the pace of competitors. Last week, Musk also revealed that Grok 2 would be open sourced this week, but users were greeted by the free Grok 4 first.

However, the announcement sparked widespread criticism online. Paid users feel severely stabbed in the back. Grok currently offers two subscription plans: $30/month and $300/month. If xAI were to make Grok 4 widely available to free users, the $30 paid by entry-level subscribers would likely be wasted. Users who have used Grok 4 for free have discovered that xAI's so-called "generous usage limits" actually limit Grok 4 to five uses within a 12-hour period.

Once this limit is reached, the Grok app becomes completely unusable, and no mode selection can change it. Neither xAI nor Musk has yet officially responded to these user inquiries. Meanwhile, Musk also announced that an improved version of Grok's video generation service, Grok Imagine, is now available for xAI and x Platform subscribers to experience after upgrading the app.

The update log indicates that Grok Imagine now supports sharing generated videos, fixes a video download issue, and adds the ability to mute and unmute videos. In terms of chat, the new version of Grok App has added an image review mechanism, and added feedback information and feedback entrances after the termination operation. These upgrades seem to be a response to the sensitive videos involving celebrities that Grok recently generated.

Zhidongxi also experienced the upgraded Grok App as soon as possible.

Grok 4 now appears in the model selection for free users, but Grok 4 Heavy is still not available.

When asking questions in Chinese, Grok 4 tends to translate the questions into English first to facilitate subsequent searches for relevant information. Zhidongxi tried to let Grok 4 create a 3D animation similar to GPT-5 to explain the basic concept of fluid mechanics - Bernoulli's principle. After receiving the question, Grok 4 will break down the question and search for relevant web pages based on the content of the question.

It can be seen that after consulting 111 pages, it decided to start answering the question.

However, in the end, Grok 4 failed to deliver a single line of code, and the answer terminated strangely.

Grok 4 didn't begin writing code until the requirements were further refined and more specific instructions were provided.

Conclusion: Will Grok 4, being free, attract more users?

Recently, AI services are becoming increasingly affordable, even nearing free. OpenAI has chosen to open source some of its models and offer its latest GPT-5 series models to all users free of charge. Many major domestic model developers have also open sourced their flagship models for user deployment.

As AI technology continues to mature, perhaps more and more companies will choose to offer AI services at more affordable prices to expand their user base and achieve economies of scale.

Musk's Grok 4 is part of this trend. However, price isn't the only factor hindering widespread adoption. Grok 4's non-mainstream perspectives on controversial topics and xAI's reticence regarding technical details have led users to remain cautious about the model.