Grok

Grok churns fast on nearly every axis. Model access loosens relentlessly: Grok 4.1 shipped free to all tiers in November 2025, the multi-agent Grok 4.20 beta followed in February 2026, then Grok 4.3 (native video, 1M context) in April, and Grok 4.5 landed on the xAI API in July 2026 at $2/1M input and $6/1M output. The top of the range is steep — the SuperGrok Heavy tier launched at $300/mo alongside Grok 4. Policy is what complicates the picture. The July 2025 'MechaHitler' incident left an unsafe system-prompt path live roughly 16 hours before rollback, and in January 2026 a regulator-driven overhaul (UK ICO, France, California AG) banned sexual images of real people after a permissive 'Spicy Mode' era. Developers should also note a quiet reversal: priority processing (service_tier) was added across text, image, and video endpoints in June 2026, then silently narrowed to text-only in July — a tightening flagged as silent in the record. Capability and access mostly expand, but the surrounding rules — safety policy, priority scheduling — can shift abruptly, sometimes without announcement and sometimes under external legal pressure. Model availability and features arrive quickly and generously on Grok; the terms around them are not stable commitments. Budget for both the $300 ceiling and the chance that a feature you depend on is scoped down between releases.