At a Glance
| Vendor | xAI |
| Family | Grok 4 series |
| Launched | xAI shipped Grok 4.5 on July 8, 2026 as a coding-focused release. xAI positions it against Claude Opus 4.8, GPT-5.5, and Claude Fable 5, claiming leading results on several software-engineering benchmarks at roughly twice the token efficiency of comparable models. |
| Context window | 500,000 tokens. This is a reduction from the 1,000,000-token window on Grok 4.3, a rare backward step in the industry and an apparent trade for throughput and cost on coding workloads. |
| Pricing | $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens, served at approximately 80 tokens per second. The output rate undercuts most frontier competitors, which is the core of xAI's price-performance pitch for agentic coding. |
| Access channels | xAI API (grok-4.5), Grok consumer app and grok.com, Grok integrated into X, and third-party routers including OpenRouter. xAI's X integration remains its distinctive distribution surface. |
Notable Benchmarks
Grok 4.5 leads Opus 4.8 on DeepSWE 1.0 and Terminal-Bench 2.1 but trails it on DeepSWE 1.1 and SWE-Bench Pro. Against GPT-5.5 xhigh and Fable max it is competitive on Terminal-Bench 2.1 and behind on the SWE benchmarks. On independent composite intelligence indices it sits behind Fable 5, GPT-5.5, and Opus 4.8.
Strengths
Token efficiency, low output pricing, strong terminal and agentic coding scores, and fast serving at roughly 80 tps. The X integration gives xAI a real-time social data surface no other frontier lab has on the same terms.
Limitations
The context window halved versus Grok 4.3. Benchmark leadership is selective rather than broad, and headline claims are strongest on the benchmarks xAI chose to highlight. Composite intelligence indices still place it behind the three leading frontier models.
Brand-Visibility Implications
Grok's brand-visibility profile is unlike any other frontier model because its retrieval leans heavily on X. Brands with active, well-engaged X presences are systematically better represented in Grok answers than their share of general web authority would predict, and brands absent from X are correspondingly under-recalled. That makes Grok the one platform where social-channel investment converts directly into AI answer presence. Track Grok separately rather than folding it into a blended multi-platform score. See Grok brand visibility and Grok citation patterns.
How Presenc AI Tracks This Model
Presenc AI monitors brand visibility on xAI's Grok 4 series as part of continuous multi-platform AI visibility tracking. We sample xAI Grok 4.5 across representative prompt sets daily, compare against competitor performance on the same prompts, and flag material mention-rate changes so brand teams can respond quickly when AI representation shifts.