Grok Alternatives in 2026: What to Use Instead, Priced by the Job

Grok's plans changed on 12 October. xAI put SuperGrok, X Premium and the coding agent Cursor into one product called The X Subscription, and closed the old plans to new sign-ups. The $30 tier is still $30. What it buys has changed. It now includes Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor Pro and X Premium+, and one weekly usage pool is shared between Grok and Cursor.

If you use every part of that, it's a good deal. xAI says the same three subscriptions cost $90 a month combined. But if you're looking for a Grok alternative, you probably used Grok for one job. You watched what X was saying about a story, or drafted emails with it, or made images and short videos in Grok Imagine. For one job, a bundle of four products is a lot to pay for.

This guide takes the four jobs people use Grok for and gives each one its alternatives and their prices, with Grok's new price for the same job next to them. Sometimes the cheapest answer turns out to be a smaller Grok plan.

I read xAI's pricing page, its launch post and help centre for The X Subscription, and the pricing pages and help articles of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity, Midjourney and Kling on 13 October 2026.

The Short Answer

What you used Grok for	Use instead	What it costs	The catch
Seeing what people on X are saying right now	Grok on its free plan or on Plus	$0, or $8 a month	Nothing outside Grok searches X itself
Following news with sources you can open	Perplexity	Free, or Pro at $17 a month billed annually	It searches the web, not X
Writing, editing and everyday chat	Claude	Free, or Pro at $20, $17 a month annually	Limits reset every 5 hours, with a weekly cap on paid plans
Everyday chat on no budget	ChatGPT	Free, or Go at $6	Free and Go run Luna, OpenAI's lightest model family, and Go may show ads
Images	Gemini	Free	The free plan often uses the lighter Nano Banana 2 Lite
Images for client work	Midjourney	$10 a month, or $96 a year	No free plan among its four tiers
Video	Gemini on Google AI Plus, or Kling	$4.99, or Kling from $10 list	Kling's free plan isn't for commercial use
Grok, for less than $30	Grok Plus	$8 a month, or $80 a year	No video and no Grok Bot
Grok plus the other models in one thread	izzedo chat	Free, or $6 for Hobby	The Grok version that searches X is on the $6 plan

The last row is mine. If you want Grok for the X part of a job and another model for the writing, izzedo chat puts them in the same conversation. Grok 4.7 is on the free plan with GPT-6 Luna, Claude Haiku, Gemini 3.8 Flash, DeepSeek and Kimi. The $6 Hobby plan adds Claude Sonnet and Opus, Gemini 3.1 Pro, GPT-6 Astra and a version of Grok 4.7 that searches X. izzedo meters usage too, with a 5-hour window and a weekly pool, and each plan's allowance is on the pricing page. There's an example thread further down.

What Changed on 12 October

xAI's launch post calls The X Subscription "Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium, all on one plan." The plans, from x.ai/pricing and xAI's help centre:

Plan	Monthly	Annual	Usage	What it adds
Free	$0	$0	Limited	Daily access to Grok Chat, Imagine, Voice and Build
Plus	$8	$80	Base	More Grok usage, the Grok API and Cursor, a checkmark and fewer ads on X
Premium	$30	$300	4x Plus	Video, Grok Bot, the latest Grok models, faster replies, X Premium+ benefits
Super	$100	$1,000	15x Plus	Priority access at peak times
Ultra	$200	$2,000	50x Plus	Earliest access to new products and models

Four things in that table matter if you're deciding whether to leave.

SuperGrok is gone for new customers. The launch post says "The previous plans are no longer available for new sign-ups." If you already pay for SuperGrok or X Premium, nothing changes unless you switch, and xAI's help centre warns that a completed switch "is permanent and cannot be undone by Support." Read the new plan before you press the button.

Premium is a bundle. xAI describes it as "the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+, previously $90/month combined." Cursor is a coding agent. If you don't write software and don't post much on X, two of the three things you're paying for will sit unused.

The weekly pool is now shared with Cursor. xAI's FAQ says "Your allowance refreshes weekly," and the usage-limits page says the pool is "shared across eligible Grok and Cursor surfaces." When it runs out you wait for the refresh, or pay from a prepaid balance you top up, with an optional monthly spending cap. There's still no published size for any pool. The plan table gives you multiples of Plus and never says how much Plus is. I went through what that means in practice in the Grok limits guide.

There's a cheaper rung now. Before, $8 bought X Premium, which raised Grok's limits inside X. Plus at $8 a month, or $80 a year, covers Grok's own apps as well, with chat, voice, Imagine images and Build, and no video or Grok Bot. On the plan card, "Latest Grok models" is listed as something Premium adds over Plus, so check which model you're talking to before you assume the two answer the same way.

That gives every alternative below a clear bar. For writing, it has to beat Grok Plus at $8. For video, it has to beat Premium at $30, because that's the cheapest Grok plan that makes video at all.

If You Used Grok for What's Happening on X

This is the job Grok does that nothing else does. xAI's product page says Grok "searches the web and 𝕏 live" and lists "real-time 𝕏 integration for breaking news and trends." X is where reaction to a product launch, an outage or a news story shows up first, and Grok has its own tab inside X.

Every other big assistant searches the web. ChatGPT's plan grid lists search on the free plan. Claude's lists web search on the free plan. Perplexity's help centre describes its source picker, and the choices are Web, files from your organisation, or nothing. None of them lists X as a source.

So if X is the reason you used Grok, the cheapest alternative is Grok on a smaller plan. The free plan gives "daily access" to Grok's chat, which xAI marks as Limited without a number. The new plan table has no row for search, but the one xAI showed on 10 October marked web and X search on the free plan as Limited, not unavailable. Plus at $8 raises the usage limit. For reading reaction on X a few times a week, one of those two is probably enough.

If what you actually need is news you can verify, Perplexity is the better tool. It answers with inline citations you can open, and the free plan gives "practically unlimited basic searches" with "very limited" Pro searches. Pro is $17 a month billed annually on Perplexity's plan page, and verified students and educators can get Education Pro for $10 a month.

The other way is the one in the screenshot further down. Use Grok for the X part, then hand the thread to a model that writes better. The three-way comparison with ChatGPT and Gemini runs all three against the same live question, if you want to see how far apart their answers land.

If You Used Grok for Writing and Everyday Chat

Here Grok has real competition, and most of it costs less.

Claude is the swap I'd make for writing. Its free plan includes Sonnet and Haiku, web search, file creation and memory. Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month on an annual plan paid $200 up front. Anthropic's pricing FAQ is clear about how limits work. Every plan resets on "a rolling five-hour session window," paid plans add weekly limits, and "there's no fixed message count." Pro gives "at least 5x more usage per 5-hour session than Free." The Grok vs Claude comparison goes through the two side by side, though it predates xAI's new plans.

ChatGPT is the safest free swap. OpenAI's help centre says Free and Go users "have unlimited everyday text chats, subject to abuse-prevention safeguards," with separate limits on uploads, image generation and voice. The catch is the model. Free and Go default to Luna, which OpenAI calls "the fastest and lowest-cost model" in its GPT-5.6 family, and they don't get Sol. Go is $6 a month and the pricing page says it "may include ads." Plus at $20 adds GPT-6 Sol at OpenAI's Medium and High thinking levels, which the help centre says is still rolling out.

Gemini is the cheapest paid option. Google AI Plus is $4.99 a month for 3.6 Flash and twice the free plan's usage, and AI Pro is $19.99 for Gemini 4 Argon, 3.8 Flash, Gemini inside Docs and 5 TB of storage. Since 9 October the free plan defaults to a setting called Auto. In Google's words, "Most prompts will go to Flash-Lite, our fastest model." I covered what that change does to the free plan in Grok vs Gemini.

DeepSeek has no paid plan for its chat app. Its site lists prices only for the API. Its privacy policy says "we directly collect, process and store your Personal Data in People's Republic of China," which rules it out for client material for a lot of people. The Chinese models post explains why the models themselves are a different question from the app.

Monthly price	Grok	ChatGPT	Claude	Gemini
$0	Limited chat, no published amount	Luna, unlimited everyday chats with abuse safeguards	Sonnet and Haiku, 5-hour window	Auto, mostly 3.5 Flash-Lite
$4.99 to $8	Plus, $8	Go, $6	No plan	AI Plus, $4.99
$17 to $20	No plan	Plus, $20	Pro, $20 or $17 annual	AI Pro, $19.99
$30	Premium, with video, Grok Bot, Cursor Pro, X Premium+	No plan	No plan	No plan

At $20, three companies sell a plan built around chat and writing, and xAI sells nothing. If you mostly write, that's the gap.

If You Used Grok Imagine for Images

Grok makes images on every plan. xAI's table marks image generation as Limited on the free plan and included from Plus. Every image carries a Grok watermark, and xAI's FAQ says "There is no setting to remove the watermark."

Gemini is the free alternative. Google's help centre says Gemini creates images with Nano Banana 2. When the Gemini model answering is Flash-Lite, which on the free plan is most of the time, it uses a lighter Nano Banana 2 Lite that Google says "isn't designed for multiple image references or for multiple edits." Paid Google AI plans can regenerate an image with Nano Banana Pro. What each of Google's image models costs and where its limits sit is in the Nano Banana price guide.

ChatGPT also makes images on its free plan, marked "Limited" on OpenAI's pricing grid. Go raises that, and Plus adds image generation with Thinking.

Midjourney is the paid pick for images you'll put in front of a client. Basic is $10 a month, or $96 a year, with 200 minutes of fast generation time. Standard at $30 adds unlimited images in the slower Relax mode. Midjourney's plan page also says a company making more than $1,000,000 a year in gross revenue has to buy Pro or Mega, which most small businesses won't need to worry about.

For a small shop that wants product shots for a listing, I'd start with free Gemini and pay for Midjourney only once the free images stop being good enough.

If You Used Grok Imagine for Video

This is where Grok's new ladder is steepest. xAI's table puts video generation on Premium and above, so it's off the free plan and off Plus. The cheapest Grok that makes video is $30 a month. xAI's FAQ adds one more limit worth knowing: "720p videos automatically fall back to 480p once you hit the 720p cap for your tier." You get a lower-resolution clip, not an error.

Gemini is the cheapest paid route. Google's help centre says video in the Gemini app uses Gemini Omni and needs a Google AI plan, and Google AI Plus at $4.99 a month is the smallest one. That's a sixth of Grok Premium. There's also a free route through Google Flow, Google's video studio. Google says everyone gets 50 Flow credits a day, and an 8-second Gemini Omni Flash clip at 720p costs 12 credits. That's four clips a day, by my arithmetic. Google also says users without a plan may not be able to make videos at peak times, roughly 2 PM to 5 PM UTC.

Kling is the pick if the video is for a client. Its free Basic plan has no monthly credits, and Kling's own guide says content from it "is not for commercial use." Standard lists at $10 a month, $6.99 for the first month and then $8.80 on the monthly plan, with 660 credits. Kling's credit guide puts that at about 33 videos at 720p. Paid plans list "Brand watermark removal." Grok doesn't offer that on any plan.

Midjourney makes video too. Basic at $10 includes SD video, and HD starts on Standard.

If you want per-second prices for these models side by side, Veo vs Kling vs Seedance has the rate cards. The Sora alternatives roundup covers the rest of the field.

If the Problem Is the Price or the Weekly Pool

Some people aren't leaving because of one job. They hit the weekly pool, or they look at $30 and wonder what else that money buys. Every alternative here limits you too. What differs is how much of it they publish.

• Grok publishes multiples of Plus with no Plus figure. Past the weekly pool you pay from a prepaid balance.
• Claude publishes its windows, a rolling five hours on every plan with weekly limits on paid ones, and says Pro gives at least 5x the free plan per session. Claude's limits has the detail.
• ChatGPT gives free users unlimited everyday text chats under abuse safeguards and limits the rest. When you hit a Thinking limit, OpenAI says "ChatGPT may continue with another available model." ChatGPT's limits are mapped the same way as Grok's.
• Gemini sells usage as multiples of the free plan, 2x on AI Plus and 4x on AI Pro.

Here is the whole field on one price axis.

Monthly price	Grok	ChatGPT	Claude	Gemini	Perplexity
$0	Free	Free	Free	Free	Free
$4.99 to $10	Plus, $8	Go, $6	No plan	AI Plus, $4.99	Education Pro, $10, verified students and educators
$17 to $20	No plan	Plus, $20	Pro, $20	AI Pro, $19.99	Pro, $17 billed annually
$30	Premium	No plan	No plan	No plan	No plan
$100 and up	Super $100, Ultra $200	Pro, from $100	Max, from $100	Ultra, $99.99 or $199.99	Max, $167 billed annually

Two things stand out. Grok is the only one with a plan at $30, and that plan is the bundle. And between $4.99 and $10 there are now four plans, one of them Grok's. If $30 felt like too much, check whether Grok Plus covers you before you move anywhere. The Grok price guide covers each new plan in detail, and what to do if you're still on SuperGrok.

Pick by the Job

A freelancer who used Grok to watch reaction to clients' launches. Stay on Grok, on the free plan or Plus at $8. Nothing outside Grok reads X directly. Do the write-up in Claude's free plan.

A consultant who mostly used Grok to draft emails and proposals. Claude Pro at $20, or its free plan if you write a few things a week. You give up X search and Grok's images, which this kind of work rarely needs.

A small business owner who made product images in Grok Imagine. Gemini's free plan first. Midjourney Basic at $10 if you need more control or more images than free Gemini gives you.

Someone who made short promo videos in Grok Imagine. Google AI Plus at $4.99. Try Flow's free daily credits before you pay. Kling Standard if you need its watermark removal or its commercial terms.

A student on no budget. ChatGPT's free plan for everyday chat, Gemini's free plan for images, and Perplexity's free plan for research with sources. If you can verify as a student, Perplexity's Education Pro is $10 a month.

Where izzedo Fits

izzedo chat puts Grok in the same model picker as GPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Kimi and others, and lets you switch model in the middle of a thread. The model you switch to reads everything above it.

That's what the thread below shows. Grok 4.7 X Search, the variant of Grok in izzedo that searches X, summed up what freelancers on X were saying about raising their rates, with numbered links to its sources. Then I switched to Claude Sonnet 5.5 and asked for a short note to clients, built on those points. Claude had the whole thread to work from, so I didn't paste anything.

On the free plan you get Grok 4.7, GPT-6 Luna, Claude Haiku, Gemini 3.8 Flash, DeepSeek, Kimi, Qwen and GLM, plus Nano Banana 2 for images. The $6 Hobby plan adds every other chat and image model, including Grok 4.7 X Search, Claude Sonnet and Opus, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Perplexity's Sonar models and Grok's own image model. Grok Imagine video is on the $12 Pro plan, along with Kling 3.0 and Gemini Omni Flash.

It also connects to more than 50 apps, Gmail, Google Drive and Notion among them, on every plan including the free one. If you've never run one question past two models, this is how it works in practice.

The Bottom Line

Grok's $30 price didn't change on 12 October. What it buys did. It now carries a coding agent and X Premium+, and the weekly pool you used to spend on chat and video is shared with Cursor. For someone who used Grok for one job, that's the reason to look around.

For live reaction on X, nothing replaces Grok itself, so drop to Grok's free plan or Plus at $8. For writing, Claude or ChatGPT will do the job for less. For images, start with Gemini's free plan. For video, Google AI Plus costs $4.99 against Grok's $30, and Kling sells the watermark removal that Grok doesn't.

xAI said on 12 October it would make The X Subscription available worldwide over the next few days, and its plan table changed between 10 and 13 October. Check the date on any Grok price you read, this one included.

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Want Grok for X and Claude for the writing in one thread? Try izzedo chat free, no credit card required.