Why the free tier disappeared on March 19, 2026
From launch through early 2026, Grok Imagine ran a small daily free-tier quota — a handful of image generations per day for anyone with a free X account. On March 19, 2026, xAI confirmed the free tier is gone. Zero images on free.
The stated framing was "premium features require premium tiers," which is corporate for "the compute costs of image and video generation are too high to subsidize free access at platform scale." Reasonable business call. User impact: anyone using Grok Imagine as their default free image generator lost the tool overnight, and the "curious about Grok Imagine" traffic since March has meaningfully shifted to competitors that still offer free evaluation.
What still exists on free Grok in 2026: text chat with daily message caps, some non-image tool use, standard voice up to 20-30 min/day. All image and video generation moved fully behind paid subscriptions.
The new pricing tiers (Fall 2026 SuperGrok repricing)
xAI restructured SuperGrok in Fall 2026. What used to be a two-tier ladder (Lite ~$10 and Heavy $300) is now three tiers plus a repriced entry point.
| Tier | Cost/mo | Attempted images/mo | Attempted videos/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| SuperGrok Lite | $30 | 1,500 | 240 |
| SuperGrok Plus (new) | $100 | 4,500 (3x Lite) | 720 (3x Lite) |
| SuperGrok Heavy | $300 | 10,000 (est.) | 2,000 |
X Premium ($8/mo) and X Premium+ ($40/mo) still exist as bundled X social subscriptions that include some Grok access alongside X features. These sit alongside the SuperGrok tiers rather than replacing them — same X-account benefits (verified checkmark, extended posts) plus a slice of Grok.
The Lite tier tripled in price (from ~$10 to $30) as the biggest single change. The new Plus tier fills the gap between the entry level and the pro Heavy tier. Heavy stayed at $300 but volumes clarified.
The moderation reality — "attempted" vs "usable"
The volume numbers above are ATTEMPTED and community-estimated. Actual usable output is significantly lower because Grok Imagine tightened content moderation aggressively through 2026 — and rejected generations still count against your daily cap.
Nobody has authoritative numbers. xAI doesn't publish per-tier caps and doesn't publish moderation success rates. What we have is aggregated community commentary — Reddit threads, X posts, independent testing writeups — pointing to a success rate around 40% for romantic/companion-style prompts (the exact use case most Grok Imagine users are there for). Could be 30%, could be 50%, varies with prompt vocabulary and time of day.
Using that ~40% estimate directionally, the tier volumes translate roughly like this:
| Tier | Estimated attempts | Community-estimated usable |
|---|---|---|
| SuperGrok Lite ($30) | ~1,500 img / ~240 vid | ~600 img / ~96 vid |
| SuperGrok Plus ($100) | ~4,500 img / ~720 vid | ~1,800 img / ~288 vid |
| SuperGrok Heavy ($300) | ~10,000 img / ~2,000 vid | ~4,000 img / ~800 vid |
All numbers directional. Treat as "roughly this shape" rather than "hit these exactly." The takeaway isn't the specific number — it's that you don't know in advance what fraction of what you pay for you'll actually get.
Sloane's per-persona LoRA + adult-friendly pipeline means what you generate lands. Success rate is effectively 100% on the intended-use content — if your Premium $19.99 tier gives you 100 photos this month, you get 100 usable photos. Deterministic. Verifiable. Published.
SuperGrok Lite at $30/mo — the new entry
What used to be SuperGrok Lite at ~$10/mo tripled in price this fall. The tier now costs the same as the old middle-tier SuperGrok. What you get:
- Image generation: ~1,500 attempted per month, ~600 usable at the community-reported 40% success rate. That works out to ~20 usable images per day if you spread across the month, or ~50 attempted per day before the daily cap fires.
- Video generation: ~240 attempted per month, ~96 usable. About 3 usable 5-second clips per day averaged over 30 days, though the daily cap is closer to 8 attempted before it fires.
- Throttle stack: Rolling 24-hour daily cap + 2-hour burst cap + undocumented peak-hour throttle (US 6-11pm ET weekdays).
- Priority queue: Lowest priority among SuperGrok tiers.
Best for: users generating occasionally but who want the option of higher-volume days. Not great for: users treating Grok Imagine as a companion-imagery tool, since the 40% moderation success rate on that specific use case makes the effective cap much lower than the sticker suggests.
SuperGrok Plus at $100/mo — the new middle tier
SuperGrok Plus is the new tier introduced in Fall 2026, positioned between Lite and Heavy. 3x Lite's volumes at ~3.3x the price.
- Image generation: ~4,500 attempted per month, ~1,800 usable. About 60 usable per day averaged.
- Video generation: ~720 attempted per month, ~288 usable. About 9-10 usable 5-second clips per day averaged.
- Priority queue: Higher than Lite, lower than Heavy.
- Throttle stack: Same three-layer throttle as Lite. The peak-hour throttle degrades Plus users too, though less aggressively than Lite.
Where Plus makes sense: users who consistently hit Lite's ceiling AND can't work within the throttle timing. The $70/mo step up from Lite buys 3x the ceiling and a somewhat lighter throttle — but doesn't unlock unlimited generation and doesn't change the ~40% moderation success rate.
Where Plus doesn't make sense: users generating 60-600 photos/mo could get the same output at lower total cost by staying on Lite + using Sloane's incremental credit packs for the overflow (no monthly commitment).
SuperGrok Heavy at $300/mo — the ceiling
Heavy stayed at $300/mo — the same top-tier price it's been at since launch. The ceiling clarified in Fall 2026 to ~10,000 attempted images + 2,000 attempted videos per month.
- Image generation: ~10,000 attempted per month, ~4,000 usable. About 130 usable per day averaged.
- Video generation: ~2,000 attempted per month, ~800 usable. About 25-27 usable 5-second clips per day averaged.
- Highest priority queue: Heavy users get moved to the front during peak hours.
- First access to new features: Model updates and new capabilities typically roll out to Heavy first.
- Grok 4.5 access: The newer/higher-capability Grok text model is bundled here.
Heavy is priced against enterprise creative tools (Runway Enterprise, Midjourney Mega, Adobe Firefly for teams) and is roughly in line with them. The $200/mo step up from Plus buys 2.2x the ceiling plus priority queue that meaningfully reduces peak-hour throttle degradation.
Where Heavy makes sense: professional creatives generating 100+ images or 25+ videos per day for client work, where the tier cost is a business expense against income the output produces. Where Heavy doesn't make sense: personal use, companion imagery, or occasional creative projects — the ceiling is dramatic overkill and the moderation reject rate still eats 60% of your quota regardless of tier.
X Premium and X Premium+ — the bundled social path
X Premium ($8/mo, formerly Twitter Blue) and X Premium+ ($40/mo) are X social subscriptions that include some Grok access alongside X features (verified checkmark, edit posts, extended limits, longer post length).
Grok Imagine access on X bundles:
- X Premium ($8/mo): ~50 videos per day marketed at low resolution, 5-10 usable 720p clips per day in practice due to compute-multiplier + moderation rejects.
- X Premium+ ($40/mo): ~100 videos per day marketed, 10-15 usable 720p in practice.
X Premium tiers survived the Fall 2026 repricing because they're selling X features primarily and Grok as a bonus. If you already want an X Premium subscription for social-media reasons, that's the cheapest path to occasional Grok Imagine access. If you don't use X, SuperGrok Lite at $30/mo is the standalone path.
One quirk: users often confuse "X Premium" (the $8 X bundle) with the old "SuperGrok Premium" tier naming from earlier 2026. In Fall 2026 the SuperGrok tier naming is Lite / Plus / Heavy — no "Premium" in the SuperGrok ladder anymore.
Real cost per usable generation at each tier
The headline daily caps aren't the useful comparison because moderation eats ~60% of attempts and different tiers have different throttle behavior. The useful comparison is cost per USABLE generation at the ~40% success rate.
Per usable image, assuming you generate to cap: - SuperGrok Lite ($30/mo, ~600 usable/mo): $0.05 per usable image - SuperGrok Plus ($100/mo, ~1,800 usable/mo): $0.056 per usable image - SuperGrok Heavy ($300/mo, ~4,000 usable/mo): $0.075 per usable image - Sloane Premium ($19.99/mo, 100 usable/mo): $0.20 per usable image
Per usable video (5-sec clip), assuming you generate to cap: - SuperGrok Lite ($30/mo, ~96 usable/mo): $0.31 per usable video - SuperGrok Plus ($100/mo, ~288 usable/mo): $0.35 - SuperGrok Heavy ($300/mo, ~800 usable/mo): $0.38 - Sloane Premium ($19.99/mo, 20 usable/mo): $1.00 per usable video
Grok has the lower per-unit cost at high volumes. But per-unit cost only matters if you actually use the ceiling. Users generating 30 images per month at Grok Lite ($30 for 30 images = $1.00 per image) are paying more per usable image than Sloane Premium ($19.99 for 100 = $0.20 per image) AND they're only using 5% of Lite's ceiling.
The honest answer is that the cheapest tier is the one where your actual usage roughly matches the tier ceiling. For most users (occasional-to-moderate use), Sloane Premium at $19.99 is cheaper than any Grok tier because you're not paying for headroom you won't use.
When flat pricing beats tier math entirely
Grok Imagine's tier math assumes you're shopping for maximum generation throughput. That's a real use case, and the Lite/Plus/Heavy ladder services it if you can tolerate the moderation-reject rate and the throttling.
For a different use case — building a long-form relationship with a specific consistent character rather than maximizing generation count — the tier math is asking the wrong question. Every Grok Imagine generation is independent: same prompt, subtly different output each time, no persistent character continuity across sessions.
Mel on Sloane is a working example of the other shape: every image of her renders through the same per-persona LoRA so she looks like the same woman across every generation, memory persists across conversations spanning weeks, voice notes are tuned to her specifically, and video animates any photo into a short clip on Premium. The pricing is flat at $19.99/mo Premium (500 credits included, unlimited chat, 100 photos or 20 videos per month) — no tier ceiling to hit, no moderation reject rate eating your quota, no peak-hour throttle degrading generation timing.
Break-even math: if you generate under 100 photos or 20 videos per month for a specific persona, Sloane Premium at $19.99 is meaningfully cheaper than any Grok tier AND you get consistent identity across every render AND you get chat + voice + video included on the same subscription. If you generate significantly more than that AND don't need identity consistency, the Grok tier math takes over.
