Grok 4.20 API Pricing
xAI · Mid-tier · Proprietary · released 2026-04. Prices in USD per 1 million tokens. Data snapshot: 2026-09-28.
Grok 4.20 has held the same list price since 2026-08-15 and is the 30th cheapest of 108 Mid-tier models. Only one host, xAI, sells it, so there is no second price to shop. It holds the FinOps Friendly badge: top-40% Arena quality, top-30% Efficiency, not among the dearest 30%, and no stability flag.
- Input: $1.25 per 1M tokens
- Output: $2.50 per 1M tokens
- Batch API (input/output): not published
- Prompt-cache read: $0.20
- Context window: 2M
- Arena ELO: 1475 (as of 2026-09-25)
Grok 4.20 market position
On blended price ($2.13 per 1M tokens at 30% input, 70% output) it is cheaper than 71% of Mid-tier models: 30th cheapest of 108, tied with 2 others. Across every category it is cheaper than 38% of priced text models in the catalogue: 172nd cheapest of 281, tied with 2 others. Its Arena ELO of 1475 ranks 13th of the 68 models that carry one, tied with one other, above 81% of them.
Grok 4.20 licence, size and capabilities
Grok 4.20 is recorded here as proprietary: access is through an API, priced by the token. Its parameter count is not published. Listed capabilities: Text, Vision, Reasoning, Code, Agents. Filling its 2M context window once costs $2.50 in input tokens at list price.
Monthly cost at 100K requests, by business use case
From the after-discounts figure (prompt caching on the cached input share, batch API for async workloads, only where the provider publishes those rates), which assumes you implement both, to the list price. One figure means no discount is published.
| Use case | Tokens (in/out) | Monthly (after discounts – list) |
|---|---|---|
| Support Ticket | 1,500 / 500 | $218 – $313 |
| Knowledge Q&A | 2,000 / 800 | $303 – $450 |
| Meeting Summary | 10,000 / 1,200 | $1.4K – $1.6K |
| Marketing Content | 2,500 / 1,800 | $710 – $763 |
| Coding Task | 3,000 / 2,000 | $718 – $875 |
| Invoice Processing | 1,500 / 600 | $290 – $337 |
| Call Summary | 2,000 / 700 | $404 – $425 |
| Agent Workflow | 6,000 / 3,000 | $1.1K – $1.5K |
Grok 4.20 pricing by host
A host is a company that runs the model and sells it by the token — the lab that made it, a cloud platform like Amazon Bedrock, Azure or Vertex, or an independent provider. One model, several sellers, and often several prices. This model is sold by 1 host. The price quoted above is the one we publish so that models stay comparable; it is not necessarily the cheapest way to buy this model. List prices as published on 2026-09-28 via OpenRouter — negotiated rates, committed-use discounts and provisioned capacity are not shown.
xAI is the only host with a published rate, $1.25 input / $2.50 output per 1M tokens, which is the price shown on this page.
| Host | Input $/1M | Output $/1M |
|---|---|---|
| xAI (the price shown above) | $1.25 | $2.50 |
Grok 4.20 price history
Grok 4.20 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $1.25 input / $2.50 output per 1M tokens. No list price change since tracking began on 2026-08-15. Last checked against the 2026-09-28 snapshot.
Alternatives to Grok 4.20
- Next cheaper Mid-tier model: R1 (DeepSeek) at $1.96 blended, 8% less.
- Next more expensive: Qwen3.8 27B (Alibaba) at $2.23 blended, 5% more.
The nearest Mid-tier models on Arena ELO, each with its blended price and score difference against Grok 4.20.
- Qwen3.7 Max (Alibaba) — $1.48 in / $4.42 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1475: 67% more expensive, same Arena ELO
- GLM 5.2 (Zhipu) — $0.65 in / $2.04 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1476: 24% cheaper, 1 ELO point higher
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (Google) — $1.50 in / $9.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1477: 218% more expensive, 2 ELO points higher
- GLM 5.3 (Zhipu) — $1.40 in / $4.40 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1480: 65% more expensive, 5 ELO points higher
- Cheapest within 15 Arena points: GLM 5.3 Flash (Zhipu), 81% cheaper, 1 ELO point lower, out of 22 models in that band.
- Highest Arena ELO within 20% of this price: Grok 4.20 itself has the highest score of the 8 models priced within 20% of it.
Common questions about Grok 4.20 pricing
- How much does Grok 4.20 cost?
- Grok 4.20 costs $1.25 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens on the API.
- Does Grok 4.20 offer batch or cached pricing?
- Prompt-cache reads cost $0.20/M input tokens. No batch pricing is published.
- What would Grok 4.20 cost per month?
- For a support-ticket workload (1,500 input + 500 output tokens per request) at 100K requests/month, Grok 4.20 costs about $313 at list prices.
- Has the price of Grok 4.20 changed?
- Grok 4.20 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $1.25 input / $2.50 output per 1M tokens. No list price change since tracking began on 2026-08-15. Last checked against the 2026-09-28 snapshot.
These are list prices: real cost also depends on caching, batching, negotiated discounts, marketplace agreements, and existing contracts. Get a FinOps review from OptimNow or compare all models.
Build the business case for Grok 4.20 in the AI ROI Calculator: add your business value on top of these costs to get ROI, break-even and payback.
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