Grok Imagine's free tier went to zero on 19 March 2026, which is why you are here. But before you switch, do one division. Per image it runs about $0.060 at published list rates — mid-table, cheaper than the flagships and dearer than a dozen models you have not heard of. The expensive part was never the image. It was the plan wrapped around it, and that changes which alternative is the right answer.
You are escaping a plan, not a per-image cost. At ~$0.060 an image, a ~$10/month plan only pays for itself past 167 images a month, about 5.6 a day. Below that, buying by the unit is cheaper — including buying Grok Imagine itself by the unit.
- If you generate a few images a week, no free alternative is needed. Per-unit access to the same model costs less than the plan you left.
- If you want genuinely free, the honest options are text-to-image models at $0.005–$0.040, not another gated product.
- For video, it runs $0.025–$0.115 per second, which is competitive. Its own extend endpoint is the outlier: $0.80 for ten seconds at 720p works out to $0.08/sec, nearly double its own generate rate.
- Watch the model id. Two of the six Grok Imagine names we called are catalogue labels no endpoint answers to.
Last updated: August 2026.
What actually happened to Grok Imagine's free tier
On 19 March 2026, xAI dropped the daily free video allowance from 50 to zero. Image and video generation moved behind a paid SuperGrok plan; the free tier on X is now text-only against a lighter model. Notably, a standard X Premium subscription is not the same thing as SuperGrok, which is where much of the confusion in those threads comes from.
The reported plan shapes — roughly $10/month for about 20 images a day, roughly $30/month for about 50 — are widely repeated but xAI does not officially publish per-tier generation caps, so treat any specific number, including those, as reported rather than documented.
The arithmetic every Grok Imagine alternatives list skips
Take the published API rate for the same model — about $0.060 an image — and divide.
- A ~$10/month plan breaks even at 167 images a month, about 5.6 a day.
- A ~$30/month plan breaks even at 500 a month, about 17 a day.
Generate less than that and the plan was the expensive option regardless of what its cap allowed. This is the number that decides your move, and none of the roundups we read while writing this computes it.
Free Grok Imagine alternatives that are actually free
| Model | Published list price | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Z-Image | $0.005 / image | Shelf lists a text-to-image endpoint only |
| Google Imagen 4 Fast | $0.020 / image | Shelf lists a text-to-image endpoint only |
| Qwen Image 3 | $0.040 / image | Text-to-image and image-to-image, both answered our probe |
| Grok Imagine | $0.060 / image | Text-to-image and edit |
None of these is free at the API layer — every one charges per image. A front end offering free runs is paying that rate on your behalf, which is the simplest explanation for why free tiers come with caps at all. We took that apart separately in why free AI editing tiers stop where they stop.
So the honest version of "free Grok Imagine alternatives" is: a front end that eats a few cents on your behalf. Judge those on how many runs they give you before the wall, not on the word free.
Grok Imagine alternatives for video, priced per second
Video is where the switch can be justified, though still not usually on price. It runs $0.025 per second at 360p without audio up to $0.115 per second at 1080p with audio — so a six-second 720p clip with sound is about $0.36.
That is already competitive. At published rates, a five-second 720p clip runs $0.23 on PixVerse V6 and $0.42 on Kling 3.0 without audio. The real outlier is its own extend endpoint: $0.80 for ten seconds at 720p is $0.08 a second, nearly double the $0.045 it charges to generate at the same resolution. If you need length, generating long beats extending short.
On price alone, PixVerse V6 at $0.045/sec for 720p is the nearest thing to a like-for-like swap. We have not run the two against the same prompt, so treat that as a cost match rather than a quality verdict.
The Grok Imagine alternatives detail that will waste your afternoon
Before you plan a migration around any model name, check that the name is an API id.
On 2026-08-25 we sent schema-only requests to six of its names, checking the account balance before and after each call. Four answered: grok-imagine/text-to-video, grok-imagine/extend, grok-imagine/upscale and grok-imagine/image-to-video. Two — grok-imagine-image-2-0 and grok-imagine-video-1.5 — returned "model name not supported". Both are names that appear on catalogue and product pages, including ours; neither is a name the API answers to.
One of those calls was not free.
grok-imagine/image-to-videoreturned HTTP 200 and created a billable task from a request with no input at all, where every other endpoint rejected it. The common advice that a malformed request is a safe way to test whether a model id exists is false here. Check your balance after each probe, not just the error string.
Which Grok Imagine alternatives we would actually pick
You generate a few images a week
Stay on the same class of model and buy by the unit. Below about six images a day the subscription never made sense, and the output you liked came from the model, not the plan. Grok Imagine's image model is on our shelf at per-image pricing.
You want the cheapest possible text-to-image
Z-Image at $0.005 is twelve times cheaper per image. The shelf lists only a text-to-image endpoint for it, so it substitutes for generating, not for editing a picture you already have.
You were editing photos, not generating them
Then the peers are the edit endpoints and the ladder is a different one — we priced all sixteen of them in Nano Banana alternatives.
You mainly used it for short video
Compare at the length you actually need, not per second. Ten seconds of 720p costs $0.45 generated on PixVerse V6 and $0.80 extended on Grok Imagine — same output length, different line on the bill.
Trying Grok Imagine alternatives without a subscription
Several of these models run on our image generator and video generator on credits rather than a plan, which is the point: you pay for the runs you make. The pricing page shows the credit cost per model, so you can do the same division for yourself.
Grok Imagine FAQ
Is Grok Imagine free in 2026?
No. On 19 March 2026 the free daily allowance went to zero, and image and video generation now require a paid SuperGrok plan. X Premium alone does not include it.
What is the cheapest Grok Imagine alternative?
For text-to-image, Z-Image at about $0.005 per image at published list rates — roughly twelve times cheaper per image than Grok Imagine. It does not edit existing photos.
Is switching away from Grok Imagine actually cheaper?
Only if you were generating a lot. At ~$0.060 an image, a ~$10 plan breaks even at about 167 images a month. Under that, per-unit access to the very same model costs less than the plan did.
Are there free Grok Imagine alternatives with no limits?
Not at the API layer — every model we priced charges per image or per second. A front end advertising free runs is paying that rate for you, which is why the run count is capped.
Why does the Grok Imagine model id not work in my code?
Check whether the string you used is a catalogue name rather than an API id. We called six Grok Imagine names on 2026-08-25 and two of them — grok-imagine-image-2-0 and grok-imagine-video-1.5 — are labels no endpoint answers to.
Is it good value for video?
Per second it is competitive: $0.025 to $0.115 depending on resolution and audio. Its weak spot is extending: $0.80 for ten seconds at 720p is $0.08 a second against the $0.045 it charges to generate at that resolution.
If the bot rather than the image model is what you are after, access, price and setup are in how to use Grok bot.
Sources
- xAI Grok Imagine free-tier shutdown, 19 March 2026 — reported across Grok limit trackers and community writeups; plan prices and per-tier caps are not officially published by xAI.
- fal.ai and vendor published per-image and per-second list rates for Grok Imagine, Z-Image, Imagen 4, Qwen, PixVerse and Kling, retrieved 2026-08-25.
- First-party API probe, six Grok Imagine endpoint names, balance checked before and after each call, 2026-08-25.
One division decides this: your images per month against $0.060. Above about 167 the plan was worth it; below, you were paying a subscription for something you could have bought by the piece — and that is true of the alternative you pick next, too.
