xAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) company founded by Elon Musk, launched its application programming interface (API) for Grok on Monday. While the API was launched last month, the company has now offered several incentives for developers to try out the API and create apps and software using it. The most notable incentive on offer is free credits worth $25 (about Rs 2,100) per month until the end of the year. An API key can be generated using the xAI console and users can further customize how it is used.
xAI offers the Grok API with free credits
Three weeks ago, Musk took action mail on X (formerly Twitter) to highlight that the Grok API was live. However, it seems to have not received much attention from the developer community as the official handle for xAI on the social media platform separately. Announce Rolling out the API as well as various freebies to attract developers’ attention.
For starters, any developer who signs up for the xAI console will receive $25 worth of free credits every month. With two months left until the end of 2024, developers can get a maximum of $50 (around Rs 4,200) in API credits.
But that’s not all. xAI is also rewarding any developer who has purchased prepaid API credits so far. In a Blog postThe company said that any developer who purchased prepaid credits will receive an equivalent amount of free monthly credits for each month until the end of the year.
This means that if a developer purchases $50 of prepaid credits, they will receive $50 + $25 of total free credits in both November and December. Considering that the cost of the xAI API is $5 (~Rs. 420) per million input tokens and $15 (~Rs. 1,261) per million output tokens, this is a huge bonus for those willing to use the API.
The move also highlights the ongoing race by AI companies to capture the attention of the developer community. As broader adoption of the AI ​​model relies on different applications and software that power the large language model, developers have become an important entity for both ecosystem players and technology providers.
Aside from the financial incentives, xAI also highlighted that the company has made its REST API compatible with those offered by OpenAI and Anthropic. For example, a developer using the OpenAI Python SDK can change base_url to And start building on the xAI API. The move also highlights the company’s intention to reduce friction while moving from one system to another.
