Grok 4 is the July 2025 flagship model from xAI. It delivers a 256k token context window, built in tools, multimodal input, and an optional Heavy multi agent tier. API pricing is $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens (same as Grok 3). This guide covers capabilities, quick API setup, and how Grok 4 compares to current premium reasoning models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and DeepSeek.

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Overview of Grok 4

Grok-4 Release & Variants

• Announced July 10, 2025 as xAI's most capable model targeting advanced reasoning and real time intelligence.
• Two variants: Grok 4 (single agent) and Grok 4 Heavy (parallel multi agent for complex jobs).

Core API Specs

Stand-out Features

• Always-on chain-of-thought: the legacy reasoning_effort toggle is gone and every call runs in full reasoning mode.
• Live search agent: lets the model fetch current web or X posts during inference—no extra orchestration needed.
• Structured outputs & function calling: follow the OpenAI JSON schema standard.

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Grok API Access

Getting Started with xAI API

Step 1: Create an xAI account at console.x.ai and generate your API key. Store it securely as an environment variable.

Step 2: Make your first API request following the official tutorial.

Step 3: You can also use OpenAI or Anthropic SDK compatibility by changing the base URL.

pythonCopy
1client = OpenAI(
2    api_key=os.getenv("XAI_API_KEY"),
3    base_url="https://api.x.ai/v1",
4)
5
6# Sending the query
7response = client.chat.completions.create(
8    model="grok-4",
9    messages=[
10    {
11      "role": "user",
12      "content": [
13        {
14          "type": "text",
15          "text": "Which ingredients do you notice on the picture?"
16        }
17      ]
18    }
19  ],
20)
21
22print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Alternative: Using Keywords AI Gateway

You can also access Grok 4 through the Keywords AI gateway, which provides unified access to all mainstream AI models.(Library) We offer seamless compatibility with popular SDKs including OpenAI, Anthropic, LangChain, Vercel AI SDK, Mastra, and etc., making integration effortless regardless of your preferred development stack.

pythonCopy
1from openai import OpenAI
2
3client = OpenAI(
4    base_url="https://api.keywordsai.co/api/",
5    api_key=YOUR_KEYWORDSAI_API_KEY,
6)
7
8response = client.chat.completions.create(
9    model="gpt-4o-mini",
10    #Any models you would like to use.
11    messages=[{"role":"user", "content":"Tell me a long story"}],
12)

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API-First Model Comparison (July 2025)

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When Grok 4 Is the Right Choice

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Alternatives

• Production coding pipelines → Claude 4 Sonnet/Opus
• Multimodal experiences with video/audio → Gemini 2.5 Pro
• Budget-conscious deployments → DeepSeek R1
• Enterprise safety and compliance → Claude 4 models
• General-purpose versatility → OpenAI o3

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