Elon posted three sentences about Grokbot, his company’s AI agent, and social media reacted strongly. He stated that he had never seen anything grow as fast as Grokbot. There is no free tier, which means people are getting real value in excess of what they pay for. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. That post cleared 1.2 million views in four hours. He was quoting a clip from Jensen Hoying, the CEO of Nvidia. Hoying said the demand for Grokbot, the consumption for Grokbot, is really skyrocketing. This comes from the person selling the chips and the business.
Bloomberg reported that 418,000 weekly users hit a month after launch. That is a large number. Some people mention retention issues, and part of these could stem from the many changes moving through with Cursor, Grok, X, and the related merger. There is a free trial of some parts of the offering, but not for Grokbot. Users must pay for Grokbot.
Joint Pricing for Grok, Grokbot, Cursor, and X
Grok has moved from one plan covering Grok, Grokbot, Cursor, X, and related services. The pricing structures have recently changed into a joint setup.
Right now there is a zero free limit that provides limited chat for Grok and limited agent requests. There is a shared $8 a month option that covers Grok chat voice, Grok API, and Cursor. It also includes premium check marks and some other features.
The premium tier is where Grokbot starts. To get Grokbot now requires paying $30 a month. This is what Elon was referring to when discussing paid versus non-paid access. The $30 plan gives a pretty generous amount. A team is using just this $30 amount, and they report they are not getting a lot of hits on the limits. It includes ad-free scrolling on most surfaces, a preferred handle, and a lot of other features. A substantial amount of functionality is packed into this $30 a month subscription.
The $100 a month subscription provides a ton of usage. One heavy user is on the $100 plan. Team pricing also exists at the $30 and $100 levels. This joint pricing combines Grok, Cursor, Grokbot, and X.
Growth Claims and Supporting Comments
Elon said Grokbot hits 418 weekly users after just one month. It remains unclear exactly how many people currently use Grokbot each week when separating it from Grok, SpaceX, and related services. Some people say numbers are being hidden behind the merge of the three. Elon then stated he has never seen anything grow as fast as Grokbot. There is no free tier, which means people are deriving real value in excess of what they pay. You get what you pay for.
This was in response to a video clip from Jensen Wang. He said Grokbot usage is skyrocketing. In the video the CEO spent one minute on Elon and Grokbot. He noted that Elon trains and runs his own models. Grokbot demand is climbing fast. He called it super cool.
Jensen was originally a big fan of Clawbot and others that grew really quickly. Those topped out and died very quickly because the real value was not there. Elon’s suggestion is to start small. Give Grokbot one research task that has been put off. Grab the $30 a month plan. A lot of value comes with it. This is not a paid advertisement.
Jensen Wang says he loves working with Elon. He is delighted and loves working with Elon. Elon is using their technology for his own training models and for deploying models. Grokbot is super cool. The combination of these three things is fairly unique. Google does something similar as another example.
One recent interesting exchange involved Tesla’s Roadster launch and flying cars. Elon was posting about it. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, popped in and gave compliments to Elon. Elon responded. It is interesting to see these public exchanges. Jensen has also spoken about his collaborations with Elon.
Elon has said Grokbot usage is growing faster than anything they have ever seen. SpaceX Grokbot hits 418,000 weekly users ending September 14th. That figure is from a month ago, so the number has probably increased since then. Some people say the merge of the pricing and related changes has pushed people off, though that remains to be seen.
A Heavy User’s Perspective and Comparison to Metamuse
At Startuphakk, custom software solutions are built for companies. With a decade of executive leadership as a fractional CTO and 25 years in software development, the work includes transforming tech teams and products, including building custom AI solutions.
The team runs Openmonoagent. It is open source and given away free. Anyone can open the code, run it, and install it with one command for a full local setup for AI. A Strata build is being pushed so Openmonoagent can run on top of Strata. On a 5090 with 64 gigs of RAM, the setup is getting around 180 tokens per second on a huge model—not even as small as a 27 billion parameter model. Boundaries are being pushed.
On smaller hardware, work is underway to move from the Quen 3.59 billion model to the Bonsai 2.12 billion and then the Bonsai 2.27B. These run faster on a bigger model using the Bonsai model. The system detects hardware and decides the best model to run, along with the UI and TUI. An agent host mode is also launching. On a development or R&D box, the agent host can be installed to troubleshoot installs, optimize, and support a recursive loop so developers can run faster. About four branches are merging into main with new features.
This context matters for Grokbot usage. Hardware in the R&D lab includes a system running a Bonsai 2 model on a 3060 with 12 gig. Another (a white unit) is running Strata at 180 tokens per second on a huge model such as something in the range of Quen 3.8 Flash Next. This has become a daily driver for a development group on a 5090 with 64 gigs of RAM. A black unit runs a 3090 with 12 gig. Production runs in a private data center, not from the office.
Metamuse, the agent, was tested. The Metamuse models themselves (Wonder and Spark 1.3) are really good and work very well. The agent, however, feels more like a tool for personal or home use—booking flights, hotels, and similar tasks. When given work tasks, it performed poorly in the examples tested. Many work tasks were pushed to it and it did not do well.
When Grokbot was stood up, it integrated into the R&D lab using burner accounts. It is not connected to any production work accounts. A cloud bot is not allowed to touch production systems. Grokbot is managing Openmonoagent installs on the machines in an R&D lab setting and is doing a lot of that work. It is very powerful.
The difference is that Metamuse feels more like a personal tool—stronger than a toy, but oriented that way. Grokbot functions as a work tool and a workhorse. Around 20 different Grokbots are running and doing various things. It is not perfect and is worked with every day. The team is also using it for various tasks. There are many things it does very well. From a business level, the $30 plan is really good.
Retention, Value, and Business Use
Even if there is some churn related to combining Grok, Cursor, and related services, it is better to be loved by a few than liked by many. OpenAI is liked by many, with tons of free users—hundreds of millions, somewhere near a billion free users. The question is how many people want to pay for it. Elon is saying there is no free tier for Grokbot: put your money where your mouth is and pay the $30 a month. Those users are likely to be business and corporate accounts.
In one business, the $100 per month Grokbot, Cursor, and related stack is paid for along with many other services. It is easy to get $100 a month of value out of the business from it. For that business a $100 line item is fairly small. The $100 per month would be kept, and Grokbot is providing that value. This backs up Elon’s statement. Developers are using both the $30 and $100 ranges and getting value out of it. As someone who is careful with business spending, the usage reflects genuine value found in the tool.
SpaceX Quarterly Numbers on AI
SpaceX’s quarterly earnings provide additional context. Their AI revenue was $2.56 billion, up 247% from last year. The quarterly filing breaks it down. $1.6 billion of the jump came from renting out Compute and GrokX subscriptions. Grok and GrokX subscriptions added $258 million. They spent $16 billion on AI buildout in that one quarter and hit 1.4 gigawatts of computing power.
Per the IPO filing, Anthropic pays a reported $15 billion a year for access to Colossus. That $16 billion buildout is already getting paid for in the first year. Elon is renting his data centers to Dario at Anthropic. The same filing shows about 117 million monthly Grok users, but only about 1.9 million paying for SuperGrok. When the numbers from SuperGrok, Cursor, and related services are combined, the picture changes somewhat. As a consumer, more comes out of that combination.
Broader Tool Usage and Advice
Nearly every stack is in use right now except for Codex and OpenAI, which are not used. One team is still on CloudCode because they are in a big release crunch. Many people are on OpenCode. Free options have included Metamuse Spark 1.3 (free up to around a billion tokens) and recent free offerings from DeepSeek and others on OpenCode. Developers are also using OpenMonoAgent for daily coding work, and limits are being pushed with it.
Staying on the cutting edge matters for a business that builds custom software solutions. The $30 a month plan to try Grokbot, which also includes a bunch of Cursor usage and other features, feels like pretty good value.
Startuphakk builds custom software solutions for companies, particularly AI build-outs. Most companies do not have a technology problem; they have a leadership problem. They pay for it in missed deadlines, failed integrations, and AI investments that deliver nothing. Spencer Thomason is a fractional CTO and founder of Startuphakk, with 25 years building real software and a decade in executive leadership at organizations such as GoDaddy, SRP, and Wells Fargo. Bad technology decisions do not just waste money; they can kill companies.
The businesses winning right now are not necessarily the ones chasing the latest AI trends. They are the ones who built on solid engineering and treated AI as infrastructure they own, control, and integrate into software that actually works. The team delivers real custom software development: database architecture, API design, system integration, and scalable infrastructure built the right way. When AI belongs in a solution, it is designed into the architecture and runs in the customer’s environment, not a vendor’s cloud or on someone else’s pricing schedule.
An open-source platform called OpenMonoAgent.ai is a terminal-native AI coding agent running entirely on local LLMs. It has zero API costs, zero telemetry, and full ownership. It is growing because engineers recognize real infrastructure. As a fractional CTO offering, the same standard of leadership is available without full-time executive costs: strategic architecture, hands-on delivery, and clear accountability.
The growth numbers, the lack of a free tier, the pricing changes, and direct usage experience all point to Grokbot delivering measurable value for those who pay for it, particularly in business and development settings. Whether the fastest-growth claim holds over time will depend on continued retention and real-world results after the recent mergers and pricing shifts.
Conclusion
Elon highlighted Grokbot’s rapid growth and the lack of a free tier as signs that users get real value for what they pay. Bloomberg’s 418,000 weekly users and Jensen Wang’s comments on skyrocketing demand support that view, even as the new joint pricing with Cursor and X raises some retention questions.
In practice, the $30 and $100 plans deliver usable capacity and clear business value for teams handling real work, with Grokbot functioning as a workhorse rather than a personal tool. The SpaceX AI revenue figures and related deals further show the commercial context behind the growth. For those evaluating it, starting with the $30 plan on a single deferred task offers a straightforward way to test the claimed value.
