Tier: frontier
Context: 131K
Cheapest Host: OpenRouter
xAI Grok 2 (1212) API Pricing Calculator & Cheapest Provider
Live unit economics and multi-provider host arbitrage for xAI Grok 2 (1212) (x-ai/grok-2-1212).
Input tokens cost $2.00/1M, output tokens cost
$10.00/1M, and prompt cache reads drop to
$0.50/1M.
Input / Output / Cache Read
$2.00 / $10.00
Per 1M tokens · Cache Read: $0.50/1M
10,000 DAU Monthly Bill
$54,000/mo
Drops to $39,825/mo at 75% prompt cache hit rate
Speed & Context Spec
94 tok/s
Context: 131,072 · Max Out: 16,384
1. Multi-Provider Host Arbitrage Table for xAI Grok 2 (1212)
Compare every verified inference provider hosting xAI Grok 2 (1212) by input price, output price, cache read discount, and throughput speed:
| Provider / Endpoint | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Cache Read / 1M | Throughput | 10K DAU Monthly Bill | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenRouter Lowest Price | $2.00 | $10.00 | $0.50 | 94 tok/s | $54,000/mo | Deploy (Unified API for 470+ Models) → |
2. Monthly SaaS Spend by DAU Scale & Prompt Cache Hit Rate
Exact monthly spend projections across 1,000 DAU, 10,000 DAU, and 50,000 DAU with 0%, 50%, 75%, and 90% prompt caching:
| Active Users (DAU) | Uncached (0% Hit) | 50% Cache Hit | 75% Cache Hit (RAG) | 90% Cache Hit (Agents) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 DAU (1.55B tok/mo) | $5,400/mo | $4,455/mo | $3,983/mo | $3,699/mo |
| 10,000 DAU (15.5B tok/mo) | $54,000/mo | $44,550/mo | $39,825/mo | $36,990/mo |
| 50,000 DAU (77.4B tok/mo) | $270,000/mo | $222,750/mo | $199,125/mo | $184,950/mo |
3. Frequently Asked Questions (xAI Grok 2 (1212))
How much does the xAI Grok 2 (1212) API cost per 1M tokens?
xAI Grok 2 (1212) (OpenRouter) costs $2.00 per 1M input tokens, $10.00 per 1M output tokens, and $0.50 per 1M cached input tokens. Its context window is 131K (131,072 tokens) with 16,384 max output tokens.
What is the cheapest inference provider for xAI Grok 2 (1212)?
Among 1 verified endpoints, OpenRouter offers the lowest blended pricing at $2.00/1M input and $10.00/1M output (94 tok/s). For maximum throughput, OpenRouter delivers 94 tokens/sec.
How much does xAI Grok 2 (1212) cost per month at 1,000, 10,000, and 50,000 DAU?
On a standard SaaS production workload (12 requests/user/day, 3,500 input + 800 output tokens), xAI Grok 2 (1212) costs $5,400/month at 1,000 DAU, $54,000/month at 10,000 DAU, and $270,000/month at 50,000 DAU. Enabling 75% prompt caching reduces the 10,000 DAU bill to $39,825/month.
4. Compare xAI Grok 2 (1212) Against Alternative Models
xAI Grok 2 (1212) vs GPT-4o
Side-by-side DAU cost & cache savings →
DeepSeek V3 (0324) Pricing Calculator
$0.24/1M in · $0.79/1M out →
Claude 3.7 Sonnet Pricing Calculator
$3.00/1M in · $15.00/1M out →
GPT-4o Pricing Calculator
$2.50/1M in · $10.00/1M out →
Gemini 2.5 Pro Pricing Calculator
$1.25/1M in · $10.00/1M out →
DeepSeek R1 (671B Reasoning) Pricing Calculator
$0.50/1M in · $2.15/1M out →
OpenAI o3-mini Pricing Calculator
$1.10/1M in · $4.40/1M out →