Grok 4.5 ships: 500K context, $2/$6 per million tokens

xAI just pushed Grok 4.5 live across the API, xAI Console, and Grok Build. The headline specs: a 500K-token context window, text + image→text input, and pricing that undercuts most frontier rivals at $2 / 1M input and $6 / 1M output tokens.

That pricing is the real story. At $2/$6, Grok 4.5 lands well below the going rate for comparable long-context reasoning models, and the half-million-token window puts it in the same conversation as Gemini and Claude for large-document and codebase work. xAI is positioning it as its smartest model yet for coding, STEM, and knowledge work.

One caveat worth flagging: much of the early availability data is surfacing through third-party routers like OpenRouter, and xAI's own docs have lagged the rollout announcements — so treat exact quotas and regional access as fluid until the official model page catches up.

Why it matters: cheap tokens + a 500K window make Grok 4.5 a serious cost play for anyone running long-context or high-volume AI workloads.