Is Grok Imagine Free? Video Limits, Length and Plans Explained

In short: Grok Imagine video is not free without limits. xAI's current plan table, The X Subscription, has a $0 Free plan whose included usage is described only as "Limited"; none of the xAI pages we could read on 2026-11-01 says whether it includes video, and a third-party report from September said free accounts got one video a day or none at all. Paid plans run from $8 to $200 a month and share one weekly usage pool across Chat, Imagine, Voice and Build, so xAI publishes no number of videos per plan. Clips on grok.com carry a Grok watermark you may not remove. Through the API, a clip can be 1 to 15 seconds from $0.02 a second.

We make Cicadas, an independent site that runs Grok Imagine Video 1.5 and 1.5 Lite through a third-party API on the Grok Imagine page. We are not xAI. Everything below about xAI's plans and limits was read on xAI's own pages on 2026-11-01; where xAI does not state something, we say so instead of guessing.

1. Is Grok Imagine free in November 2026?

The honest answer is "maybe a little, depending on your account".

• What xAI states. The X Subscription pricing page in xAI's docs lists Free: $0, included usage "Limited", and says the Free plan includes standard X. It does not list what Free includes in Imagine.
• What xAI's FAQ implies. When a paid plan's weekly pool runs out, the FAQ says you keep "Grok's free tier limits on Chat and Voice". Imagine is not named there.
• What we could not read. The full plan comparison at x.ai/pricing did not load for us, so we cannot quote its Free column.
• What users report. RoboRhythms (updated 2026-09-17) reported that free video came back on August 21, 2026 at one video a day, that from September 5 some free accounts got none while others still could, and that xAI's comparison grid then showed video as excluded on Free. That was before the October plan change, so treat it as history, not as today's rule.

So if you open grok.com/imagine on a free account, you may get a clip, a smaller allowance than you hoped, or an upgrade prompt.

2. What the paid plans cost

New customers now choose from The X Subscription, which combines Grok, Cursor and X in one plan. List prices from xAI's docs, read on 2026-11-01:

• Plus: $8 a month or $80 a year, base included usage.
• Premium: $30 a month or $300 a year, 4x the usage.
• Super: $100 a month or $1,000 a year, 15x the usage.
• Ultra: $200 a month or $2,000 a year, 50x the usage.

Existing SuperGrok and X Premium plans continue for people who already pay for them, and switching is optional. Prices exclude sales tax.

3. How the limits work: one weekly pool

Since June 2026, paid Grok plans no longer have separate daily limits per product. Per xAI's FAQ:

• One pool for everything. Chat, Imagine, Voice and Build draw from one weekly usage pool, which resets on a schedule shown under Settings, then Usage.
• Video is expensive in that pool. xAI says different products cost different amounts of it, and that a high-quality video uses far more than a chat message. It does not convert the pool into a number of clips.
• 720p has its own cap. Once you reach your plan's 720p cap, 720p videos fall back to 480p. The cap is not published.
• Running out. Paid features pause until the reset. You can buy Extra Usage Credits from $5, on the web only; they expire one year after purchase and cost more per action than the usage included in a plan.

That is why every "Grok Imagine limit per day" number you find online comes from users, not from xAI, and why those numbers keep changing.

4. Length, resolution and sound

• In the app. xAI's June 16, 2026 announcement says Video 1.5 Fast runs on grok.com/imagine and in the iOS and Android apps and makes 6-second 720p videos in about 25 seconds. The other length options in the app are not stated on the xAI pages we could read.
• Through the API. A clip can be 1 to 15 seconds, 8 by default. Grok Imagine Video 1.5 renders 480p, 720p or native 1080p; 1.5 Lite reaches 1080p by upscaling 720p.
• Longer than 15 seconds. The API's extension adds 2 to 10 seconds to a clip of 2 to 15 seconds, and the result is capped at 720p.
• Sound. Generated videos include audio by default, with lip-synced speech on 1.5 and 1.5 Lite; the API can return a silent clip on request.

Spicy mode is not described on any xAI page we read, so we do not cover it here.

5. Watermark and commercial use

xAI's FAQ is clear on the watermark: videos made on grok.com and in the Grok apps carry a Grok watermark, there is no setting to remove it, and removing, altering or hiding it breaks xAI's Acceptable Use Policy. If a clean file matters, plan for the watermark on the free and paid apps alike.

We could not load xAI's consumer terms on 2026-11-01, so we do not summarize what they say about ownership or commercial use. Read x.ai/legal/terms-of-service before you publish Grok output for a client or an ad.

6. The API price per second

Developers pay per generated second, with no plan. From xAI's model pages, read on 2026-11-01:

• Grok Imagine Video 1.5: $0.08 a second at 480p, $0.14 at 720p, $0.25 at 1080p. A 5-second clip is $0.40, $0.70 or $1.25.
• Grok Imagine Video 1.5 Lite: $0.02 a second at 480p, $0.03 at 720p, $0.14 at 1080p. A 5-second clip is $0.10, $0.15 or $0.70.
• Starting from a picture adds $0.01 per input image.

You need an xAI account, an API key and some code, and xAI's FAQ says API credits are non-refundable.

7. Grok Imagine on Cicadas: paid, with the price shown first

Cicadas does not offer free Grok Imagine clips. You pay in credits, the generator shows the quote before you submit, and every clip has sound. At the $9.90 first pack of 1,000 credits:

• Grok Imagine Video 1.5 Lite, 5 seconds: 25 credits at 480p (about $0.25), 38 at 720p (about $0.38).
• Grok Imagine Video 1.5 Lite, 10 seconds: 50 credits at 480p (about $0.49), 75 at 720p (about $0.74).
• Grok Imagine Video 1.5, 5 seconds: 100 credits at 480p (about $0.99), 175 at 720p (about $1.73).
• Grok Imagine Video 1.5, 10 seconds: 200 credits at 480p (about $1.98), 350 at 720p (about $3.46).

Starting from a picture adds 2 or 3 credits. Clips are 5 or 10 seconds at 480p or 720p. That is more per second than calling xAI's API yourself; what you get instead is no code, no subscription and no weekly pool. If the provider fails or the file fails our check, the credits come back; a finished clip you dislike is still charged. In frames we checked from our recorded clips we saw no visible Grok mark; we cannot tell you whether they carry invisible provenance signals.

The cover of this post is grok-lite-lanterns, a 5-second 480p clip we recorded on the Grok Imagine page with 1.5 Lite for 25 credits: paper lanterns over a wet stone alley as the camera tilts up. Its rain sound is very quiet, which is typical of the Lite clips we made.

8. How to get a cheaper or longer clip

• Cheaper: use 1.5 Lite at 480p, keep the first take at 5 seconds, and write the prompt once with the Grok Imagine prompt builder instead of paying for retries.
• Longer in one clip: on Cicadas, Grok stops at 10 seconds. The Grok Imagine alternative page puts MiniMax H3 Max (up to 15 seconds) and Seedance 2.5 (up to 30 seconds, see the Seedance 2.5 page) in one form.
• Cheapest clip with sound on Cicadas, any model: Grok 1.5 Lite at 25 credits for 5 seconds at 480p; MiniMax H3 Max is 63 credits (about $0.62) for the same length and resolution, also with sound.
• Longer through Grok itself: generate up to 15 seconds and extend it through the API, or use the app within your plan's pool.

For what people have made with Grok Imagine at full length, see our note on the Grok Imagine Odyssey series.

How we checked

On 2026-11-01 we read xAI's docs pages for The X Subscription (pricing and usage limits), the Grok website and apps FAQ, the API pricing and model pages for Grok Imagine Video 1.5 and 1.5 Lite, the video generation, overview and extension guides, and xAI's June 16, 2026 Grok Imagine Video 1.5 announcement. x.ai/pricing, grok.com plan pages and xAI's legal pages did not load for us, so nothing above is quoted from them. The free-tier history comes from RoboRhythms and is marked as reported. Cicadas prices are computed from our generator's per-second rates, rounded up to whole credits as the generator does. We did not generate on grok.com or through xAI's API for this post. Method: how we test.