Grok Alternatives: What to Use Instead of Grok, Grok Bot and Grok 4.7, by Job

The best Grok alternative depends on which Grok you're replacing. To replace Grok Bot, the agent that does jobs for you, Meta's Muse is free with a usage limit, with a $20 a month Power plan for more, and ChatGPT's Dots comes with ChatGPT Pro, from $100 a month. In Pat Simmons's three-job test, published October 7, 2026, Grok Bot won every round, so Muse is the pick for personal errands rather than a better agent for work.

To replace Grok 4.7 for coding, Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra both beat it on all three of Pat's builds. They cost $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens (the same for Astra), against $2 and $6 for Grok 4.7. For everyday chat, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini each have a free plan, and Pat hasn't tested them against Grok as chat apps.

Last checked November 6, 2026: every price on this page comes from the company's own pricing page, opened that day and linked where it's stated.

What can you use instead of Grok?

You can replace each Grok product with a different rival: ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for chat, Meta's Muse or ChatGPT Dots for the Grok Bot agent, Claude Fable 5.1 or GPT-6 Astra for Grok 4.7 coding work, and ChatGPT Images or Seedance for Grok Imagine. The last column says whether Pat put that rival up against Grok himself.

For a wider list that starts from ChatGPT instead, see ChatGPT alternatives and what each costs. Each product's latest changes are tracked on its own page: Grok, Grok Bot, Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini.

Grok Bot alternatives: Muse and Dots on the same three jobs

Grok Bot won all three jobs in Pat's test, so the two alternatives each fit a narrower use: Muse is the free pick for personal errands, and Dots comes with ChatGPT Pro, from $100 a month. Pat gave all three agents the same three jobs: plan a three-night Montreal trip up to the checkout page without paying, research and outline a YouTube video, and run a fake online coffee store, Clanker Coffee, for about four hours.

The full write-up, with every prompt and the slide deck, is Grok Bot vs Muse vs Dots on the same three jobs.

Planning the Montreal trip

Grok Bot got past a bot check on the FlightHub booking site that blocked both Muse and Dots, and it found a cheaper Airbnb: $497 for three nights with a 4.86 rating, against $633 for the one Muse picked. Dots was the slowest and was still working when Pat stopped the test, so he gave the round to Grok Bot.

Researching and outlining a YouTube video

Grok Bot was the only one of the three that pulled Pat's real past titles and thumbnails before writing, and it wrote the best titles and outline. Pat said the thumbnails from all three were poor.

Running the Clanker Coffee store for four hours

Claude Opus 5.5 graded this job, not Pat: he said on camera that he had Opus 5.5 grade the agents and didn't look at the results himself. Its overall grades were Dots B, Grok Bot A- and Muse D.

Grok Bot sent 58 customer replies and Dots about 42. Dots was the only one that marked the sold-out coffee as unavailable on the store's website, and none of the three fell for the scam emails.

What each agent does that the other two don't

Grok Bot lets you run a team of bots, with one bot acting as the orchestrator that hands work to the rest, plus group chats and an easy way to import skills you already use in Claude Code or Codex.

Dots runs on OpenAI's newest model, which was GPT-6 Astra in Pat's test. It can fall back to the Codex Chrome extension when a site blocks it, it connects to Slack, and its coding work happens in Codex.

Muse has a feed, ideas and goals it builds from your chats, side chats and a log where you can see every action it took. It can also use Instagram, and its connectors include Spotify, Health and Peloton.

In Pat's video, Grok Bot ran on Grok 4.7, Dots on GPT-6 Astra and Muse on Muse 1.3. A day later, AI for Mortals reported that Grok Bot was starting to run on Claude Opus 5.5.

What each agent cost Pat

Pat used 83% of his Grok Bot allowance on mostly test work, hit the limit in the middle of the video, and turned on pay-as-you-go pricing. He said he spent an extra $30 to finish the tasks, on a plan he called SuperGrok at $30 a month, "not to be confused with Cursor Pro, which is $20 a month."

Muse cost him nothing. After a week of heavy use plus all three tests, his free Muse plan showed about 51% used.

Other subscribers ran out early too: in early November, they saw weekly meters hit 100% days before reset, and Elon Musk said serving Grok Bot cost too much for what it brought in. That story is why Grok Bot users are running out of usage.

Pat's verdict on Grok Bot, Muse and Dots

Pat picked Grok Bot for work: "So Grok Bot it is. I don't even think it's close." He also said "the only thing I wouldn't trust it on is day-to-day coding," and that "realistically, you have to have at least that $100 subscription if you want to get real work done every day with Grok Bot."

For Muse, his advice was "don't sleep on Muse for your personal life." On Dots, he said "it's not quite there yet. It feels a little half-baked."

Is Claude better than Grok for coding?

On Pat's three builds, yes: Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra beat Grok 4.7 every time, and Grok 4.7 costs a fifth as much per input token. Pat gave the three models the same one-shot prompts for three builds: a rebuild of an award-winning website picked from Awwwards, a scrolling product page for a mechanical keyboard with a 3D model in it, and a playable Mario Kart clone set on Rainbow Road. Grok 4.7 ranked last on all three.

These are the cost of each run at each model's API prices, from Grok 4.7 vs Fable 5.1 vs GPT-6 Astra build costs. Grok 4.7 was the cheapest run on the first build, but on the Mario Kart clone it cost more than Astra, the model that beat it.

Pat's verdict, in his words: "my thoughts on Grok 4.7 are not great." He added that these were "one-shot outputs" and that "three builds is a limited test."

xAI pitches Grok 4.7 on knowledge-work benchmarks and on CursorBench, a coding test, at a lower cost. Those are xAI's own claims, and Pat points out in the review that xAI owns Cursor. He didn't test Grok 4.7 on knowledge work or office tasks.

If you want Fable 5.1 without paying per token, Claude's pricing page says Claude Code comes with Pro and up, Pro pays for Fable with usage credits, and the Max plan ($100 a month) includes Fable for up to half your weekly limit.

Is Grok better than ChatGPT?

It depends on the job: in Pat's agent test, Grok Bot won all three jobs over ChatGPT's Dots (on the store job, Claude Opus 5.5 graded Grok Bot A- and Dots B), and in his coding builds, ChatGPT's GPT-6 Astra beat Grok 4.7 on all three. Pat hasn't compared the two as everyday chat apps. The full head-to-head, with what every plan costs, is Grok vs ChatGPT, compared in full.

Is Grok free, and what does SuperGrok cost?

Yes, Grok is free to use with limits: SpaceX Super Intelligence's pricing page lists a Free plan at $0 a month with limited chat requests and limited agent requests, and its Grok page says Grok is "free to try on the web and in the apps." The paid plans are Plus ($8 a month), Premium ($30), Super ($100) and Ultra ($200), and Grok Bot starts at Premium.

SuperGrok is the paid upgrade the Grok page offers "for higher limits and multi-agent reasoning." Since October 12, 2026, Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor and X Premium also come in one plan called the X Subscription, and its $30 Premium tier includes "the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+". People who already had SuperGrok can keep their current plan and price, per the same announcement. More on the bundle is in Grok, Cursor and X Premium in one plan.

The table puts Grok's plans next to the alternatives on this page, from each company's own pricing page.

Prices checked November 6, 2026. Grok's own plans page showed half off the first month of Premium, Super and Ultra that day, and it doesn't list a free trial.

Grok Imagine alternatives for images and video

The two alternatives covered here are ChatGPT's image maker and ByteDance's Seedance 2.5 for video, and Pat hasn't tested either one against Grok Imagine. Grok Imagine makes images and video from text or a reference photo, up to 2K images and 15-second videos, and the Super plan adds 1080p, 15-second videos. Its 1.5 version makes short video clips with the sound generated in the same pass.

ChatGPT makes images on every plan, with limited image creation on the free plan and more on paid ones. Pat has tested it on its own: in about 50 prompts, ChatGPT Images 2.0 won the realistic photos, maps and infographics against Google's Nano Banana, which did better on handwriting and receipts.

Seedance 2.5 is ByteDance's video model, and ByteDance says it makes video and audio together, up to 30 seconds in a single generation, with the option to extend a clip twice. Its latest changes are on the Seedance page.

Grok, Groq and who owns Grok: quick answers

What is Grok?

Grok is an AI assistant for chat, search, image and video making and voice, on the web, iOS and Android, according to its own product page. It can search the web and X live, and it comes with the X Subscription along with Grok Bot and Cursor.

Who owns Grok?

Grok is made by SpaceX Super Intelligence, whose name is on the footer of Grok's product page ("© 2026 SpaceX Super Intelligence LLC"). It's the SpaceX-owned company formerly called xAI, and it sells Cursor, the coding app, in the same X Subscription as Grok.

Is Groq the same as Grok?

No. Groq is a different company that builds hardware and a cloud service for AI inference, which is the computing that runs an AI model each time someone uses it. Groq's site says it "pioneered the LPU," its own processor, and now runs it alongside Nvidia's GPUs.

What does Grok Bot cost?

Grok Bot starts with the $30 a month Premium plan, and the Super ($100) and Ultra ($200) plans give 15 and 50 times the usage of the $8 Plus plan, which doesn't include Grok Bot. Pat's verdict was that daily work with Grok Bot needs at least the $100 plan.

What does Grok 4.7 cost?

Grok 4.7 costs $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens through SpaceX Super Intelligence's API, which describes it as its "flagship model for code and everything else." In the Grok apps it comes with the paid plans, and Premium and up list "Latest Grok models".

How does Grok compare with ChatGPT and Gemini?

All three have a free plan, and the cheapest paid plans are Google AI Plus at $4.99 a month, Grok Plus at $8 and ChatGPT Go at $8. Pat has tested Grok against ChatGPT (above), and he hasn't tested Gemini against Grok.

How Pat tested Grok against the alternatives

The agent test is Pat's video published October 7, 2026, which is the video at the top of this page. Grok Bot ran on Grok 4.7, Dots on GPT-6 Astra and Muse on Muse 1.3, and each agent got the same prompts. For the coffee store job, Claude Opus 5.5 built a sandbox company called Clanker Coffee, with its own inboxes, Notion, HubSpot and Asana for each agent and about 70 customer emails each over roughly four hours, then graded the results. Pat said he didn't review the grades.

The coding test is Pat's Grok 4.7 review, published September 22, 2026. Grok 4.7, Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra each got the same prompt for three builds, in one pass with no follow-up prompts, and Pat ranked the results without knowing which model made which. Each build's cost is the price of its tokens at the model's API rates.

Pat hasn't tested Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini against Grok as chat apps, or Grok Imagine against any rival, so this page compares those from the companies' own pages and makes no claim about which works better.

Sources

• SpaceX Super Intelligence: Grok and X Subscription pricing (checked November 6, 2026)
• Grok: Plans (checked November 6, 2026)
• SpaceX Super Intelligence: Grok product page
• SpaceX Super Intelligence: Introducing The X Subscription
• SpaceX Super Intelligence: Models and pricing
• Meta Help Center: About Muse subscriptions
• ChatGPT: Plans and pricing (checked November 6, 2026)
• OpenAI: API pricing
• Claude: Pricing (checked November 6, 2026)
• Anthropic: Claude API pricing
• Google: Gemini subscriptions (checked November 6, 2026)
• ByteDance Seed: Seedance 2.5
• Groq
• Pat Simmons: Grok 4.7: No-Hype Full Review & Testing (the ranking at 20:31)
• AI for Mortals: Grok Bot vs Meta Muse vs ChatGPT Dots
• AI for Mortals: Grok 4.7 vs Fable 5.1 vs GPT-6 Astra
• AI for Mortals: Grok Bot users ran out of usage days early
• AI for Mortals: Grok Bot can now search and watch X
• AI for Mortals: Grok Imagine 1.5