Pricing through Cloudflare's AI Gateway mirrors xAI's standard API rates. The two primary text models cost :
| Model | Input (per 1M tokens) | Output (per 1M tokens) | Context window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grok 4.3 | $1.25 | $2.50 | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Grok Build 0.1 | $1.00 | $2.00 | 256,000 tokens |
Relative to Grok 4.20 — which was priced at $2.00 per million input tokens and $6.00 per million output tokens — Grok 4.3 represents roughly a 37% reduction on input and a 58% reduction on output . This price cut, which took effect when xAI shipped Grok 4.3's general availability on May 6, 2026, is one of the more aggressive pricing moves in the frontier model market
.
Billing flows through Cloudflare's unified billing system. Developers purchase credits in the Cloudflare Dashboard and spend them across any connected AI provider, including xAI. This eliminates the need to maintain separate billing relationships with each model vendor .
Routing Grok requests through AI Gateway requires a straightforward URL swap. Developers replace the standard xAI API base URL with the Cloudflare gateway endpoint :
https://gateway.ai.cloudflare.com/v1/{account_id}/{gateway_id}/grokThree pieces of information are needed: the Cloudflare account ID, the gateway name configured in the dashboard, and a valid xAI API key. Because the gateway exposes an OpenAI-compatible API schema, existing integrations built on the OpenAI SDK work without code changes beyond the base URL update .
Cloudflare positions AI Gateway as a control plane that sits between applications and model providers. Once Grok traffic flows through it, developers unlock several infrastructure capabilities that would otherwise require custom middleware :
The integration carries weight beyond a simple API connector announcement. It reflects how the AI infrastructure layer is consolidating, and where both companies are placing their bets.
For xAI, the partnership with Cloudflare provides enterprise-grade distribution without requiring xAI to build a global edge network itself. Cloudflare's infrastructure spans hundreds of cities, and routing Grok through that fabric means xAI's models inherit low-latency availability, caching, and observability that large enterprise customers expect. The move positions Grok as a multi-modal AI platform — text, code, image, video, and audio — that can compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic for developer budgets .
For Cloudflare, adding the full Grok lineup strengthens the pitch that AI Gateway is a neutral, universal control plane. Every additional model family that plugs into the gateway makes Cloudflare's infrastructure stickier: once a team routes its AI traffic through Cloudflare for caching, logging, billing, and failover, switching costs rise. This directly competes with Vercel's AI Gateway and other middleware layers that aim to abstract model providers behind a unified API .
The timing is also notable. This announcement landed roughly one month after xAI released Grok 4.3 with its 1M-token context window and aggressive pricing, and just as the model reached general availability across multiple partner platforms. By locking in deeper distribution through Cloudflare at that moment, xAI gave developers a low-friction path to adopt the model alongside existing providers already routed through the same gateway .
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