xAI has tied the cost of searching X to how much data a query pulls back, not how many times an application asks. The company released Grok 4.7 across Cursor, Grok Build and its API on September 21, 2026, and paired the launch with a new billing structure for the X Search tool, according to Search Engine Watch. The old rate, $5 per 1,000 tool calls, gives way to $5 per 1,000 posts fetched and $10 per 1,000 profiles fetched, effective noon Pacific that day.
Every post returned counts toward the total, including parent and quoted posts pulled in as part of a thread, and model token charges are billed separately. Search Engine Watch calculated that 100 calls returning 20 posts each, once billed at $0.50 under the old system, would cost $10 in retrieval fees alone under the new one. Standard token pricing for the new model stays level with its predecessor, xAI says.
Brand-monitoring and social-listening tools that pull large volumes of posts per query face the steepest cost increase. Teams building on the X Search API should audit typical post-return volume now, since call counts alone no longer predict the bill.
Search Engine Watch, September 21, 2026.
