On this page
Where do you see your limits?
On the Models page in the xAI Console. It shows your team’s tier and your limit for each model.
How do you move up a tier?
Spend more on the API. Tiers go up automatically at these totals. They count from January 1, 2026, so anything you spent before that date doesn’t help.
| Tier | Cumulative spend | grok-4.7 RPS | grok-4.7 TPM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 0 | $0 | 150 | 50M |
| Tier 1 | $50 | 172 | 53M |
| Tier 2 | $250 | 208 | 60M |
| Tier 3 | $1,000 | 312 | 74M |
| Tier 4 | $5,000 | 500 | 100M |
Rates as listed on xAI’s Rate limits page, checked November 2, 2026.
What counts is money xAI has received, through prepaid credit purchases or invoices that were fulfilled. Buying credits moves you up before you’ve used any of them. Above Tier 4 sits Enterprise, which is available on request.
These tiers cover text, embedding and voice models, and limits differ a lot from model to model. The multi-agent model tops out at 56 RPS at Tier 4, against 500 for grok-4.7, so check the exact model you use.
How do you ask for more?
If you want higher limits without spending more, submit a request in the xAI Console. That route also covers limits beyond Tier 4.
Enterprise capacity goes through sales, at sales@x.ai. So do Imagine API limits, which sit outside the tiers altogether.
Why are you getting 429s at low volume?
Look at the per-second limit first. xAI works out RPS from your per-minute budget as RPM divided by 48, with a minimum of 2. You can’t spend a full minute of requests in a single second, so a burst gets a 429 even when your minute looks fine.
Tokens are the other thing to check. Prompt, completion and reasoning tokens all count toward TPM, and so do cached prompt tokens. On xAI caching saves money but doesn’t buy you throughput, which is different from how Anthropic handles it.
Use exponential backoff on 429s. To see how xAI sits next to other vendors, check our AI API rate limits page.
Questions
Do xAI tiers ever go down?
No. xAI says once you qualify for a tier you stay there permanently.
What counts as spend for xAI tiers?
Revenue received through prepaid credit purchases or successfully fulfilled invoices, counted since January 1, 2026.
Do cached tokens count toward xAI TPM?
Yes. Cached prompt tokens are billed at a lower rate but still count toward TPM.
Where ernd fits
The ernd card is a credit card for US companies, with its own partners in the AI stack. ernd isn't affiliated with any of the vendors on this page. Request your card .
Read next
- OpenAI API pricing OpenAI API pricing is what OpenAI charges per million input, cached input and output tokens, set by model and processing mode.
- Anthropic API pricing Anthropic API pricing is what Anthropic charges per million input, cache and output tokens for each Claude model.
- AI API cost calculator Example monthly costs for an OpenAI or Anthropic model at list prices.
- Cut LLM API costs Cutting LLM API costs means paying for fewer or cheaper tokens on the OpenAI and Anthropic APIs, mostly through model choice, caching, batching and spend limits.
- API billing basics API billing is how OpenAI and Anthropic charge for API usage, through prepaid credits, card payments or monthly invoices, depending on the account.
- Track AI API spend Tracking AI API spend means recording what each OpenAI and Anthropic project costs, from the usage dashboards and cost APIs through to the receipts your finance team files.
- The ernd blog Notes on billing and pricing for teams paying OpenAI and Anthropic.
Sources
Checked . Providers change prices and terms, so the linked page is the final word.
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