xAI · 2026-05-07 · major
xAI Ships Grok Imagine Quality Mode to the API — Photorealistic Image Generation Starting at $0.01/Image
xAI's high-realism image model — the same engine behind 300M+ Grok generations — is now an API. Starts at $0.01/image, scales to $0.07 for 2K, and ranks top-five on the LMArena Text-to-Image Arena.
Grok's photorealistic image model — the engine behind 300M+ Grok generations — is now an API for any developer.
Key specs
| Min price | $0.01 / image |
|---|---|
| 2 k price | $0.07 / image |
| Total grok image gens to date | 300M+ |
| Lmarena t2 i rank | Top 5 |
What is it?
xAI exposed Grok Imagine's Quality Mode through the public Imagine API. It is a text-to-image and image-edit model focused on photorealism, multilingual text rendering, scene understanding, and consistent brand output rather than stylized art.
How does it work?
Quality Mode is the higher-fidelity tier of Grok Imagine, the same model already serving the Grok consumer app. Endpoints accept text prompts or reference images and return PNGs at standard or 2K resolution, with tighter prompt-following than the Fast mode that launched the API earlier this year.
Why does it matter?
Up to now Grok Imagine only ran inside Grok's own apps. Putting it behind a stable API at $0.01–$0.07 per image gives developers a third serious image-gen choice next to OpenAI and Google, with pricing aimed at marketing pipelines and product-render workloads.
Who is it for?
Marketing teams, e-commerce product-render pipelines, and developers building UGC tools
Try it
POST https://api.x.ai/v1/images with model: grok-imagine-quality