3 ms·

Why is Grok so popular

coder543 1y ago
I think it has been free in some editor plugins, which is probably a significant factor. I would rather use a model that is good than a model that is free, but different people have different priorities.
- YetAnotherNick 1y ago
  Non free has double usage than free. Free one uses your data for training.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  I mean, I can kinda roll through a lot of iterations with this model without worrying about any AI limits. Y'know with all these latest models, the lines are kinda blurry actually. The definition of "good" is being foggy. So it might as well be free as the definition of money is clear as crystal. I also used it for some time to test on something really really niche like building telegram bot in cloudflare workers and grok-4-fast was kinda decent on that for the most part actually. So that's nice.
davey48016 1y ago
I think it's very cheap right now.
keeeba 1y ago
It came from nowhere to 1T tokens per week, seems… suspect.
riku_iki 1y ago
I think it is included for free into some coding product
BoredPositron 1y ago
They had a lot of free promos with coding apps. It's okay and cheap so I bet some sticked with it.
NitpickLawyer 1y ago
It's pretty good and fast af. At backend stuff is ~ gpt5-mini in capabilities, writes ok code, and works good with agentic extensions like roo/kilo. My colleagues said it handles frontend creation so-so, but it's so fast that you can "roll" a couple of tries and choose the one you want. Also cheap enough to not really matter.
- SR2Z 1y ago
  Yeah, the speed and price are why I use it. I find that any LLM is garbage at writing code unless it gets constant high-entropy feedback (e.g. an MCP tool reporting lint errors, a test, etc.) and the quality of the final code depends a lot more on how well the LLM was guided than the quality of the model. A bad model with good automated tooling and prompts will beat a good model without them, and if your goal is to build good tooling and prompts you need a tighter iteration loop.
  - nwienert 1y ago
    This is so far off my experience. Grok 4 fast is straight trash, it literally isn’t even close to decent code for what I tried. Meanwhile Sonnet is miles better - but even still, Opus while I guess technically being only slightly better, in practice is so much better that I find it hard to use Sonnet at all.
    - SR2Z 1y ago
      Not Grok 4, the code variant of Grok. I think it's different - I agree with you Grok 4 kind of sucks.
      - nwienert 1y ago
        I meant to say code actually my bad, I found it significantly worse.
minimaxir 1y ago
Grok Code Fast 1 usage is driven almost entirely by Kilo Code and Cline: https://openrouter.ai/x-ai/grok-code-fast-1/apps https://openrouter.ai/x-ai/grok-code-fast-1/apps Both apps have offered usage for free for a limited time: https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/grok-code-fast-get-this-frontier-ai-model-free https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/grok-code-fast-get-this-frontier-... https://cline.bot/blog/grok-code-fast https://cline.bot/blog/grok-code-fast
- ewoodrich 1y ago
  Yep Kilo (and Cline/Roo more recently) push these free trial of the week models really hard, partially as incentive to register an account with their cloud offering. I began using Cline and Roo before "cloud" features were even a thing and still haven't bothered to register, but I do play with the free Kilo models when I see them since I'm already signed in (they got me with some kind of register and spend $5 to get $X model credits deal) and hey, it's free (I really don't care about my random personal projects being used for training). If xAI in particular is in the mood to light cash on fire promoting their new model, you'll see it everywhere during the promo period, so not surprised that heavily boosts xAI stats. The mystery codename models of the week are a bit easier to miss.
Simon321 1y ago
it was free

I think it has been free in some editor plugins, which is probably a significant factor. I would rather use a model that is good than a model that is free, but different people have different priorities.

YetAnotherNick 1y ago
Non free has double usage than free. Free one uses your data for training.
Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
I mean, I can kinda roll through a lot of iterations with this model without worrying about any AI limits. Y'know with all these latest models, the lines are kinda blurry actually. The definition of "good" is being foggy. So it might as well be free as the definition of money is clear as crystal. I also used it for some time to test on something really really niche like building telegram bot in cloudflare workers and grok-4-fast was kinda decent on that for the most part actually. So that's nice.

davey48016 1y ago

I think it's very cheap right now.

keeeba 1y ago

It came from nowhere to 1T tokens per week, seems… suspect.

riku_iki 1y ago

I think it is included for free into some coding product

BoredPositron 1y ago

They had a lot of free promos with coding apps. It's okay and cheap so I bet some sticked with it.

NitpickLawyer 1y ago

It's pretty good and fast af. At backend stuff is ~ gpt5-mini in capabilities, writes ok code, and works good with agentic extensions like roo/kilo. My colleagues said it handles frontend creation so-so, but it's so fast that you can "roll" a couple of tries and choose the one you want. Also cheap enough to not really matter.

SR2Z 1y ago
Yeah, the speed and price are why I use it. I find that any LLM is garbage at writing code unless it gets constant high-entropy feedback (e.g. an MCP tool reporting lint errors, a test, etc.) and the quality of the final code depends a lot more on how well the LLM was guided than the quality of the model. A bad model with good automated tooling and prompts will beat a good model without them, and if your goal is to build good tooling and prompts you need a tighter iteration loop.
- nwienert 1y ago
  This is so far off my experience. Grok 4 fast is straight trash, it literally isn’t even close to decent code for what I tried. Meanwhile Sonnet is miles better - but even still, Opus while I guess technically being only slightly better, in practice is so much better that I find it hard to use Sonnet at all.
  - SR2Z 1y ago
    Not Grok 4, the code variant of Grok. I think it's different - I agree with you Grok 4 kind of sucks.
    - nwienert 1y ago
      I meant to say code actually my bad, I found it significantly worse.

minimaxir 1y ago

Grok Code Fast 1 usage is driven almost entirely by Kilo Code and Cline: https://openrouter.ai/x-ai/grok-code-fast-1/apps https://openrouter.ai/x-ai/grok-code-fast-1/apps Both apps have offered usage for free for a limited time: https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/grok-code-fast-get-this-frontier-ai-model-free https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/grok-code-fast-get-this-frontier-... https://cline.bot/blog/grok-code-fast https://cline.bot/blog/grok-code-fast

ewoodrich 1y ago
Yep Kilo (and Cline/Roo more recently) push these free trial of the week models really hard, partially as incentive to register an account with their cloud offering. I began using Cline and Roo before "cloud" features were even a thing and still haven't bothered to register, but I do play with the free Kilo models when I see them since I'm already signed in (they got me with some kind of register and spend $5 to get $X model credits deal) and hey, it's free (I really don't care about my random personal projects being used for training). If xAI in particular is in the mood to light cash on fire promoting their new model, you'll see it everywhere during the promo period, so not surprised that heavily boosts xAI stats. The mystery codename models of the week are a bit easier to miss.

Simon321 1y ago

it was free