SpaceX: Grok Bot Restricted Despite 800,000 Subscribers

Users report seeing their Grok Bot quotas reduced, and Elon Musk describes its operating costs as "unsustainable" compared to revenue. These signals come as the service claims 800,000 paying subscribers per week at the beginning of October, while other players are also tightening their subscription offerings.

800,000 Weekly Subscribers and a High-Growth Product

At the beginning of October, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell indicated that the affected services had 800,000 paying users per week, more than double that of the previous month. Elon Musk recently referred to Grok Bot as the fastest-growing product, a claim echoed less than two weeks ago.

Reduced Quotas and Costs Considered "Unsustainable"

According to the Telegraph, several users noticed that their Grok Bot quotas were halved over the weekend, suggesting increased limitations. On Sunday, Elon Musk responded to complaints on X, explaining that the costs associated with operating Grok Bot far exceeded the generated revenue, although he did not clearly confirm a reduction in quotas. One user reported waiting several days before receiving a new quota, to which Musk then asked if a subscription at a higher rate would be too expensive. The Grok Bot quota is shared with Grok and the coding platform Cursor.

The Industry is Also Tightening Its Packages

OpenAI has begun to further limit its fixed-price plans and plans to unify the quotas of Codex and Chat starting in December, while implementing restrictions on account changes. Anthropic is also tightening its limitations, stating that the cost of an agent is between four and fifteen times that of a standard chat. Grok Bot, which explores websites, processes emails, and can access accounts, offers similar features to Muse at Meta, Dot at OpenAI, and Claude Duet at Anthropic.