Grok Lands on Cloudflare & Vercel: Use xAI's Flagship Models Free on Both (Image & Video Shine)

1. What happened

In June 2026, Cloudflare and Vercel almost simultaneously announced that xAI's entire Grok lineup (text / image / video / code) is now available on their platforms. Beyond the "big three" (OpenAI / Anthropic / Google), that gives us another solid way to use a frontier commercial model for free — and Grok is especially strong at real-time knowledge and image / video generation.

• Cloudflare: Grok ships via AI Gateway / Workers AI, billed directly through Cloudflare, with no additional auth / env / API keys needed — calls look like env.AI.run("xai/grok-imagine-video-1.5-preview"). It costs nothing as long as you stay within Cloudflare's daily free allowance.
• Vercel: The full Grok lineup is on Vercel AI Gateway; even the free Hobby plan gets $5 of system credits every month, callable keyless via the AI SDK.

2. Two free routes — which to pick

Vercel AI Gateway

• Free allowance: $5/month system credit (including the free Hobby plan), keyless (no BYOK).
• Call it: one line via the AI SDK, model: 'xai/grok-4.3'.
• Caveat: video generation xai/grok-imagine-video needs a Pro / paid plan and is not covered by the free credit.
• Best for: you're already on Vercel and want a one-liner.

Cloudflare

• Free allowance: a daily free allowance (Neurons), billed directly by the platform.
• Call it: Workers AI binding env.AI.run("xai/...") or REST ai/run, with no extra key.
• Edge: global low latency; video is also free within the daily allowance.
• Best for: global low latency, or free Grok video.

In short: text / image are free on both — pick by your existing stack; for free Grok video, go Cloudflare.

3. The Grok family at a glance

• Grok 4.3 (text): 1M-token context, real-time access to X data, strong agentic tool calling, native image understanding.
• Grok Imagine Image / Image Pro (image): text-to-image across photorealistic-to-illustrative styles; Pro pushes detail, lighting and composition further. Image is Grok's strong suit.
• Grok Imagine (video): text-to-video / image-to-video / video editing, with motion and audio.
• Grok Build 0.1 (code): 256K context, always-on reasoning, purpose-built for agentic software engineering.

4. Quick start

Vercel (AI SDK, keyless)

import { streamText } from 'ai';
// OIDC on Vercel means no explicit key; locally use AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY
const { textStream } = streamText({
  model: 'xai/grok-4.3',
  prompt: 'Explain black holes in one sentence.',
});
for await (const chunk of textStream) process.stdout.write(chunk);

Switch to image generation with one line:

import { experimental_generateImage as generateImage } from 'ai';
const { image } = await generateImage({
  model: 'xai/grok-imagine-image',
  prompt: 'A neon cyberpunk fox, cinematic lighting, ultra-detailed',
});

Cloudflare (Workers AI binding, no extra key)

export default {
  async fetch(request, env) {
    // No extra key / env; Grok is billed directly through Cloudflare
    const res = await env.AI.run('xai/grok-4.3', {
      messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Explain black holes in one sentence.' }],
    });
    return Response.json(res);
  },
};

Generate video for free (within Cloudflare's daily allowance):

const video = await env.AI.run('xai/grok-imagine-video-1.5-preview', {
  prompt: 'A serene mountain lake at sunrise, slow camera pan',
});

5. Why it's free (plainly)

• Vercel: the platform fronts $5/month of system-level token credit, keyless; stay under the $5 equivalent for the month and it's free. Text and image are covered; video currently needs a paid plan.
• Cloudflare: Grok is billed straight to your Cloudflare account and costs nothing within the daily free allowance (Neurons) — and needs no extra API key.

Neither route needs an invite code — sign up and go. Add Grok to your free-model shortlist, especially when you need images or video.