Which is cheaper, Grok 4 Fast or MAI-Thinking-1?
As of August 30, 2026, Grok 4 Fast is 7% cheaper on blended LLM API pricing. Grok 4 Fast costs $0.20 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens ($0.70 blended 1M-in + 1M-out). MAI-Thinking-1 costs $0.15 / $0.60 per million tokens ($0.75 blended). Sources: https://docs.x.ai/docs/models and https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/details/azure-openai-service/. The cheapest LLM for your app still depends on how many output tokens you generate.
How much does Grok 4 Fast vs MAI-Thinking-1 cost per million tokens?
Grok 4 Fast xAI API pricing is $0.20 input and $0.50 output per million tokens via xAI. MAI-Thinking-1 Microsoft API pricing is $0.15 input and $0.60 output per million tokens via Microsoft. Use those four numbers, not ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription prices, when you are comparing APIs.
Which is better for coding, Grok 4 Fast or MAI-Thinking-1?
MAI-Thinking-1 has a published SWE-bench Verified score of 73.5%. Grok 4 Fast does not have that eval on this page yet.
What is the context window for Grok 4 Fast vs MAI-Thinking-1?
Grok 4 Fast supports a 2M token context window, while MAI-Thinking-1 supports 128K tokens. Grok 4 Fast offers a larger context window. Filling a larger window bills more input tokens, so the cheaper-per-million model can still cost more on long documents.
Which model performs better on benchmarks, Grok 4 Fast or MAI-Thinking-1?
Grok 4 Fast and MAI-Thinking-1 are tied across 2 shared benchmarks. Check the table for category-level strengths. Check the comparison table for GPQA Diamond, SWE-bench, MMLU, HLE, and the other evals we track. Token price and benchmark score together are the usual LLM comparison, not either number alone.
Is Grok 4 Fast or MAI-Thinking-1 better for production use?
Both Grok 4 Fast and MAI-Thinking-1 are production API models. For cost-sensitive production traffic, Grok 4 Fast has better economics on the blended 1M-in + 1M-out scale. For maximum capability, weight the benchmark table for your domain. Many production stacks route cheap models for drafts and a frontier model for the hard turn, which is usually cheaper than sending everything to the expensive API.
Can I switch between Grok 4 Fast and MAI-Thinking-1 in my app?
Yes. Call Grok 4 Fast through xAI and MAI-Thinking-1 through Microsoft with separate API keys, or through a gateway that already wraps both. Keep prompts in tokens, not characters, when you estimate the invoice. AnotherWrapper templates can swap providers without rewriting auth and billing.
How accurate is this Grok 4 Fast vs MAI-Thinking-1 pricing data?
List rates are the latest published xAI API pricing and Microsoft API pricing, quoted per million tokens. Official rate sheets: https://docs.x.ai/docs/models and https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/details/azure-openai-service/. Prompt caching, batch APIs, and committed-use discounts can change the invoice. Benchmark scores are from official publications and independent evals, updated as new numbers land.
What is the output token limit for Grok 4 Fast and MAI-Thinking-1?
Grok 4 Fast supports up to 30K output tokens per request, while MAI-Thinking-1 supports up to an unspecified number of output tokens. Output tokens are usually the expensive half of API pricing, so a higher max output cap is a capability, not a discount.
Which model has better throughput, Grok 4 Fast or MAI-Thinking-1?
Grok 4 Fast has a measured throughput of approximately 90 tokens/second. Throughput data for MAI-Thinking-1 is not yet available. Throughput (tokens per second) and time-to-first-token are why two models with the same per-million-token price can still feel different in chat and agents.
How do I switch the models in this Grok 4 Fast vs MAI-Thinking-1 comparison?
Use the model pickers at the top of this LLM comparison. Search any model in the index and the URL updates. Open Grok 4 Fast or MAI-Thinking-1 from the sidebar for the single-model API pricing page, or go back to the LLM pricing table to sort by cheapest blended cost.
