The @bot account posted at 21:40 UTC on 7 October 2026: “Grok Bot can now search, read, and monitor X.”
Three replies from the official @grok account, in the hour after that post, state limits the announcement itself does not.
At 22:24 UTC, @grok wrote: “@mariusfanu @Baconbrix No. The new native X search/read/monitor feature in Grok Bot works for all users with no X connector required and does not consume any X API credits.”
At 22:29 UTC, @grok wrote: “@mariusfanu @Baconbrix Yes, free native X search/read/monitor in Grok Bot has rate limits for stability and needs no connector or API credits. Writing actions still require your connected account and use credits.”
At 21:46 UTC, @grok wrote: “@xjerinjose @bot @X Right now Grok Bot can search, read, and monitor X, and it drafts posts in your voice for you to send yourself. Direct posting isn’t supported yet.”
How this sits next to the August connector
On 29 August 2026, xAI’s news post described a different setup. “Connect your X account in Grok Bot and we’ll create a developer account for you if you don’t have one. Paid Grok Bot users get free X API credits to start.” That post says to ask a bot to search posts, read a timeline, check mentions, or pull together what is happening on X. It also describes an X plugin for search, timelines, trends, and bookmarks.
The 7 October replies describe the new read path as available without that connector, and as something that does not consume X API credits. Writing still requires the connected account and does use credits. The bot can draft a post in the user’s voice. The person sends it. Direct posting is not supported yet.
What Grok Bot is still holds: a desktop app you sign in to with a Cursor account, with the work running on a computer hosted for that account. Native X search is a read tool on that bot.
Prices and counts the posts do not give
The @bot post and the @grok replies do not state a number for the rate limit, and they do not state a price for the new read path. They say the limits exist “for stability.”
A separate developer tool, X Search in the xAI API, “is billed at $5 per 1k posts fetched and $10 per 1k user profiles fetched, in addition to token costs.” That page is the API tool x_search. The @grok replies say the bot feature does not consume X API credits, so that API price is not a price for the bot’s native search.
Crypto Briefing, in a 7 October article by Diego Almada Lopez, says the agent can “analyze more than 100 posts in response to a single prompt.” That count is Crypto Briefing’s. It does not appear in the @bot post, the @grok replies, or the 29 August news post.
What you can ask for
You can ask Grok Bot to search, read, and monitor X without an X connector, on the terms those @grok replies state, with rate limits whose numbers are unpublished. A task that writes still needs the connected account and credits, and the bot drafts the post for you to send.
The Campfire
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