# Grok Business, the API, or a custom agent system

A practical way to choose a runtime before you buy a year of seats.

Grok Business is the team product: about $30 per seat, centralized billing, and a default that your data is not used for training. It is the right door when people need a strong assistant inside a governed workspace.

The xAI API is a different product. As of August 2026, Grok 4.6 bills $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens under 200,000 prompt tokens, with cached input at $0.50. Cross that prompt line and the whole request doubles. Server-side tools such as web search bill on top. The API is the right door when you are embedding a model inside software you control.

A Grok bot — usually reached through Cursor or a heavy individual plan — is the third door. It is the right shape when the work is “do this job across several apps,” not “answer this box.”

Helixfield’s Field Survey picks the door from the loop, not from the demo. Many companies end up mixed: Business seats for staff, a bot for one operational loop, and a small API bill for a customer-facing or internal tool. Buying all three on day one is how budgets disappear.