Grok AI: What It Is and Whether It's Worth It for Canadians

What Is Grok?

Grok is the AI assistant made by xAI — Elon Musk's AI company. It launched in late 2023, initially as an exclusive feature for X (formerly Twitter) subscribers.

The current version is Grok 3, released in February 2025. It's a capable large language model that competes with GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet in most benchmarks.

The name comes from Robert Heinlein's 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land. To "grok" something means to understand it deeply and intuitively.

How to Access Grok in Canada

You need an X Premium subscription. There is no standalone Grok subscription.

• X Premium: ~$10.83 USD/month = ~$15 CAD/month (Basic tier, includes Grok)
• X Premium+: ~$22.00 USD/month = ~$31 CAD/month (more features, higher Grok limits)
• Access at x.com/i/grok or inside the X app

Grok is also available as a standalone app at grok.com, though full access still requires X Premium or a separate Grok subscription (currently being rolled out).

What Grok Can Do — and What Makes It Unique

Most of what Grok does, ChatGPT and Claude also do. Writing, coding help, explanations, translation, brainstorming.

Where Grok is genuinely different:

• Real-time X search. Grok can search posts on X and report what people are saying right now. No other major AI assistant has this. If something just happened and you want to know what X users are saying, Grok is faster than any alternative.
• DeepSearch mode. Multi-step web research that compiles information from multiple sources into a structured answer. Comparable to Perplexity's approach.
• Big Brain mode. Extended thinking for harder problems — math, coding, logic puzzles. Uses more compute, takes longer, produces better results on complex tasks.
• Less filtered responses. Grok is less cautious than Claude or ChatGPT on many topics. It will engage with edgier questions that the others decline.

Grok vs ChatGPT vs Claude

The Honest Verdict

Grok is a genuinely capable model. It's not a gimmick. On writing tasks and coding, it performs comparably to GPT-4o.

The problem is the access model. You're paying for X Premium, which is primarily a social media subscription. The AI is a feature of that subscription, not the main product.

Who should use Grok:

• You already pay for X Premium for other reasons (blue checkmark, longer posts, etc.)
• You specifically need real-time X search — for social monitoring, trending topics, news research
• You want less-filtered AI responses

Who should not pay for X Premium just for Grok: almost everyone. ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro are better all-around AI subscriptions at a similar price, without requiring you to pay for a social media platform you might not use.