Recursive: Flint (free) vs xAI Grok 4.3: Live Promos, Pricing, Hidden Fees & Latency
Recursive: Flint (free) (recursive/flint-v1.0:free) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for Recursive: Flint (free): Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to 0/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
xAI Grok 4.3 (x-ai/grok-4.3) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for xAI Grok 4.3: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 84% (down to 0.2/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
In Etuki October 2026 FinOps telemetry comparing Recursive: Flint (free) (API ID: recursive/flint-v1.0:free) vs xAI Grok 4.3 (API ID: x-ai/grok-4.3), Recursive: Flint (free) offers lower standard input pricing at $0/1M tokens ($0/1M output), while Recursive: Flint (free) leads in cached prefix economics at $0/1M tokens (50% discount). xAI Grok 4.3 achieves a 155ms faster P90 time-to-first-token latency (125ms vs 280ms).
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
⚠️ Long-Context Repricing: Standard $1.25/$2.50 (Cache $0.20) applies to short context; long-context prompts bill at $2.50 input / $5.00 output (Cache $0.40) for the full request.
| Specification / FinOps Dimension | Recursive: Flint (free) | xAI Grok 4.3 | Verified Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official Vendor API ID | recursive/flint-v1.0:free | x-ai/grok-4.3 | Pinned Snapshot IDs |
| Standard Input / Output (per 1M) | $0 / $0 | $1.25 / $2.5 | Recursive: Flint (free) |
| Cache Read Price (per 1M) | $0/1M (50% Off) | $0.2/1M (84% Off) | Recursive: Flint (free) |
| Context Window / Max Output | 256K In / 230K Out | 1000K In / 128K Out | Recursive: Flint (free) |
| P90 First-Token / Edge Latency | 280ms | 125ms | xAI Grok 4.3 (-155ms) |
Flint is an open-weight mixture-of-experts model from Recursive, with about 2.5B active parameters out of 40B total, built by Recursive's autoresearch system Eureka Machine for cod
xAI Grok 4.3 high-speed reasoning model: $1.25/$2.50 (Cache $0.20/1M) short context; jumps to $2.50/$5.00 (Cache $0.40/1M) on long context.
Real-Time Stack Cost & Hidden-Fee Simulator (MAU / Token / Egress / GMV)
Calibrated with Reddit r/FinOps & r/devops telemetry: Includes Context Caching, Bandwidth Egress, and MoR Tax
✖️Switch from Recursive: Flint (free) to xAI Grok 4.3
xAI Grok 4.3 high-speed reasoning model: $1.25/$2.50 (Cache $0.20/1M) short context; jumps to $2.50/$5.00 (Cache $0.40/1M) on long context. Verified P90 latency of 125ms.