Making short video for X just got much cheaper for anyone willing to work through an API. xAI has added a Lite tier to its Grok Imagine video models, and the headline number is hard to miss: two cents for every second of finished video at the lowest resolution. For creators who test several versions of a clip before posting one, that pricing changes the math of experimenting.
The model, listed in xAI's developer documentation as grok-imagine-video-1.5-lite and announced by the @imagine account on X on October 8, 2026, handles both text-to-video and image-to-video generation. It produces clips from one to fifteen seconds long, generates audio in the same pass, and supports lip-synced speech. Through hosting partner fal.ai it offers seven aspect ratios, including the 9:16 vertical format that dominates short-form feeds, which makes it a natural fit for video posts on X.
Price depends on resolution. Lite costs 0.02 dollars per second at 480p, 0.03 dollars at 720p and 0.14 dollars at 1080p, with each input image adding one cent to an image-to-video job. A five-second clip therefore costs ten cents at 480p, fifteen cents at 720p or seventy cents at 1080p before any input image. One detail is worth knowing: at the Lite tier, the 1080p output is upscaled from a 720p source rather than rendered natively at that resolution, according to xAI's video documentation.
The full Grok Imagine Video 1.5 model sits one rung higher on the same ladder, at 0.08 dollars per second at 480p, 0.14 dollars at 720p and 0.25 dollars at 1080p. That makes Lite's top rate the same as the flagship's mid rate, and every Lite tier cheaper than the matching full-model tier. Against rivals, Lite's 720p rate also undercuts Kuaishou's Kling 3.0 Turbo with audio, which its developer pricing page lists at roughly 0.11 dollars per second at that resolution.
Lite is not exclusive to xAI's own API. The same model is available through fal.ai, through Runway's developer marketplace, where it arrived on October 1, and it was listed by Venice on September 30. Billing is per second of output, separate from any X Premium or X Subscription plan, so every test clip is a small line item rather than part of a subscription allowance.
For X creators, the practical use is drafting. A product teaser, a quick explainer or a batch of variations on one idea can be generated at 480p for a few cents each, the best take can be re-rendered at a higher resolution, and only the finalists need to cost real money. The sensible workflow is to explore cheaply, keep the input-image fee in mind when animating stills, and save the flagship model for the clips that will actually carry a post.