Week 42

One bundle replaces three bills. Fast Opus opens up.

October 12-18, 2026 UTC. xAI folds Grok, Cursor and X Premium into one subscription, Gemini 4 Argon launches at an introductory API price, and Claude Opus 5.5 Fast mode is open to every API account.

One plan restructureOfficial sourcesReviewed October 20

What changed for your wallet

01
One $30 plan covers what cost $90. The X Subscription Premium tier bundles the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro and X Premium+ for $30/month. xAI puts the old combined price at $90/month: a $60 monthly difference if you paid for all three.
02
Argon is half price until November 30. Gemini 4 Argon costs $2 input / $10 output per million tokens through November 30, then $4 / $20 from December 1. Budget for the doubled rate before you build on it.
03
Fast Opus doubles the token price. Claude Opus 5.5 Fast mode no longer needs an access request. It costs $8 input / $40 output per million tokens, twice the standard $4 / $20.

Price Summary

Tool	What Changed	Was	Now	Impact	Who It Affects
Grok / Cursor	The X Subscription launched October 12 for new customers	SuperGrok + Cursor Pro + X Premium+: $90/month combined (xAI figure)	Premium $30/month; also Free, Plus $8, Super $100, Ultra $200	Bundle saving	New subscribers and anyone paying for two or more of the old plans
Gemini 4 Argon	New API model, generally available October 13	No Argon rate card	$2 / $10 per M tokens to Nov 30; $4 / $20 from Dec 1	New rate card	Paid Gemini API users; no free API tier
Claude Opus 5.5	Fast mode left research preview October 15	Access by request only	$8 / $40 per M tokens (standard $4 / $20)	2x per token	Direct Claude API users who turn Fast mode on

All amounts are USD. One new bundle, one new model rate card and one premium speed option: none of them raises an existing plan's list price. Each row links to its full story below.

Past briefings: Week 41 · Briefing archive

The X Subscription: Grok, Cursor and X in one plan

On October 12, xAI launched The X Subscription, one plan that covers Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor and X Premium. It is available to new customers from that day. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor and X Premium subscribers can keep their current plan, price and features, or switch from their billing settings with a prorated refund for the old plan.

The new tiers are Free $0, Plus $8, Premium $30, Super $100 and Ultra $200 per month. Paid tiers share one pool of Grok model usage across the Grok apps, the Grok tab on X and Cursor. Super includes 15x and Ultra 50x the Plus allowance; Premium includes 4x. Third-party models in Cursor stay available on Premium and above, but that usage is billed separately at API list prices through top-ups.

The headline math: xAI says Premium includes the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro and X Premium+, previously $90/month combined. Paying $30 instead is $60 less per month, $720 less per year, if you really used all three. If you only used Cursor Pro at its legacy $20/month, Premium costs $10 more and adds Grok and X benefits you may not need. Plus at $8 is the entry paid tier; xAI does not publish its allowance as a Cursor Pro equivalent.

Teams get Premium, Super and Ultra at the same per-seat prices as individual plans. Older Cursor Teams Standard listed $40 per seat, so a 10-seat team on Premium pays $300 instead of $400 a month. Compare the included usage before switching, not only the seat price.

Who This Affects

Anyone paying for more than one of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro and X Premium+, and Cursor teams. Solo Cursor Pro users should compare their actual coding usage first. See Cursor plans and Grok plans.

Official October 12 xAI announcement and Cursor pricing. Sources retained October 20, 2026.

Gemini 4 Argon: an introductory price with an end date

Google made Gemini 4 Argon generally available on October 13. Standard paid-tier pricing is $2 input and $10 output per million tokens through November 30, 2026, rising to $4 input and $20 output from December 1. Output includes thinking tokens. Context caching is $0.10 per million, then $0.20. Batch and Flex cost half: $1 / $5, then $2 / $10.

Argon has no free API tier and only implicit caching; explicit cache storage is not supported. Search and Maps grounding each include 5,000 free monthly requests shared across Gemini 3 and newer models, then cost $14 per 1,000 (Search requests, Maps search queries).

Budget at the December rate. A workload with 10M input and 2M output tokens a month costs $20 + $20 = $40 now and $80 from December 1, before grounding and caching. A cost test run in October will look half as expensive as production in December.

Who This Affects

Developers testing Argon on the paid Gemini API. Include the December 1 price in any cost comparison. See Gemini API rates.

Official October 13 Gemini API release notes and Gemini API pricing. Sources retained October 20, 2026.

Opus 5.5 Fast mode: no waitlist, double the rate

On October 15, Anthropic moved Fast mode for Claude Opus 5.5 out of research preview. You no longer need to request access or send the beta header, and Opus 5.5 now has a default Fast mode rate limit in the Start, Build and Scale usage tiers. Fast mode for Opus 5 and Opus 4.8 stays in research preview at $10 / $50.

Fast mode for Opus 5.5 costs $8 input and $40 output per million tokens. Standard Opus 5.5 is $4 / $20, so the same tokens cost twice as much for faster output. Caching and data residency multipliers apply on top, and Fast mode is not available with the Batch API.

Example: 1M input plus 1M output tokens cost $24 at standard speed and $48 in Fast mode, a $24 premium. Use it where waiting costs more than tokens, not as a default.

Who This Affects

Direct Claude API users on Opus 5.5 who switch on Fast mode. Set it per request where speed matters and keep standard speed elsewhere. See Claude API rates.

Official October 15 release notes and Claude Platform pricing. Sources retained October 20, 2026.

Switch Watch

Three actions tied to actual billing.

Opportunity

Merge three bills into $30

If you pay for SuperGrok, Cursor Pro and X Premium+, Premium at $30/month replaces up to $90/month. Check the switch offer in your billing settings first.

Warning

Budget Argon at $4 / $20

The $2 / $10 price ends November 30. A 10M input, 2M output month goes from $40 to $80. Plan production costs at the December rate.

Warning

Keep Fast mode targeted

Opus 5.5 Fast mode costs $48 where standard costs $24 for 1M input plus 1M output. Turn it on only for requests where speed is worth double.

Also checked this week

Taskade Free credits. Our October 20 check found that Taskade's Free plan now lists AI credits as "0 to start. Earn or buy" instead of the earlier 6,000 one-time starter credits. Taskade published no dated notice, so this is a pricing-page correction, not a dated October 12-18 change. Paid plans are unchanged. See Taskade plans.

GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast. OpenAI added Ultrafast mode for GPT-6.1 Sol on October 8, last week's window: $12 input, $0.60 cache read, $15 cache write and $60 output per million short-context tokens. Our ChatGPT page now lists these rates. See ChatGPT API rates.

Reporting window: October 12-18, 2026 UTC. All 35 tools were re-checked against official pages on October 20. Where a vendor shows only local-currency prices from our location, the last verified USD price and its date stay in place.