Third-Party Models in Cursor Removed From Subscription and Now Billed Per Request
On October 12, 2026, SpaceXAI announced on X that it is combining Grok, Cursor, and X Premium into a single subscription: "We have unified the plans across Grok, Cursor, and X Premium. We are introducing The X Subscription" (Yahoo Finance/24/7 Wall St.). The package has five tiers — Free, Plus, Premium, Super, and Ultra — with the top Ultra tier costing $200 per month. But the pricing mechanics conceal a significant change: use of third-party models in the Cursor code editor is no longer included in the subscription, and a first-person account suggests the usage quota refreshes weekly, not monthly.
What The X Subscription Is
The subscription combines the company's products — Grok, Grok Bot, the Cursor code editor, and X Premium — into a single plan structure. According to Mashable, it consists of five tiers (Mashable):
- Free — $0. Limited chat and agent requests in Grok and Cursor, plus limited X functionality.
- Plus — $8 per month. Unlocks Grok Chat, Voice, Imagine, and Build, as well as access to the Grok API.
- Premium — $30.
- Super — $100.
- Ultra — $200 per month.
According to Mashable, the paid tiers above Plus come with usage multipliers of 4x, 15x, and 50x Plus. Here, however, the sources disagree: Engadget writes that Ultra provides "20 times the usage capacity of Plus," while Mashable and the Japanese writer AI Masakichi state 50x. The discrepancy is not resolved in the available source material.
The rollout took place in the days following the announcement, with secondary coverage from October 13.
The Savings Math — and the Caveat
The company claims that the benefits from SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+ previously cost a combined $90 per month, and that the new $30 Premium tier now covers them. The company also states that "each comparable new tier provides more usage-per-dollar than the plan it replaces" (24/7 Wall St.).
These are the company's own claims, not independently verified figures. And there is a significant caveat, which Mashable points out: the statement applies expressly to the company's "own models." The savings effect therefore assumes you use the Grok models — not, for example, Claude in Cursor.
Cursor's Third-Party Models: Per Request, Not Flat Rate
The most consequential change affects developers. Cursor itself stated: "To make room for more Grok usage, third-party models in Cursor move to API pricing on the new plans" (24/7 Wall St.). API pricing means paying per request, with no fixed quota.
According to Mashable, third-party model usage in Cursor is not included in the monthly subscription at all, and must be purchased separately. That means a developer who relies on Claude or other external models in Cursor cannot count on those being covered by any subscription tier.
What the actual net effect will be cannot be said from what is available: the underlying per-request rates have not been published in the source material. But the direction is clear — the package subsidizes the Grok models and shifts the cost of competing models onto the user.
One Shared Quota, Weekly Refresh — and a Contradiction in the Documentation
For the Grok products, usage works as follows: the paid tiers share one combined usage quota across Cursor, Grok Build, and other Grok products (24/7 Wall St.).
Tech writer AI Masakichi, who reviewed the pricing page on their own account on note.com, describes the mechanics this way: usage is "shared between Grok and Cursor in a single quota," the quota "refreshes every week," and once it is used up, you must either buy more or wait for the refresh (note.com).
Here a conflict arises worth noting: the pricing page's explanatory documentation as shown to Masakichi as of October 13 still stated that usage resets monthly. Whether the actual refresh frequency is weekly or monthly therefore cannot be definitively established from the sources — but the first-person account and the pricing page's own text point in opposite directions. For users considering switching, this is a concrete point to check: a weekly quota shared between chat and coding agent is a far tighter frame than a monthly one.
What Happens to Current Subscribers?
Nothing, according to the company. Current subscribers do not need to switch: "Nothing changes for existing SuperGrok, Cursor, or X Premium subscribers," the company states (24/7 Wall St.). Those who choose to move to one of the new tiers receive a prorated refund on the old plan.
What Was Not Disclosed
The announcement contained neither subscriber counts, expected revenue, nor usage limits for the cheapest paid tier, according to 24/7 Wall St. In other words, there are no stated figures for how many requests or tokens each tier actually allows — only the relative multipliers.
The stock market met the news with a shrug: the SPCX share closed on October 12 at $163.42, with a small move after hours. The analysts at 24/7 Wall St. interpret this as investors seeing the package as a pricing change without an announced revenue upside.
Context: From SpaceXAI to One Unified Platform
The background is the company's effort to tie together the Grok chatbot, the Cursor code editor (acquired in 2026 — sources disagree on whether this happened in June or August), and the paid X Premium program. According to Engadget, the company is now named SpaceXSI, after Elon Musk announced he would change the name from SpaceXAI, in line with President Donald Trump's wish to use the term "superintelligence" instead of artificial intelligence (Engadget via MSN). Naming still varies between sources, and the exact current name cannot be confirmed from the available material.
What to Check Before Switching
For an ordinary X or Grok user, the math is probably straightforward: if you already subscribe to several of the services, the Premium tier combines — according to the company — what previously cost $90, for $30. For heavy Grok users, Super and Ultra are the options.
For developers, the picture is more complicated. Three things should be clarified before switching:
- The refresh frequency — weekly or monthly? The pricing page's documentation and first-person accounts conflict.
- The Ultra multiplier — 20x or 50x Plus? The sources disagree.
- The cost of third-party models — the per-request rates are unknown, and without them it is impossible to calculate whether the Cursor workflow becomes more or less expensive.
The next test comes on November 3, 2026, when the company's Q3 report is expected. It will show whether the package is actually driving upgrades — and thus whether the pricing mechanics that favor the company's own models also pay off commercially.