Grok Bot went into public beta on 11 August 2026, and within an hour I hit the two things nobody puts in the launch hype: a $200 price tag and a waitlist. So I spent the days after launch chasing Grok Bot free — every real route to running it, or its open-source twin, without paying — and tested each one on actual work. The good news: genuinely free ways in exist. The honest news: every route has a catch, and one burned through my tokens in about 20 minutes. Here is exactly what works.
📺 Watch: OpenMausBot DESTROYS Grok Bot?
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What Grok Bot Actually Is
A thirty-second grounding in case you missed the launch. Grok Bot is xAI's team of AI agents — not one chatbot, a team. Each agent gets its own cloud computer, logs into your apps, and works through multi-step jobs on its own. Close your laptop and the agents keep going, then come back when the work is done or when they need approval for something risky. It runs on Mac, Windows, Linux and iPhone, with Android on the way, and it was built with Cursor — the two products are tied together at launch.
It is the most mainstream version yet of the agent-team way of working I run through my own Agent OS. Which is exactly why the price stings.
The $200 Problem (And the Waitlist)
Grok Bot costs $200, and I will say it plainly: I think that is a bit expensive for something still in public beta. Bigger companies do not even get to pay it straight away — there is a waitlist in front of them.
That is why the free question matters. You should not need $200 to find out whether an agent team fits how you work.
How To Use Grok Bot Free: The Three Routes That Work
Every working path I found falls into one of three buckets:
- The official free trial, through subscriptions you may already have
- OpenMausBot, a free open-source version of the whole idea
- Hermes, a free agent that is not Grok Bot at all — but might be what you actually want
I ran all three through the same real tasks I use for every review — my usual Goldie Bench habit — so the comparisons below come from identical jobs, not vibes.
Free Route 1: The Official Trial
This one surprised me. I got the Grok Bot free trial simply by being an X (Twitter) subscriber — no separate signup. Access also starts with the top Grok and Cursor subscription tiers, so if you already pay for either, check your account before you spend a penny. You may already have a way in.
Now the catch, because there is a big one. Even as a subscriber on the free trial, I ran out of tokens within about 20 minutes of normal use. Not stress-testing — a couple of agents, a couple of real tasks, and the meter hit zero before I had finished my first proper job. Your mileage will vary, but that was my experience.
My verdict on Route 1: brilliant for a taste of the real thing, useless for real work. Feel what a polished agent team is like — just do not plan your week around it.
If you want the agent-team setup without the meter, the AI Profit Boardroom breaks down free stacks like this the day they drop. → Get the free-stack playbooks
📺 Watch: Grok Bot DESTROYS Hermes Agent?
Free Route 2: OpenMausBot — The Open-Source Grok Bot
This is the route I actually use. The day after Grok Bot's beta went live, a builder named Milind Soni shipped OpenMausBot (also written Open MouseBot) — a free, open-source version of the whole Grok Bot idea. Free forever, because it is open source. No trial to run out, no meter.
The clever part is the model setup. OpenMausBot does not sell you compute — it drives the AI subscriptions you already pay for. Use Claude and it works through Claude Code. Codex works. Grok's own tool works. These are CLI logins, not API keys, and there are no new accounts to create. If you already pay for one serious AI tool, you own the engine; OpenMausBot wraps it in the Grok Bot shape.
And it really is the same shape. You get the Telegram-style sidebar where every contact is a working AI agent with its own job, memory, connected apps and computer — a cloud desktop with live preview, or your own Mac. You get an approval card before any risky action, and a one-click app marketplace built on Composio with 500+ apps — Gmail, Slack, Notion, Linear. Plus two things Grok Bot does not have: a per-bot model picker (Fable 5, Opus 5, Sonnet 5, Haiku, Codex, Grok 4.5) and a local-first design — a small server on your Mac, with conversations, keys and logs in a folder you own. The models are still cloud models, but the setup lives with you.
One moment from testing sold me: it picked up my preloaded Claude skills automatically, and my keyword-research skill pulled live Google Search Console data with zero API setup.
I have kept this tight because the full walkthrough lives in my complete OpenMausBot guide and the feature-by-feature scoring is in my OpenMausBot vs Grok Bot comparison. The point here is simple: if you want to use Grok Bot for free in a way you can build on, this is it.
How To Get OpenMausBot
- Download it from GitHub — a simple Mac app, drag it into Applications, server built in. Mac is live now; Windows and Linux/Ubuntu are coming.
- Have at least one AI tool installed and logged in — Claude Code, Codex, or Grok's tool. Whatever you have auto-appears in the model picker.
- Sort the CLI logins — the one genuinely fiddly step. I had Claude Desktop talk me through configuring them.
- Open the app, pick a model for your first bot, and give it a real job.
What You Give Up vs Paid Grok Bot
I promised honesty, so here it is. OpenMausBot is not as smooth as Grok Bot. There are open-source rough edges: formatting gets messy in places, the approval cards get repetitive on longer jobs, and agent-to-agent tagging — one bot pulling another into the conversation — did not work in my test, while Grok Bot has it working. Grok Bot is unmistakably the polished one. It is also the waitlisted, priced and metered one. That is the whole trade.
And one honest note that cuts both ways: computer use is slow everywhere right now. In my testing, Grok Bot itself got stuck just typing hello into Google. Agents driving browsers are still more demo than workhorse in August 2026, and on both platforms the app integrations are far more useful today. Judge these tools on the integrations, not the screen recordings.
📺 Watch: FREE Grok 4.5 Course: Automate ANYTHING!
The Third Path: A Free Agent That Is Not Grok Bot
One more option deserves a paragraph, because for plenty of people it is the real answer. If what you actually want is a free agent — not specifically the Grok Bot app — Hermes is free and open source, and if you subscribe to X you can even run Grok 4.5 inside Hermes via OAuth for free. It is a different, more technical shape, but you own the entire thing. I have written up how to use Hermes for free, my Grok Bot vs Hermes breakdown covers when each approach wins, and Grok vs Hermes compares things at the model level.
Grok Bot Free: Every Route Compared
| Route | Cost | What you get | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official free trial | Free with an X subscription | The real Grok Bot, fully polished | Metered — my tokens lasted about 20 minutes |
| Top Grok or Cursor tiers | Included if you already pay | Grok Bot access bundled in | Only free if you were paying anyway; still metered |
| OpenMausBot | Free forever (open source) | The whole Grok Bot shape on your existing AI subscriptions, plus a model picker | Rough edges, repetitive approvals, no agent-to-agent tagging yet, Mac first |
| Hermes | Free and open source; free Grok 4.5 via X OAuth | A full agent you completely own | More technical, and not the Grok Bot app experience |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Grok Bot free?
No. Grok Bot is $200, with a waitlist for bigger companies on top. But there is a genuine free trial if you subscribe to X, access starts with the top Grok and Cursor tiers, and OpenMausBot is a free, open-source version of the same idea with no meter at all.
How long does the free trial last?
It depends how hard you push it. In my case, normal use burned through the trial tokens in about 20 minutes. Lighter use will stretch further, but treat it as a test drive, not a free tier you can work from daily.
Is OpenMausBot really the same thing as Grok Bot?
Same idea, same shape, different finish. You get the agent contacts, cloud computers, approvals and app marketplace, plus a per-bot model picker Grok Bot does not offer. You lose the polish and, at least in my test, agent-to-agent tagging. For most solo operators, that trade heavily favours free.
Do I need API keys?
Not for OpenMausBot — it uses CLI logins on the AI subscriptions you already have, so there are no keys to generate and no new accounts. If you go the Hermes route and want that side free too, I have covered the free API options for Hermes separately.
What is the best free option overall?
For a taste: the X-subscriber trial. To actually build: OpenMausBot on your existing subscriptions. For maximum ownership: Hermes — and my guide to the best free AI model for Hermes will save you testing time.
My Verdict
After running all three routes through the same real jobs, here is where I land. Use the X-subscriber trial for a taste of the polished product — and expect the meter. Use OpenMausBot as the free version you can genuinely build on: it is the closest thing to Grok Bot free that exists right now, and Milind Soni shipping it one day after the beta is my favourite open-source moment of the year. And if ownership matters more than the app itself, go Hermes. The $200 question mostly answers itself once you realise the idea is no longer locked behind the price.
If you want an agent team working for you without the $200 price tag, check out the AI Profit Boardroom — inside you get the Agent OS, four weekly coaching calls, daily tutorials, personal video answers from me, and 3,700+ business owners building with the same free stacks. → Build your free agent stack this week
