# SiliconFlow vs xAI API (Grok) (slim)

> xAI scores 71.7 (BB) to SiliconFlow's 42.9 (E) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/siliconflow-vs-xai-api.md (~7,250 tokens) · this version ~3,880 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/siliconflow-vs-xai-api.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/siliconflow-vs-xai-api
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

xAI API (Grok) scores 71.7 (BB) on agent readiness against SiliconFlow's 42.9 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. SiliconFlow leads on payments & pricing. Both do llm inference.

- SiliconFlow: E 42.9, rank #1266 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/siliconflow.min.md
- xAI API (Grok): BB 71.7, rank #152 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/xai-api.min.md
- SiliconFlow, good for Agents that want recent open-weight chat models, plus image, video and speech, behind one OpenAI-style key at low per-token prices, and can live without a status page or SLA. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 35 against 20.
- xAI API (Grok), good for Agents that want a capable model at a low per-token price with built-in web and X search, remote MCP and voice, and teams that need self-serve ZDR or US-only processing. Ahead on Reliability, 55 against 33; Schema & documentation, 88 against 65; Agent ergonomics, 90 against 60; Security & auth, 97 against 39; Maintenance & community, 77 against 37; Transparency & trust, 63 against 52. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; No incidents deducted, where SiliconFlow loses 3 points for them.

| Category | SiliconFlow | xAI API (Grok) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 33 | 55 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 65 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 60 | 90 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 39 | 97 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 35 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 37 | 77 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 52 | 63 |

| Fact (where they differ) | SiliconFlow | xAI API (Grok) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | SiliconFlow Labs Pte. Ltd. | SpaceXSI (xAI) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.siliconflow.com/v1` | `https://api.x.ai/v1` |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the SiliconFlow Terms of Use | Proprietary service under xAI's enterprise terms of service. The Python SDK is Apache-2.0 |
| Last release | 2026-09-14 | 2026-11-02 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-10-27 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-10-27 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 597 stars, 912k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Security & auth, xAI API (Grok) +58: SiliconFlow 39 (SiliconFlow's Terms of Use bar spiders, robots, scrapers and crawlers on the Platform, so its sites were not re-read on 5 November. Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 5 November. Model reading. Bearer keys created in the console. No scopes, expiry, per-key limits or rotation are documented, and deletion of a key was not confirmed because the console was not read (15 of 30). The terms say Interaction Data is used only to supply the service and is not used or disclosed without authorisation. No statement on model training was found (12 of 20). The terms say there is no obligation to store Interaction Data. No retention period or zero-retention option is stated, and clause 5.11 allows communications to be recorded and passed to the authorities (6 of 15). The release note of 26 March 2026 describes usage and cost breakdowns and invoice export, and the pricing FAQ says monthly spending limits can be set. No audit log was found (6 of 15). No security.txt (404), disclosure policy, bug bounty or named certification was found on the pages read. The product introduction says the service complies with industry standards and names none (0 of 20). 15+12+6+6+0 = 39.); xAI API (Grok) 97 (Model reading. Team API keys with ACLs per endpoint and per model, QPM and TPM caps, expiry, and create, rotate, disable and delete through the Management API, plus documented mTLS. GitHub secret scanning disables leaked keys and emails the owner (30). The security FAQ says SpaceXSI never trains on API inputs or outputs without explicit permission (20). Requests and responses are kept 30 days for abuse auditing, then deleted, and team admins can switch on zero data retention themselves, confirmed by an `x-zero-data-retention` header on every response (15). Console audit log and a Management API audit-events endpoint, plus optional per-key request logging (15). security.txt valid to 2027-06-29 with a HackerOne bug bounty and a separate safety contact for prompt-injection issues. SOC 2 Type 2 is claimed in the security FAQ with the reports behind an NDA in the trust centre, so 17 of 20. Remote MCP doesn't support `require_approval`, which the model checklist doesn't score but reviewers should see. New in October, a `guidelines` array lets the caller make the model decline nsfw, violence or profanity content, which the checklist doesn't score.)
- Maintenance & community, xAI API (Grok) +40: SiliconFlow 37 (SiliconFlow's Terms of Use bar spiders, robots, scrapers and crawlers on the Platform, so its sites were not re-read on 5 November. Model reading, per the 9 October check, not re-read on 5 November. Hy4-preview is listed as released on 14 September 2026, 52 days before this check, and no later model or API change was recorded; blog post dates record no API change (20). No notice period is stated. Six removal notices from 31 December 2025 to 11 June 2026 are dated the day of removal, and two in March 2026 gave six and seven days (2 of 12). The release notes record about 60 model ids removed in ten notices over the last twelve months (2 of 8). The release notes stop at 11 June 2026 while nine chat models were added afterwards. Support is by email and Discord (6 of 15). Replies in the support channels were not examined (2 of 10). No official SDK. The `langchain-siliconflow` repository in the vendor's GitHub organisation was last changed on 12 December 2025 (version 0.2.3), confirmed from a clone on 5 November (3 of 15). The API description and two guides are out of date (2 of 10). 20+2+2+6+2+3+2 = 37.); xAI API (Grok) 77 (Model reading. grok-imagine-image-quality and grok-imagine-image-pro retired on 2 November 2026 as announced in September, Grok Voice 3.0 and custom moderation controls in October, Grok 4.7 on 21 September (30). No minimum notice period found. Retirements come as dated migration guides, retired slugs redirect to a replacement rather than failing, billed at the replacement's price, and grok-voice-2.0 was deprecated in October with no end date (4 of 12). Shutdowns in the last 90 days with dates given in advance, `grok-voice-transcribe-1.0` on 2 October and `grok-imagine-image-quality` on 2 November (8 of 8). Release notes several times a month but dated only by month, support by email and a Discord #help channel, not tested. On xai-sdk-python a collaborator commented on 2 of the 16 most recent threads with replies, and most outside pull requests since 23 October are open without a maintainer reply (10 of 15, down from 12). The repository has CI, release and version-bump workflows (5 of 10). One current first-party SDK, `xai-sdk` 1.21.0 tagged on 23 October, Python only (10 of 15). Supported runtimes stated, Python 3.10 or later (10).)
- Agent ergonomics, xAI API (Grok) +30: SiliconFlow 60 (SiliconFlow's Terms of Use bar spiders, robots, scrapers and crawlers on the Platform, so its sites were not re-read on 5 November. Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 5 November. Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). OpenAI-style `tools` with up to 128 functions, and each model page says whether Tools are supported. No `tool_choice` field is in the chat schema and the guide is out of date (12 of 20). `response_format` of `json_object`. The DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash page says Structured Outputs are not supported (7 of 15). Cached input prices are published per model. No caching guide was found (8 of 15). Context listed as 1049K tokens on eleven chat models on the home page, with output up to 393K (14 of 15). `/files` and `/batches` are in the OpenAPI file for chat completions only, with no guide in the English index, no batch price and a window description that contradicts itself (5 of 10). No official SDK. The OpenAI and Anthropic clients work with a changed base URL (6 of 10). Errors carry an HTTP status, a numeric code and a message. No list of codes was found (8 of 15). 12+7+8+14+5+6+8 = 60.); xAI API (Grok) 90 (Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). Function calling with parallel calls on by default and `tool_choice` of auto, required, none or a named function (20). Guaranteed structured outputs (15). Automatic prompt caching, cached input at 0.25x on grok-4.7 ($0.50 per million) and 0.16x on grok-4.3 (15). 500,000-token context on grok-4.7 and 1,000,000 on grok-4.3, 13 of 15 for the default model's 500K. The Batch API is now 20% off on grok-4.7, 4.6 and 4.5 as well as the older models, with batch requests outside the rate limits (10 of 10, up from 5 on 6 October). One first-party SDK, `xai-sdk` for Python, with the OpenAI SDKs and Vercel's AI SDK documented as alternatives (5 of 10). Status codes documented with fixes, no Retry-After header found (12 of 15).)
- Schema & documentation, xAI API (Grok) +23: SiliconFlow 65 (SiliconFlow's Terms of Use bar spiders, robots, scrapers and crawlers on the Platform, so its sites were not re-read on 5 November. Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 5 November. Model reading. Public OpenAPI 3.0 file with 22 operations and 102 schemas, linked from `llms.txt` under the Chinese path only. Its chat model enum of 71 ids includes removed models and omits every model added since July 2026 (19 of 25). `llms.txt` and a Markdown copy of each docs page (10). Guides for function calling, JSON mode, reasoning, prefix and FIM completion. The function calling guide lists only models the release notes show as removed, and its examples use DeepSeek-V2.5 (10 of 20). Typed parameters with 104 enums and required fields. `response_format` is typed as a bare string with an example (10 of 15). Curl and Python examples, an error page with seven HTTP codes and one body code, and 400, 401, 404, 429, 503 and 504 responses in the file (9 of 15). The file's version reads 1.0.0. The release notes are dated, stop at 11 June 2026 and since March 2026 record only model removals (7 of 15). 19+10+10+10+9+7 = 65.); xAI API (Grok) 88 (OpenAPI 3.1 document at docs.x.ai/openapi.json, 39 paths and 205 schemas on 6 November, covering Responses, Chat Completions, files, images, videos and models. The batch endpoints documented in the REST reference still aren't in it (20 of 25, applied as for gemini-api's missing Interactions API). llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every page, plus a docs MCP server (10). The models page says which model to use for code, chat, images, video and voice, and reference pages list each parameter. Reference not read in full (18 of 20). Structured outputs are guaranteed to match the schema for supported keywords, and tool arguments always conform with `strict` implicitly true (15). Examples in Python, JavaScript and curl on every guide. The debugging page lists status codes with fixes, but the cause cells for 400, 403, 404 and 415 are still empty (13 of 15). Release notes are grouped by month without day dates, and model slugs come as aliases and dated versions (12 of 15).)
- Reliability, xAI API (Grok) +22: SiliconFlow 33 (SiliconFlow's Terms of Use bar spiders, robots, scrapers and crawlers on the Platform, so its sites were not re-read on 5 November. Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 5 November. Hosted reading. No status page is linked from the site, the docs index or any page read (0). With no page there is no incident record to read (5 of 30). Rate limits are published with numbers by spend tier, from 1,000 requests and 40,000 tokens a minute at L0 to 10,000 and 2,000,000 at L5, on a page served only in Chinese, with per-model figures left to the console (12 of 15). The 429 body is documented and names the limit reached, and the docs say to wait and retry. No `Retry-After` header, backoff figures or idempotency guidance were found (6 of 15). No SLA found. Clause 4.2 of the terms disclaims any uptime or availability commitment (0). The serverless API is generally available, and `/systemone` is marked alpha (10). 0+5+12+6+0+10 = 33.); xAI API (Grok) 55 (Status page at status.x.ai with components for the global and US API endpoints, voice, the consumer apps and, since the Cursor merger, Cursor's services, with an RSS feed (20). The feed, read on 6 November, now holds 267 incidents back to 11 August, so the whole 90-day window is readable. On the API components there were high error rates on grok-4.6 and grok-4.5 from 21:57 to 23:28 UTC on 17 August (about 90 minutes) and a models outage on the global and US endpoints from 13:30 to 17:09 UTC on 3 September (about 3 hours 40 minutes), so several majors. A 26-minute datacenter outage across the API on 22 September, voice disruptions of 12 and 28 minutes on 10 September and 6 October, a 63-minute voice and Imagine degradation on 30 October and a 37-second model degradation on 24 October add to the record (0). Rate limits published per model and tier, grok-4.7 at Tier 0 is 150 requests a second and 50M TPM, with the per-second cap derived as RPM divided by 48 (15). The rate-limits page shows exponential backoff on 429, but no Retry-After header or overload guidance was found (10 of 15). No SLA found in the docs or llms.txt (0). The Responses API has been GA since September 2025 and grok-4.7 carries no preview label (10).)
- Payments & pricing, SiliconFlow +15: SiliconFlow 35 (SiliconFlow's Terms of Use bar spiders, robots, scrapers and crawlers on the Platform, so its sites were not re-read on 5 November. Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 5 November. No machine payment protocol (0). Per-token, per-image and per-video prices on the pricing page, read without a login, such as DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash at $0.15 in and $0.60 out per 1M tokens (20). $1 in free credits for a new account. Whether a card is needed was not established, so this line takes 15 of 20. A person signs up in a browser with a Google or GitHub account, and no key API was found (0). 0+20+15+0 = 35.); xAI API (Grok) 20 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-token and per-call prices published without a login on docs.x.ai/developers/pricing (20). No free tier found for the text API, and the quickstart says to load the account with credits (0). Sign-up is in the browser at console.x.ai. The Management API can create keys and top up prepaid credit, but only with a management key made by a person in the console, so no line credit (0).)

| Task | SiliconFlow | xAI API (Grok) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Research a product and write a sourced report | $0.09 | $21.76 |
| Build a small four-page website | $0.05 | $4.85 |
| Find and fix a bug in a large codebase | $0.01 | $1.07 |