# Grok 4 Fast 19 Hacker News commenters recommended Grok 4 Fast and 14 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Recommended as cheap and very fast, good for data extraction, bug fixing and agentic tasks. Common caveat: it falls short of frontier models on harder work. ## Why people recommend it - Fast responses (6 comments): "cheap, fast and almost really well suited for data parsing/extraction, a lot better than Gemini 2.5 Pro" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45870486)) "The one I ended up with was Grok 4 Fast, because it's weirdly fast." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46374228)) "have no business being as good + cheap + fast as they are" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46332975)) - Few content restrictions (3 comments): "No censoring and it says the things I agree with are not the same thing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45865573)) "Grok 4 Fast has essentially zero restrictions on safety" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45863126)) "It's the only model that lets you do gooner shit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45864301)) - Low cost for its quality (3 comments): "cheap, fast and almost really well suited for data parsing/extraction, a lot better than Gemini 2.5 Pro" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45870486)) "have no business being as good + cheap + fast as they are" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46332975)) "matches GPT-5.2 at 1/25th the cost" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46783454)) ## What people warn about - Political bias and censorship concerns (6 comments): "If Grok doesn’t refuse to do something, but gives false information about it instead, that is both bias and censorship." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45874940)) "Musk saying Grok will be corrected when it says something that doesn’t line up with his politics" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45865294)) "It's still lobotomized, it's just that you agree with the ways in which it's been "lobotomized"." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45865998)) - Behind frontier models on harder tasks (3 comments): "Grok 4 Fast is vastly faster, but some things GPT-5 can do well Grok struggled with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46119704)) "That's a notable step down from frontier models but fine for lots of bug fixing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46361246)) "did severely worse in a similarly outlandish scenario" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48951229)) - Output quality often poor or inconsistent (3 comments): "Grok 4 Fast was almost there but not quite. Great for interactive / realtime (steered) work though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47989781)) "Like Grok 4 Fasts attempt at a mushroom in a rowboat, it is barely recognisable as anything" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49013452)) "Not good, but fast and good enough to be usable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48554770)) - Incentives favor bigger context usage (2 comments): "Bigger context window = more input tokens processed = more income for the provider" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45864908)) "it seem Grok pushing the wrong metrics again, after launching fast." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45863015)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Claude Opus](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-opus.md): 3331 recommend - [OpenAI GPT](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gpt-5-5.md): 1205 recommend - [Claude Sonnet](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-sonnet.md): 854 recommend - [DeepSeek V4 Flash](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepseek-v4-flash.md): 828 recommend - [Fable](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fable.md): 823 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://x.ai/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Grok 4 Fast", https://hackerapproved.com/p/grok-4-fast/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).