Grok 4 Fast
Shares rank 36 of 72 language models by recommenders
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.
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.
33 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 19
- criticize it
- 14
- approval share
- 58%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 19 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fast responses
“cheap, fast and almost really well suited for data parsing/extraction, a lot better than Gemini 2.5 Pro”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window” “The one I ended up with was Grok 4 Fast, because it's weirdly fast.”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades” “have no business being as good + cheap + fast as they are”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “LLM Year in Review” - Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window”
- Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “SpaceX Is Buying Cursor”
- Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT”
Few content restrictions
“No censoring and it says the things I agree with are not the same thing”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window” “Grok 4 Fast has essentially zero restrictions on safety”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window” “It's the only model that lets you do gooner shit.”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window” Low cost for its quality
“cheap, fast and almost really well suited for data parsing/extraction, a lot better than Gemini 2.5 Pro”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window” “have no business being as good + cheap + fast as they are”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “LLM Year in Review” “matches GPT-5.2 at 1/25th the cost”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “VibeCodingBench: Benchmark Vibe Coding Models for Fun”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Political bias and censorship concerns
“If Grok doesn’t refuse to do something, but gives false information about it instead, that is both bias and censorship.”
Comment from 10 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window” “Musk saying Grok will be corrected when it says something that doesn’t line up with his politics”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window” “It's still lobotomized, it's just that you agree with the ways in which it's been "lobotomized".”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window” - Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window”
- Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window”
- Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window”
Behind frontier models on harder tasks
“Grok 4 Fast is vastly faster, but some things GPT-5 can do well Grok struggled with”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Google, Nvidia, and OpenAI” “That's a notable step down from frontier models but fine for lots of bug fixing.”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “GLM-4.7: Advancing the Coding Capability” “did severely worse in a similarly outlandish scenario”
Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark” Output quality often poor or inconsistent
“Grok 4 Fast was almost there but not quite. Great for interactive / realtime (steered) work though.”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “Spotify adds 'Verified' badges to distinguish human artists from AI” “Like Grok 4 Fasts attempt at a mushroom in a rowboat, it is barely recognisable as anything”
Comment from 22 Jul 2026 in “Are AI Labs Pelicanmaxxing?” “Not good, but fast and good enough to be usable.”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “SpaceX Is Buying Cursor” Incentives favor bigger context usage
“Bigger context window = more input tokens processed = more income for the provider”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window” “it seem Grok pushing the wrong metrics again, after launching fast.”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window”
Other language models people recommend
The four most recommended other language models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus | 3,331 | 2,746 | 55% | 13 | 4 mo156 owners | — |
| OpenAI GPT | 1,205 | 987 | 55% | 13 | 6 mo47 owners | — |
| Claude Sonnet | 854 | 586 | 59% | 13 | 6 mo46 owners | — |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 828 | 223 | 79% | 8 | 1 mo24 owners | Approved |
| Grok 4 FastThis page | 19 | 14 | 58% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 42 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Like Grok 4 Fasts attempt at a mushroom in a rowboat, it is barely recognisable as anything”
“did severely worse in a similarly outlandish scenario”
“you're fine with grok-4-fast”
“Not good, but fast and good enough to be usable.”
“Grok 4 Fast was almost there but not quite. Great for interactive / realtime (steered) work though.”
“dropped from 200 tps to 60tps”
“Also had good results with Grok Fast in that category”
“I am having decent results with it though.”
“got rather upset at the idea of providing a working HDMI HDCP key”
“I am having decent results with it though”
“matches GPT-5.2 at 1/25th the cost”
“The one I ended up with was Grok 4 Fast, because it's weirdly fast.”
“That's a notable step down from frontier models but fine for lots of bug fixing.”
“have no business being as good + cheap + fast as they are”
“not super fast like flash or grok fast”
“For my apps evals Gemini flash and grok 4 fast are the only ones worth using.”
“Grok 4 Fast is vastly faster, but some things GPT-5 can do well Grok struggled with”
“exceptionally fast, precise, and reliable”
“Even grok fast solved a lot of tasks in agentic mode.”
“If Grok doesn’t refuse to do something, but gives false information about it instead, that is both bias and censorship.”
“Grok stood out with its generous usage limits”
“cheap, fast and almost really well suited for data parsing/extraction, a lot better than Gemini 2.5 Pro”
“it is “not-so-large-take-out-what-Elon-doesnt-like LM””
“At least context window length and generation speed are concrete improvements.”
“rather that it’s censored in a way that aligns with their politics, and thus is good”
“Since grok 4 fast got this answer correct so quickly”
“It's still lobotomized, it's just that you agree with the ways in which it's been "lobotomized".”
“No censoring and it says the things I agree with are not the same thing”
“Grok has plenty of censoring.”
“Musk saying Grok will be corrected when it says something that doesn’t line up with his politics”
“managed to make any single topic about the white genocide in South Africa”
“Bigger context window = more input tokens processed = more income for the provider”
“Timed out after 300s of thinking”
“In my experience Grok is the best.”
“It's the only model that lets you do gooner shit.”
“Grok 4 Fast has essentially zero restrictions on safety”
“it can't even read the file?!”
“Far better than Haiku 4.5 and Gemini Flash.”
“it seem Grok pushing the wrong metrics again, after launching fast.”
“they're reliably pushing the frontier here”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.