How to Monitor Brand Mentions on X with Grok: Features & Pricing

On October 7, 2026, SpaceXAI (the new name for xAI, which owns X, Grok, and Cursor) enabled Grok bots to search X posts directly. Now, you can use a simple prompt to have the bot analyze what people are writing about your product, track a developing story, or send you a weekly summary on your topic of choice. For a creator or a small brand, this is the cheapest way to keep an eye on mentions—but only within X and only on a paid plan.

What Exactly Changed

The Grok bot isn't a chatbot in an app; it's an assistant that works in the background. You give it a task, it performs the steps on its own, and returns with the result. It used to know next to nothing about X: for the bot to see posts, you had to set up the X connector—a dedicated connection between your account and the bot.

Now, post search is built right in. The platform says you no longer need to configure the connector for this. The bot finds posts, reads them, and monitors your chosen topic all by itself.

What hasn't changed: to let the bot see your personal data—like your home feed and your mentions—you still need to link your X account via the plugin. Searching public posts works without it.

A Brief History

What the Bot Can Do with X

The bot won't send direct messages or publish posts without your review—this is explicitly stated in the terms of service.

According to Tesla North and Crypto Briefing, the bot analyzes over a hundred posts in a single query. In a demo example from the platform, it read 328 posts about a mobile app and distilled them into two main user requests: iOS widgets and a desktop version.

How Much Does It Cost?

The announcement didn't specify a price, and no new bot-specific plans have been introduced—it's included in existing paid subscriptions. Based on plan reviews from October 2026, here's the breakdown:

There is no free plan that includes the bot. Each subscription has a weekly usage limit, but the platform doesn't disclose the exact amount; it's only known that higher-tier plans have higher limits. There's no separate spending cap for the bot—the limit is a single, account-wide one.

The platform changes its prices frequently, so check the pricing page yourself before subscribing.

What This Means for Short-Form Video Creators

Let's be honest: this is primarily a tool for marketers and PR teams. But three things are useful for creators too.

1. Research a topic before you shoot. Instead of guessing that "everyone is talking about this," you get a concrete answer: how many posts in the last week, what the debates are about, and what words people are actually using. This gives you ready-made phrasing for your video's hook (the first three seconds).
2. Catch a trend early. Monitoring sends an alert when a topic is gaining traction. A video shot on day one gets several times more views than the same video a week later.
3. Gather audience requests. The example with 328 posts is exactly what creators do manually: read comments and look for what people don't understand. The bot does this faster and across the entire platform, not just in your replies.

What This Means for a Small Brand

Social media monitoring services cost anywhere from tens to hundreds of dollars a month. If you're only interested in X, a $20–$30 subscription handles the same tasks: mentions, sentiment, and a weekly summary.

This also works for tracking other brands' campaigns. When a brand pays creators for views, mentions are the only way to know if the content reached real people. We broke down how brands currently calculate this ROI in our article on what brands pay clippers for.

How to Phrase Your Query for a Useful Response

The bot answers exactly what you ask, so crafting the right prompt is everything.

• Specify the timeframe. Use "in the last 7 days," not "recently." Without a timeframe, the bot will decide for itself what counts as recent.
• Provide all spelling variations. Include the name in Latin and Cyrillic scripts, with common typos and slang abbreviations. People don't always write it the way it looks on your logo.
• Ask for a summary, not a list. "Summarize the top three complaints and quote one post for each" is more useful than "find mentions."
• Filter out irrelevant keywords. If your brand name is a common word, tell the bot what to ignore: "don't include posts about the weather."
• Set up monitoring as a separate task. A one-time query and ongoing monitoring with a weekly summary are two different instructions.
• Verify the quotes. The bot cites posts; it doesn't invent them. It only takes a minute to open two or three posts from the summary to double-check.

What This Tool Won't Replace

• Only X. It can't see TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, VK, or Telegram. For readers in the CIS region, this is a major limitation, as X is rarely the primary platform there.
• Your account analytics. This is a tool for searching other people's posts, not for statistics on your own views and retention.
• A client-ready report. It doesn't have the data exports, graphs, or year-long history that paid monitoring services offer.
• Access from Russia. Access to X has been restricted in Russia since 2022, and SpaceXAI subscriptions cannot be paid for with Russian bank cards. This is a statement of fact, not a problem to be solved: we do not cover methods for bypassing blocks.

What's Still Unknown

• The platform hasn't said how far back the search goes: a week, a year, or all time.
• There are no published daily limits on the number of posts the bot can read.
• It's unclear how the bot selects the "right" posts from hundreds of thousands. The accuracy of the answer depends on this, but the mechanism hasn't been explained.
• It also hasn't been revealed how many simultaneous monitoring tasks each plan allows.

FAQ

How can I track brand mentions on X for free?
Manually: using the standard X search, the "Mentions" tab in your account, and saved searches. The Grok bot automates this, but it's only included in paid plans, the cheapest of which is $20 per month.

What is the Grok bot?
It's an assistant from SpaceXAI that works in the background. You give it a task in plain text, and it performs the necessary steps—searching, reading, monitoring a topic—before returning with a result. It cannot publish posts or message people without your review.

Do I need to set up the X connector?
Not for searching public posts—that works for everyone out of the box. To access your home feed and personal mentions, you do need to link your X account via the plugin.

How many posts does the bot analyze per query?
Over a hundred. In the platform's own example, it analyzed 328 posts about a single app.

Will this replace social media monitoring services?
If you only need X, then yes, and it's significantly cheaper. If you need TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, VK, or Telegram, then no—the bot can't see them.

Can I have the bot reply to mentions?
It can write a draft reply, but it will only send it after your review. It is prohibited from publishing or sending DMs on its own.

Read More on This Topic

• Free Video Subtitles: Grok Now Edits and Translates Them on X
• How Brands Find Influencers: TikTok Rolls Out AI-Powered Creator Matching
• Clipping: What Brands Are Paying Clippers for in 2026

Mentions matter when payment depends on them. On Prime Oracles, a brand posts a brief via "Create Campaign," a creator opens the "Content Rewards" section, clicks "Accept Task," and gets paid for their video's views—the platform counts views, not the conversation around them.