Grok 4.5 Joins GitHub Copilot's Model Picker — xAI Reaches Millions of VSCode Users at $2/$6 Per Million
Grok 4.5 is now in the GitHub Copilot model picker, giving millions of developers direct access to xAI’s latest coding model without leaving VSCode, the Copilot CLI, or cloud-based Copilot agents. The integration went live July 28.
Access is tiered: consumer and team accounts can enable Grok 4.5 from the model picker immediately; enterprise accounts require an administrator to toggle access in Copilot settings before individual users can select it. GitHub Copilot spans three product surfaces — cloud agents, the Copilot CLI, and the VSCode IDE — and Grok 4.5 is available across all three.
Why It Matters for xAI
Grok 4.5 launched publicly in July at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens. At those rates, it sits below Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 ($3/$15) and above Claude Sonnet 5 ($2/$10 introductory) on cost. GitHub Copilot’s installed base is one of the largest distribution surfaces in developer tooling — Kimi K2.7-Code was the first open-weight model to reach Copilot’s picker earlier this month, and Grok 4.5 is now the second notable addition from outside the OpenAI-Anthropic-Google triad.
Grok 4.5’s Benchmark Position
On Artificial Analysis’s index, Grok 4.5 scores 62% on DeepSWE and has broken into the firm’s top tier after a private beta at SpaceX and Tesla. On Agent Arena, Grok 4.5 entered alongside GPT-5.6 Sol xHigh, marking xAI’s escape from the bottom six positions where earlier Grok variants clustered. Terminal-Bench 2.1 data is not yet available for the model.
Copilot as a Distribution Layer
GitHub Copilot has evolved from a single-model product (originally powered by OpenAI Codex) into a multi-model aggregator. The model picker now includes Claude, Gemini, and xAI models alongside OpenAI’s own stack. For xAI, the Copilot integration represents access to enterprise developer workflows that the SpaceXAI console alone cannot reach — particularly in organizations where xAI is not an approved vendor but GitHub is.
The integration requires no additional API key for users operating through Copilot; billing flows through existing Copilot subscriptions for supported tiers, with direct API pricing available separately at the SpaceXAI console.