The short answer
Build your SEO and AEO agent on GPT-6 Astra and point your citation work at ChatGPT. Astra scores 53 to Grok 4.7’s 46 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, costs $0.82 per finished task against Grok’s $2.73, and ChatGPT drives almost 76 percent of AI referral traffic while Grok sends close to none. Use Grok Bot as a zero-setup layer for routine tasks, or as a separate lane only if your buyers live on X.
Everyone keeps asking me the same question: should SEO and AEO agents run on GPT-6 Astra or on Grok Bot? I spent a few days running the numbers, and the answer starts with a correction. Grok Bot is priced like it is about five times cheaper than Astra. On the same benchmark, it cost about three times more per finished task. That gap is the whole story, and it comes from a question most people are asking the wrong way.
Is GPT-6 Astra a model or a product, and why does that matter?
GPT-6 Astra is a model. You reach it through ChatGPT work, through Codex, through GPT-6 Pro on the higher plans, or straight through the API. Grok Bot is a product. It is an app of AI teammates that uses your apps and your websites, and it runs on Grok models, currently Grok 4.7, built by SpaceX AI, the rebranded xAI.
So asking whether to use Astra or Grok Bot is a bit like asking whether to hire an engineer or buy a company. One is the brain. The other is the operating system wrapped around a brain. Once you separate those two things, the decision gets easier, and you sound a lot more credible explaining it to a client or a manager. This is the biggest takeaway in the video.
Which model scores higher for SEO and AEO work?
On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, the most neutral aggregate benchmark we have right now, Astra scores 53 at max effort. Grok 4.7 scores 46 at its highest setting, which is roughly tied with Astra at its lowest effort. That is the first thing worth sitting with.
The task-level numbers lean the same way. On BrowseComp, a hard web research test, Astra scores 91.5 percent. On OSWorld, which measures whether an agent can use real software, Astra scores 72.6 percent. Grok has no published number on either. To be fair, there is one place Grok wins: on GDPval, a professional document work assessment, xAI’s own charts put Grok 4.7 ahead of Astra. That is xAI grading itself, so take it for what it is.
Hallucination matters more than any of those for citation work. Astra comes in at 4.2 percent on an internal benchmark. Grok comes in at 29 percent on a separate test. Different tests, so this is apples and oranges, but the gap is wide enough to pay attention to.
Why does Grok cost more per task when the price sheet says it is cheaper?
Grok looks far cheaper on the price sheet. On the same benchmark, the cost per finished task was $2.73 for Grok and $0.82 for Astra. Grok burns about three times the output tokens to finish the same job, so the bill you pay runs opposite to the list price.
If you are an agency billing tokens as part of a monthly invoice, or you are trying to show a client real ROI, that difference is not a rounding error. It compounds every week the agent runs.
Where does AI referral traffic actually come from?
The right model can still produce the wrong business outcome if you point it at the wrong engine. ChatGPT drove almost 76 percent of all AI referral traffic in 2026 across roughly 100,000 tracked sites. Grok sits close to zero. Even if Grok gets used, do not expect it to send traffic to your site. Point your citation work at ChatGPT.
There is an honest caveat. If your buyers genuinely live on X, Grok is worth a separate lane. Just know it is a different game. Grok runs off X posts, not website rankings. X was the single biggest source in one citation study, ahead of Wikipedia, and that kind of sourcing is unstable. When OpenAI adjusted its sourcing in September, Reddit citations in ChatGPT dropped from about 60 percent of responses to 10 percent within weeks. If you build for X, post consistently from a real account and write your key claims as short standalone lines that survive being quoted. Do not confuse that with AEO.
How should you set this up for your situation?
- ChatGPT Plus or higher and not very technical: run the agent in ChatGPT work with Astra. No code, covered by your existing plan, with usage limits.
- More technical: run it through Codex or the API.
- Agency or consultant with several clients: use the OpenAI API. Best match quality and best cost.
- Zero setup, one product, not a marketer: start with Grok Bot. Download the app and install an SEO and AEO agent from the marketplace. Expect the critical thinking to cost more and land lower in quality.
The setup I would grow into: Astra as the brain for competitive research, web scraping, and strategic planning, with Grok Bot handling routine day-to-day tasks and talking to Astra sub-agents. Think of Grok Bot as the intern. If you only want to pay for one product, just use Astra.
What does the one-agent weekly loop look like?
I see a lot of videos pushing swarms of SEO agents. I have paid for those skill files from the communities selling them. They are spammy and they do not get you cited, because AI citations follow brand sentiment, and less is more. For most clients I run one agent, sometimes two, on one weekly loop. Copy it if it helps.
- Each week, ask 20 to 50 real questions your buyers would type, across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude, with web research on.
- Log who got mentioned, who got cited, and which domains keep winning.
- Open every page that beat you and write one line on why.
- Once a month, check the boring things: robots.txt, whether your content is visible without JavaScript, and whether the sitemap is current.
- Draft answer-first content for the biggest gaps, then wait for a human to approve it before anything goes live.
Guardrails I write into every agent
No fake reviews. No falsified product claims. No invented clinical, medical, or financial claims. Google treats fake reviews as spam, and Gemini can tell when content is fabricated. If you would not want it on the front page of the newspaper, do not publish it.
If you want help deciding which engine your SEO and AEO agent should run on, and what the weekly loop should look like for your firm, let’s talk.
Book a free callKey takeaways
- On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, GPT-6 Astra scores 53 at max effort while Grok 4.7 scores 46 at its highest setting, roughly tied with Astra’s lowest setting.
- On the same benchmark, the cost per finished task was $0.82 for Astra and $2.73 for Grok, because Grok uses about three times the output tokens to complete the same work.
- ChatGPT drove almost 76 percent of all AI referral traffic in 2026 across roughly 100,000 tracked sites, while Grok sent close to 0 percent.