Make your Grok Bot weekly usage last the whole week

Grok Bot's included usage resets every week, and it's easy to burn through it by Wednesday without noticing why. Often the cause is the work they do while you're not watching, like routines that run every few minutes.

This guide covers where usage goes, the settings that show it, and the habits Cursor's help center and Grok Bot staff recommend. We haven't tracked a week of our own usage for it, since The Daily Bot's computer doesn't have the desktop app's billing screens.

Why it matters#

When weekly usage runs out, one of two things happens, per Cursor's help center. If on-demand usage is off, Grok Bot stops and says you've reached your usage limit until the week resets. If it's on, work continues and is billed through Cursor. Neither is a surprise you want mid-task.

Usage isn't counted by messages. For the free trial, the help center says the credit is "measured by agent steps and tokens rather than the number of messages you send." Larger or longer jobs use more.

How to use it#

1. Find your meter#

Open Settings > Usage & Billing. It shows weekly included usage and on-demand usage for eligible accounts, and the account menu can show weekly usage at a glance, per Cursor's docs. Since Sep 9, the chat warns you near your weekly limit, per the changelog. Mac and iPhone share one meter tied to your Cursor account.

The names differ by screen. "Weekly usage" in Grok Bot is your included grant. "On-demand monthly limit" in Grok Bot is the same cap as Monthly Limit under Spending on the Cursor web dashboard.

2. Know which pool pays#

A Cursor staff answer on the forum lays it out. Anything Grok Bot does on its own comes out of the weekly Grok Bot allowance: chats, routines, browser and computer use, shell commands on its computer, sub-agents, plugin calls, and repo work on its own machine. Cloud agents a Bot launches bill to your Cursor plan instead. One task that starts a cloud agent can draw on both.

3. Audit your routines first#

Cursor's help center says to start with how often routines run. "An hourly schedule, a short interval, or a Slack trigger on a busy channel can use a week of usage in a day."

Lauren Tan, who works on Grok Bot, called this her "number 1 tip" in an Aug 22 post on X: "A 15 min routine runs almost 100 times a day, and every run consumes tokens." Hourly or a few times a day "is usually good enough," Tan wrote.

Ask a Bot for the list. A prompt written by us:

List every routine I have across my Bots with its schedule, its trigger, and roughly how many times it runs per day. Mark the ones whose output I haven't opened in a week. Suggest a cheaper schedule for each, and don't change anything until I approve.

Then pause what you don't need. Since Sep 15 you can pause a routine and resume it later, and "a routine that never runs doesn't spend usage," the help center says. For Slack triggers, narrow the channel and phrase.

Tan's Dr Eggbot template, in the Grok Bot Marketplace, can do the audit for you. Tan's post on version 0.2.0 says it can do "a health check on all your routines for unused or expensive ones," and can repeat it as a routine, weekly by default.

4. Give recurring routines a fresh Bot#

Tan's same post says a long chat history makes routines "much more expensive." The suggestion: hand recurring routines to a fresh Bot, and keep chatting with your main Bots, such as a chief of staff, separately.

5. Keep group chats lean#

"Every Bot reply counts toward your usage, including replies in a group and messages between Bots," Cursor's help center says. "Fewer Bots in a group means fewer replies."

• Add only the Bots the outcome needs.
• Type @ and a name to give a request to one Bot, instead of letting every Bot decide whether to answer.
• If Bots keep messaging each other, tell them to stop, and write the rule into the group's description so it sticks.

6. Set your on-demand limit on purpose#

In Grok Bot, open Settings and find On-demand monthly limit. Choose Enable if it's off. If it asks for a card, finish on the web at cursor.com/dashboard under Spending. On individual plans, the Aug 25 changelog says the limit can be None, Fixed, or Unlimited.

The help center adds a caveat: "A limit is not a hard stop in the middle of a run." A Bot already working can finish past it. After that, on-demand stops until you raise it or the cycle resets.

Before you upgrade#

The help center's order of operations: pause routines you don't need, widen schedules, and narrow Slack triggers "before you raise a plan or an on-demand limit."

If you do need more, know what stacks. Moving within Cursor plans, such as Pro+ to Ultra, raises your weekly usage. Linking SuperGrok or X Premium+ on top of a Cursor plan that already includes Grok Bot doesn't add usage, the help center says.

Good to know#

• Test runs spend usage, because they do the real work.
• On a self-serve Cursor Teams plan, on-demand is on by default.
• Teammates' use of a Team Bot counts against their own allowance, per the Sep 26 changelog.
• Since Sep 29, running out shows a usage limit notice instead of "Bot failed to respond."
• On-demand usage already consumed isn't refundable, per the help center.

Sources#

• Cursor Help Center: Plans and billing
• Cursor Help Center: Routines
• Cursor Help Center: Group chats and Bot-to-Bot messages
• Cursor Forum: what counts against the weekly Grok Bot pool
• Lauren Tan on X: my number 1 tip for controlling your usage
• Lauren Tan on X: new in Dr Eggbot v0.2.0
• Cursor Docs: Settings and notifications
• Grok Bot changelog
• Cursor Docs: Work with Grok Bot