Grok API Base URL Not Working: How to Fix Endpoint Errors

When integrating xAI's Grok into your applications, encountering connection failures, 404 Not Found, or 405 Method Not Allowed errors usually points to an incorrectly configured API base URL or endpoint path. Because the xAI API is built to be compatible with the OpenAI API specification, small discrepancies in how SDKs initialize base URLs can break your integration.

Use this step-by-step guide to troubleshoot and correct base URL and endpoint routing issues in your Grok API setup.

Step 1: Verify the correct xAI base URL

The official base URL for all xAI API requests is: https://api.x.ai/v1

Ensure that you are not using outdated development endpoints, console domains, or the main marketing URL. Common mistakes include: * Using https://console.x.ai (this is for the web dashboard, not API requests). * Using https://x.ai/api (this does not resolve to the API gateway). * Omitting the version suffix /v1 when your SDK or HTTP client requires a fully qualified path.

Step 2: Fix "double-versioning" in SDK configurations

A frequent error when using official or third-party SDKs (such as the OpenAI Python or Node.js libraries) is setting a base URL that leads to a double-nested path, such as /v1/v1/chat/completions.

Many SDKs automatically append /v1 to the base URL you provide. If your requests are failing with a 404 Not Found error, inspect your outgoing HTTP traffic or verbose logs.

• If the SDK automatically appends /v1: Set your base URL to https://api.x.ai.
• If you are writing raw HTTP requests (using cURL, Axios, or fetch): Use the full path: https://api.x.ai/v1/chat/completions.

Step 3: Align OpenAI SDK parameters

If you are using the OpenAI SDK to interact with Grok, you must override both the API key and the base URL explicitly.

Python SDK Example Ensure your initialization block is configured as follows:

`python import os from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI( api_key=os.environ.get("XAI_API_KEY"), base_url="https://api.x.ai/v1" )

response = client.chat.completions.create( model="grok-2-1212", messages=[ {"role": "user", "content": "Hello Grok!"} ] ) `

Node.js SDK Example For JavaScript/TypeScript environments, initialize your client like this:

`javascript import OpenAI from "openai";

const openai = new OpenAI({ apiKey: process.env.XAI_API_KEY, baseURL: "https://api.x.ai/v1", }); `

If you omit the v1 in these configurations, the client library will append its own default path components, which may fail if not aligned with xAI's routing expectations.

Step 4: Validate endpoint path naming conventions

If you are using direct HTTP client libraries (like requests in Python, axios in JS, or cURL), verify that your target paths exactly match xAI’s routes.

• Chat Completions: Use POST https://api.x.ai/v1/chat/completions
• Embeddings: Use POST https://api.x.ai/v1/embeddings (ensure the specific model supports embeddings, as not all Grok models do).

If you attempt to call unsupported legacy paths or generic routes (such as /v1/completions for instruct-based models without the chat wrapper), the server will return a 404 or a 405 error.

Step 5: Check firewall and network proxies

If your base URL is correct but your application still cannot establish a connection (e.g., throwing ETIMEDOUT or Connection Refused errors):

1. Check DNS resolution: Run nslookup api.x.ai or dig api.x.ai in your terminal to ensure your environment is resolving the hostname to xAI’s IP addresses.
2. Check outbound port access: Ensure your server, container, or local development machine allows outbound traffic on Port 443 (HTTPS).
3. Disable local intercepting proxies: If you are using debugging proxies like Charles, Fiddler, or Bruno, disable them briefly to rule out SSL handshake or custom routing issues.

When to escalate

If you have verified that your code uses https://api.x.ai/v1, your credentials are correct, and your network resolves the host but you still receive routing or transport errors: 1. Check the official xAI status dashboard (if available) or developer community channels to see if there is an active API routing outage. 2. Log in to the xAI Console, navigate to the API Keys section, and verify that your billing account is active and has sufficient credits, as deactivated accounts can sometimes trigger misleading routing or connection rejections.