Management key

A management key is xAI's administrative credential, used for billing, usage and key management. It is distinct from the xai-… key used for inference, and the two are not interchangeable.

This catches almost everyone connecting Grok to a cost tracker for the first time, because using the wrong one produces an authorisation error that looks like a permissions problem.

xAI billing is also team-scoped, so an empty result often means "wrong team" rather than "no usage". xAI management keys vs inference keys.