We mainly study the growth and Gelfand-Kirillov dimension (GK-dimension) of generalized Weyl algebra (GWA) $A=D(\sigma,a)$ where $D$ is a polynomial or Laurent algebra. Several necessary sufficient conditions for $\operatorname{GKdim}(A)=\operatorname{GKdim}(D)+1$ are given. In particular, we prove dichotomy GK-dimension GWAs over in two indeterminates, namely, $\operatorname{GKdim}(A)$ either ...