What it costs to monitor Twitter mentions

#What monitoring X mentions costs on the official X API

The official X API charges for what it sends back: $0.005 for each post and, from November 22, 2026, $0.010 for each author profile that comes back with it through expansions (X's price list (opens in a new tab), X's notice of October 23 (opens in a new tab)). A mention monitor therefore pays $5.00 per 1,000 mentions for the posts alone, and up to $15.00 per 1,000 when it also shows who wrote each one.

The range comes from deduplication. X bills a resource once per 24-hour UTC day, so an author who tags your brand ten times in a day is billed once. Ten mentions from ten different people are billed ten times. An alert without author profiles shows only a numeric author ID, which is why most monitors ask for them.

Two more rules shape the bill. Reading your own account's mentions through your own developer app counts as an owned read at $0.001 per post; any other brand, client or competitor costs the full rate. And pay-per-use stops at 3M post reads per billing month; past that, X sells only Enterprise contracts, from about $42,000 a month.

• 10K

  Official X API, posts only

  $50

  Official X API, with authors

  up to $150

• 100K

  Official X API, posts only

  $500

  Official X API, with authors

  up to $1,500

• 1M

  Official X API, posts only

  $5,000

  Official X API, with authors

  up to $15,000

• 3M and more

  Official X API, posts only

  $15,000, then Enterprise

  Official X API, with authors

  $42K+ a month

To know which row is yours, count a normal week of mentions first. The free Twitter Mentions Checker lists any account's recent mentions by period without code.

#Monitor mentions on a fixed monthly plan with Sorsa API

For a mention monitor whose bill doesn't move with your mention count, use Sorsa API, a Twitter (X) API and scraper: it bills one request per call on every endpoint, and each search request returns up to 20 mentions with every author's full profile inside. One key, no developer account and no OAuth.

A monitor is a loop of checks. Each check asks POST /search-tweets (opens in a new tab) for the newest posts that tag your handles and reads pages until it reaches a mention it has already saved. A quiet check reads one page; a busy one reads one more page for every further 20 new mentions. So the monthly use has an upper bound you can work out on a napkin:

Requests a month = queries × checks a month + mentions a month ÷ 20

One brand checked every minute with 100K mentions a month makes 43.2K checks plus 5,000 pages, about 48.2K requests, inside the Pro plan's 100K. Four steps set it up:

1. Get a key. Sign up and copy the API key from your dashboard; the 100 free requests are on it.

2. Write one query for your handles. Join the handles with OR. To also catch posts that skip the tag, add the brand's name in quotes, such as "acme coffee". The syntax is X's own: our guide to Twitter search operators lists every operator.

   curl -X POST "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/search-tweets" \
     -H "ApiKey: YOUR_API_KEY" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"query": "@acme_coffee_roasters OR @kitebird_analytics_hq",
          "order": "latest"}'
   

3. Check on a schedule and stop at the last saved mention. The function below runs one check, returns the new mentions and counts the requests it used. Run it from cron, a worker or an n8n schedule.

   import requests
   
   API = "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/search-tweets"
   HEADERS = {"ApiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"}
   QUERY = "@acme_coffee_roasters OR @kitebird_analytics_hq"
   
   
   def check(last_id, max_pages=25):
       """One check: new mentions newer than last_id, and requests used."""
       body = {"query": QUERY, "order": "latest"}
       new, used = [], 0
       while used < max_pages:
           r = requests.post(API, json=body, headers=HEADERS, timeout=30)
           r.raise_for_status()
           used += 1
           page = r.json()
           for tweet in page.get("tweets", []):
               if int(tweet["id"]) <= last_id:
                   return new, used
               new.append(tweet)
           body["next_cursor"] = page.get("next_cursor")
           if not body["next_cursor"]:
               break
       return new, used
   

4. Watch the balance. GET /key-usage-info returns the requests left in the current month and when they renew, and calling it never counts against your requests.

   curl "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/key-usage-info" -H "ApiKey: YOUR_API_KEY"
   

   {
     "key_requests": 100000,
     "remaining_requests": 61840,
     "total_requests": 152160,
     "valid_until": "2026-12-01T00:00:00Z"
   }
   

Save the newest mention ID after every check in a file or a database row, so a restart neither repeats old alerts nor skips new ones. A 403 means the key is missing or out of requests, a 429 means more than 20 requests in one second, and failed requests are never charged. For one handle with like, reply and date filters, POST /mentions works the same way; our Twitter mentions API guide covers its fields.

#How often to check, and what each interval costs

On Sorsa API, the check interval sets most of the bill: a check costs one request whether it finds twenty new mentions or none. In a 30-day month, one query checked every minute makes 43.2K checks, and the same query every 5 minutes makes 8.6K, which fits the Starter plan's 10K requests.

Whatever the checks leave of the plan pays for busy pages, at 20 mentions per request. The last column shows how many mentions a month still fit:

• 1 minute

  Checks a month, one query

  43.2K

  Plan that covers it

  Pro, 100K requests

  Mentions that still fit

  about 1.1M

• 2 minutes

  Checks a month, one query

  21.6K

  Plan that covers it

  Pro, 100K requests

  Mentions that still fit

  about 1.6M

• 5 minutes

  Checks a month, one query

  8.6K

  Plan that covers it

  Starter, 10K requests

  Mentions that still fit

  about 27K

• 15 minutes

  Checks a month, one query

  2.9K

  Plan that covers it

  Starter, 10K requests

  Mentions that still fit

  about 142K

• 1 hour

  Checks a month, one query

  720

  Plan that covers it

  Starter, 10K requests

  Mentions that still fit

  about 186K

Pick the interval from the longest wait the job accepts. A support handle where a customer waits for an answer earns a check every minute. A weekly brand report or a competitor watch is fine every 15 minutes or every hour. Every plan allows 20 requests per second, so speed never costs extra: a shorter interval costs only its checks.

#Five monitoring setups, priced end to end

The same arithmetic prices any setup in a minute. The table runs five common ones on a 30-day month, Sorsa API's plan first and the official X API's bill for the same mentions beside it; the gap widens as mentions grow, because the official X API bills every post and author while Sorsa API bills pages of 20.

• One brand, 10K mentions, checked every 5 minutes

  Sorsa API, a month

  $49, Starter

  Official X API, a month

  $50 to $150

• One brand, 100K mentions, every minute

  Sorsa API, a month

  $199, Pro

  Official X API, a month

  $500 to $1,500

• An agency: 25 brands in 5 queries, 250K mentions, every 5 minutes

  Sorsa API, a month

  $199, Pro

  Official X API, a month

  $1,250 to $3,750

• A consumer brand: 1M mentions, every minute

  Sorsa API, a month

  $199, Pro

  Official X API, a month

  $5,000 to $15,000

• A listening product: 200 customer brands, one query each, 2M mentions, every 5 minutes

  Sorsa API, a month

  $4,799, Business

  Official X API, a month

  $10,000 to $30,000

The listening product is where the official X API's cap starts to bite: a few more customers push it past 3M posts a month, into Enterprise from about $42,000 a month. On Sorsa API the same product moves up one plan, and from 1 million requests a month plans add higher rate limits on request and, from 5 million, custom terms.

Put your own numbers in below. The calculator uses the formula above and prices the official X API at $5.00 to $15.00 per 1,000 mentions.

#What a viral week does to the bill

A spike in mentions costs pages, not posts, on Sorsa API. Take the brand checked every minute with 100K mentions a month, then add a bad week: a product recall and 500K extra mentions. Sorsa API reads them in 25K extra requests, so the month ends near 73K of the Pro plan's 100K and the bill stays $199.

The official X API bills the same week at $2,500 for the posts and up to $7,500 with their authors, on top of the usual month. The spike lands exactly when the team needs the monitor most, and the budget doesn't decide how much of the crisis the team gets to read.

Good to know

A spike can't stop your monitor by surprise. Switch on extra requests in the dashboard's Billing: a prepaid balance that never expires, used only after the plan's requests run out, with a spending limit you set. If you go over every month, the next plan up costs less.

#Four habits that cut the number of checks

Most of a monitor's requests are checks, so the savings come from checking smarter, never from reading fewer mentions:

• Group handles into one query. Ten brands checked every 5 minutes as ten queries make 86.4K checks a month and need Pro; joined with OR in one query they make 8.6K and fit Starter. Route each mention to its brand in your code by the handle it contains.
• Slow down at night. Every minute for 16 daytime hours and every 10 minutes overnight makes about 30.2K checks a month instead of 43.2K, 30% fewer, with the same daytime speed.
• Back off when it's quiet. After a few empty checks in a row, double the interval up to a ceiling such as 10 minutes, and drop back to every minute as soon as a check finds something.
• Split by urgency. Keep the support handle on a one-minute query, and move the brand's name, its misspellings and competitor names to a slower query for reports.

For alerts in Slack or Telegram, many accounts in one X List and the full polling pipeline, see our guide to real-time Twitter monitoring.

#Start with one brand and its real numbers

A mention monitor costs what it checks plus what it reads, and on Sorsa API the checks are the part you control. Count your mentions for a week, pick the longest wait your team accepts, and the plan follows: one brand every 5 minutes fits Starter, one brand every minute with up to 1.1M mentions fits Pro, and the official X API would bill the same 1M mentions $5,000 to $15,000. Run that first day on Sorsa API: every new account gets 100 free requests, enough for a day of 15-minute checks on your own handles before you choose a plan.

#FAQ