Twitter API alternative: read X data 250x cheaper

#How Twitter API alternatives differ

Twitter API alternatives, also called unofficial or third-party Twitter APIs and sometimes Twitter API proxies, are services not run by X that return public X data through their own endpoints and keys, with no X developer account or OAuth. They differ in three ways, and each one changes what you pay or what you risk:

• How they bill. Some charge per request and return up to 100 tweets in one; others bill every tweet returned, or charge per call with one tweet per lookup. On the same 1,000 tweets looked up by ID, that spread runs from $0.014 to $1.11, while the official X API bills $5.00 for 1,000 posts.
• Whether they act through your X account. Managed read-only APIs return data through their own keys and never touch your X account. APIs that also post, like or follow do it through an X account you connect, using its session, so X's rules for automated activity apply to that account.
• What breaks them. A managed API keeps its response schema stable, so your code keeps working. Open-source libraries such as twscrape log in with X accounts you supply, and browser automation with Playwright or Puppeteer drives X's pages one at a time; both break when X changes its site, and the accounts, proxies and repairs are yours.

Operating history matters as much as price in this market: many providers launched in 2025 or 2026, and years of steady service are the best available sign that an API will still answer next year.

#What to use instead of the official X API

Use Sorsa API for every job that reads X data: tweets by the thousand, timelines, search, profiles, follower lists, replies and campaign checks. Sorsa API is a Twitter (X) API and scraper in production since 2022 with 6B+ requests served, formerly TweetScout API, with 45 endpoints behind one key. It covers X and nothing else, so every endpoint and field is built around X's own data.

The official X API bills each post and profile it returns, with a monthly cap on top; X API pricing breaks that rate card down line by line. Three things change when your reads move to Sorsa API:

• You pay per request, not per item. One request returns 100 tweets or 200 followers, so tweets cost from $0.014 per 1,000 and followers from $0.007 per 1,000.
• You skip the developer account. No app, no OAuth: the key goes in an ApiKey header and the first request runs in about 3 minutes, as Twitter API without a developer account shows step by step.
• Speed is the same on every plan. Sorsa API answers 20 requests per second per key, free accounts included, with search back to 2006 and no 3M post-read cap.

Posting is the one job that stays with the official X API. Sorsa API is read-only by design: it never posts, likes or follows and never asks for your X login or cookies, so your X account carries zero risk.

#Twitter API alternatives compared on price

Looking up 1,000 tweets by their IDs costs from $0.014 on Sorsa API and between $0.05 and $5.00 on the other APIs that search results and AI assistants name most often. The task is the same in every row: you hold 1,000 tweet IDs, from a dataset, a log or a monitor, and need the full tweets back. Each price comes from the provider's own pricing page.

• Sorsa API

  How it bills

  One request per call, 100 tweets per request

  1,000 tweets looked up by ID

  from $0.014

• TwexAPI (opens in a new tab)

  How it bills

  5 credits per post

  1,000 tweets looked up by ID

  about $0.05

• TwitterAPI.io (opens in a new tab)

  How it bills

  Per tweet returned

  1,000 tweets looked up by ID

  $0.15

• SocialData (opens in a new tab)

  How it bills

  Per tweet, batches included

  1,000 tweets looked up by ID

  $0.20

• Apify Tweet Scraper V2 (opens in a new tab)

  How it bills

  Per result, 50 per query at least

  1,000 tweets looked up by ID

  $0.40

• TwitterAPIs (opens in a new tab)

  How it bills

  Per call, one tweet per lookup

  1,000 tweets looked up by ID

  $0.80

• GetXAPI (opens in a new tab)

  How it bills

  Per call, one tweet per lookup

  1,000 tweets looked up by ID

  up to $1.11

• Official X API

  How it bills

  Per post returned

  1,000 tweets looked up by ID

  $5.00

What the rows mean for a real pipeline:

• TwitterAPI.io bills $0.15 for every 1,000 tweets it returns, by ID or not, while Sorsa API returns the same 1,000 tweets from $0.014, more than 10x less.
• TwexAPI charges about $0.05 per 1,000 posts and the same 5 credits for a request that returns nothing; Sorsa API reads 1,000 tweets from $0.014, more than 3x less.
• GetXAPI and TwitterAPIs charge per call and return one tweet per lookup, so 1,000 tweets cost up to $1.11 and $0.80 there; one Sorsa API request returns 100 of them.
• SocialData bills every tweet in a batch, $0.20 per 1,000, and $0.004 to $0.008 per follow, retweet or comment check; Sorsa API runs the same checks from $0.0014 each.
• Apify's Tweet Scraper V2 charges $0.40 per 1,000 tweets with at least 50 per query; Sorsa API has no per-query minimum and returns exactly the tweets you ask for, up to 100 per request.

#What the official X API costs in 2026

The official X API charges $0.005 for every post it returns and $0.010 for every user, profile or follower, so 1,000 posts cost $5.00 and 1,000 followers cost $10.00, according to X's own pricing page (opens in a new tab). You buy credits in advance in X's Developer Console; there is no free tier and no subscription.

Three details decide the real bill:

• Authors are billed on top from November 22. Under X's expansions update (opens in a new tab), a search that returns 20 posts with their authors then counts 20 posts and up to 20 users: up to $0.30 instead of $0.10.
• Post reads stop at 3M a month. Pay-per-use ends at 3M post reads per billing cycle. Above that, X sells only Enterprise contracts, from about $42,000 a month.
• Every call needs OAuth. You need a developer account, an app and OAuth credentials before the first request.

At 1M posts a month, the official X API bill is $5,000 before a single author profile. Why X prices data this way, and what it means at scale, is covered in why the X API is so expensive.

#What the same reads cost on Sorsa API

Sorsa API bills one request per call on every endpoint, whatever the call returns, so the price per 1,000 results falls as the page grows. One request to the batch endpoint returns 100 tweets, which puts 1,000 tweets at from $0.014 against $5.00 on the official X API.

For each common read job, Sorsa API costs a fraction of the official X API's price per 1,000 results:

• Tweets

  Sorsa API, from

  $0.014

  Official X API

  $5.00

  Sorsa API endpoint

  POST /tweet-info-bulk, 100 per request

• Followers of an account

  Sorsa API, from

  $0.007

  Official X API

  $10.00

  Sorsa API endpoint

  GET /followers, 200 per request

• Profiles by username or ID

  Sorsa API, from

  $0.014

  Official X API

  $10.00

  Sorsa API endpoint

  GET /info-batch, 100 per request

• Search results, author included

  Sorsa API, from

  $0.07

  Official X API

  $5.00; up to $15.00 with authors from Nov 22

  Sorsa API endpoint

  POST /search-tweets, about 20 per request

Two details widen the gap. Every tweet on Sorsa API carries its author's full profile at no extra cost, where the official X API bills each author as a user read from November 22, 2026. And failed requests are never charged.

The calculator below prices a whole month of reads at list prices: the official X API at its per-item rates, Sorsa API on the plan that fits the volume, plus extra requests when the month runs past it.

#How to judge a Twitter API alternative

Judge any Twitter API alternative by seven checks you can measure before you sign up. Sorsa API meets each one with a number:

• Price per 1,000 results

  What to look at

  The cost of your task, not the price per call

  Sorsa API

  Tweets from $0.014, followers from $0.007

• Speed

  What to look at

  Requests per second on the plan you will pay for

  Sorsa API

  20 per second on every plan, free included

• Setup

  What to look at

  What stands between sign-up and the first response

  Sorsa API

  One API key, no developer account or OAuth, 100 free requests

• Coverage

  What to look at

  Endpoints, history depth, fields in each tweet

  Sorsa API

  45 endpoints, search back to 2006, author in every tweet

• Reliability

  What to look at

  Uptime terms and the cost of a failed call

  Sorsa API

  99.9% uptime; failed requests never charged

• Account safety

  What to look at

  Whether the service acts through your X login

  Sorsa API

  Read-only, never asks for your login or cookies

• Track record

  What to look at

  How long the provider has operated

  Sorsa API

  In production since 2022, formerly TweetScout API

Two of the checks need a sentence more. Sorsa API's 99.9% uptime is guaranteed in our Terms of Service on every paid plan. And when X changes something, we fix it on our side, so the response schema stays stable and your code keeps working.

Run the checks on your own workload, not on a demo call. The free requests are enough for that: 10K tweets or 20K followers of your real data, before any plan.

#What X data you can read through Sorsa API

Sorsa API reads 45 kinds of public X data through one key, grouped by job: profiles and audiences, tweets and engagement, search and trends, verification checks, Lists and Communities, Sorsa Score and utilities.

Each tweet object carries the text, date, language and counts (likes, retweets, replies, quotes, views, bookmarks) plus the author's full profile, so a timeline or a search result needs no second call for its authors. Profiles come 100 per request through GET /info-batch (opens in a new tab), and search takes the same operators as X's Advanced Search through POST /search-tweets (opens in a new tab), back to 2006.

Campaign and giveaway work has its own group: POST /check-follow (opens in a new tab) and its siblings answer whether an account followed, retweeted, quoted or commented, from $0.0014 per check, without paging through anyone's follower list.

#Switch from the official X API in four steps

For a pipeline that reads tweets by the thousand, run it on Sorsa API's batch endpoint: 100 tweets per request, from $0.014 per 1,000, at 20 requests per second. Moving reads over takes four steps and no SDK, only HTTPS calls with one header.

1. Get a key. Sign up and copy your API key from the dashboard. The first 100 requests are free, with no card.

2. Swap OAuth for one header. Send ApiKey: YOUR_API_KEY with every call to https://api.sorsa.io/v3 instead of a bearer token. Keys belong in server-side code.

3. Batch your lookups. Send up to 100 tweet IDs or links to POST /tweet-info-bulk (opens in a new tab) in one request.

   curl -X POST "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/tweet-info-bulk" \
     -H "ApiKey: YOUR_API_KEY" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"tweet_links": ["1849212213712385091",
                         "1849208870017822734"]}'
   

   {
     "tweets": [
       {
         "id": "1849212213712385091",
         "full_text": "Shipping the new search index today.",
         "created_at": "2024-10-23T22:12:03Z",
         "lang": "en",
         "likes_count": 214,
         "retweet_count": 31,
         "reply_count": 12,
         "quote_count": 4,
         "view_count": 18230,
         "user": {
           "id": "1592041833471827968",
           "username": "lena_reads_xdata",
           "display_name": "Lena Reads",
           "followers_count": 4210,
           "verified": false
         }
       }
     ]
   }
   

   Show full response

4. Follow the cursor. List endpoints such as GET /followers (opens in a new tab) return next_cursor, a token that fetches the next page: send it back until it comes back empty.

   import requests
   
   BASE = "https://api.sorsa.io/v3"
   HEADERS = {"ApiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"}
   
   
   def followers(username):
       params = {"username": username}
       while True:
           r = requests.get(f"{BASE}/followers", headers=HEADERS,
                            params=params, timeout=30)
           r.raise_for_status()
           page = r.json()
           yield from page["users"]
           cursor = page.get("next_cursor")
           if not cursor:
               break
           params["next_cursor"] = cursor
   
   
   for user in followers("lena_reads_xdata"):
       print(user["id"], user["username"], user["followers_count"])
   

   const BASE = "https://api.sorsa.io/v3";
   const headers = { ApiKey: "YOUR_API_KEY" };
   
   let cursor = "";
   do {
     const params = new URLSearchParams({ username: "lena_reads_xdata" });
     if (cursor) params.set("next_cursor", cursor);
     const res = await fetch(`${BASE}/followers?${params}`, { headers });
     if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`HTTP ${res.status}`);
     const page = await res.json();
     for (const u of page.users) console.log(u.id, u.username);
     cursor = page.next_cursor;
   } while (cursor);
   

A 403 means the key is missing or the month's requests are used up; a 429 means more than 20 requests in one second, so wait a second and retry. The endpoint-by-endpoint mapping from the official X API, operators included, is in the migration guide.

Good to know

Search operators carry over with one change of dialect. Keywords, exact phrases, from: and to: work as they are; operators that exist only in the official X API v2, such as -is:retweet, take X's Advanced Search form, here -filter:nativeretweets. Test each saved query once before you switch it over.

#Twitter API alternatives for posting

Posting runs through the official X API, which bills $0.015 for each post and $0.20 for a post with a link, and Sorsa API leaves that job to it: Sorsa API is read-only by design and never posts, likes, follows or sends DMs.

Some third-party APIs sell posting, likes and follows for less. They run those actions through an X account you connect, using its session cookies, so that account is the one exposed to X's rules on automated activity.

The setup that holds up pairs the two. Reads, which are most of the volume in any data product, go through Sorsa API, with tweets from $0.014 per 1,000. Writes go through the official X API under your own app, and your posting account never shares its login with the data pipeline.

#Twitter API alternatives for AI agents

AI agents read X data through Sorsa API's MCP server: npx -y sorsa-mcp gives Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients 40 tools on the same key and the same per-request prices. MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is the standard way to hand an AI assistant a set of tools it can call.

Read-only matters more for an agent than for a script. An agent on Sorsa API can search, read timelines, look up profiles and run checks, and it cannot post, like or follow on anyone's behalf, whatever the prompt says. Setup for each client is on the Twitter MCP server page, and plain REST from agent frameworks is covered in Twitter API for AI agents. The agent gets the same 20 requests per second and the same history back to 2006 as any other client.

#Move your X data reads to Sorsa API

For every read job, make Sorsa API your Twitter API alternative: 250x less than the official X API on tweets and 1,000x less on followers, one key, and 20 requests per second on every plan. Keep the official X API for posting only. Start with the 100 free requests: they cover up to 10K tweets or 20K followers, need no card and never expire.

#FAQ