Twitter/X API pricing in 2026

#Twitter/X API prices per 1,000 posts, users and followers

On the official X API, 1,000 posts cost $5.00 and 1,000 users or followers cost $10.00. X bills every object a response returns, so the price per 1,000 results is the unit of every read bill.

To price a month of posts, followers and profiles at these rates, the free Twitter API Cost Calculator adds up the bill for your own mix.

The read rates on X's pay-per-use pricing page (opens in a new tab) today, per object and per 1,000:

• Posts, Lists, Spaces, Communities and Community Notes: $0.005 each, $5.00 per 1,000.
• Users, followers and accounts followed: $0.010 each, $10.00 per 1,000.
• Your app's own account (owned reads): $0.001 each, $1.00 per 1,000.
• Likes, mutes and blocks: $0.001 each.
• Direct-message events: $0.010 each.

Writes are billed per request instead: $0.015 for a post and $0.20 for a post with a link. Reads stop at 3M posts per billing cycle, which is $15,000 of posts; above that, X sells only Enterprise contracts. From November 22, 2026, a post that arrives with its author's profile costs $0.015, so 1,000 search results with their authors cost up to $15.00.

#Read the same X data through Sorsa API

To read public X data for a fraction of those prices, use Sorsa API, a Twitter (X) API and scraper: it bills per request, not per object, so 100 tweets come back with their authors in one request, from $0.014 per 1,000.

Its price per 1,000 results is lower on every kind of read: 250x on tweets and 1,000x on followers. The third row shows what the official X API charges once author profiles are billed.

• Sorsa API

  Tweets by ID

  from $0.014

  Search results

  from $0.07

  Followers

  from $0.007

  Profiles

  from $0.014

• Official X API

  Tweets by ID

  $5.00

  Search results

  $5.00

  Followers

  $10.00

  Profiles

  $10.00

• Official X API with authors, from Nov 22

  Tweets by ID

  up to $15.00

  Search results

  up to $15.00

  Followers

  $10.00

  Profiles

  $10.00

One Sorsa API request carries up to 100 tweets, 100 profiles or 200 followers and is billed once, which is where the gap comes from. The cards turn the tweet rate into totals up to X's monthly cap.

At 3M tweets a month the official X API bill reaches $15,000 for the posts alone, while the same 3M tweets cost from $42 through Sorsa API.

Start reading in four steps

Four steps take you from sign-up to the first tweets in your own code.

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

2. Send up to 100 tweet IDs. Post them to POST /tweet-info-bulk (opens in a new tab) with your key in the ApiKey header; links work as well as IDs.

   curl -X POST \
     "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/tweet-info-bulk" \
     -H "ApiKey: YOUR_API_KEY" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"tweet_links": [
           "1851902745320546304",
           "1851876301958201344"]}'
   

   {
     "tweets": [
       {
         "id": "1851902745320546304",
         "full_text": "Shipping the v2 exporter today.",
         "created_at": "2026-10-28T14:05:12Z",
         "lang": "en",
         "likes_count": 214,
         "retweet_count": 31,
         "reply_count": 12,
         "view_count": 18240,
         "user": {
           "id": "1592041833471827968",
           "username": "maya_ships_daily",
           "display_name": "Maya Ships",
           "followers_count": 12840,
           "verified": false
         }
       }
     ]
   }
   

   Show full response

3. Search when you have no IDs. POST /search-tweets (opens in a new tab) takes the operators of X Advanced Search, back to 2006, and returns up to 20 tweets per page with a next_cursor for the next one.

   import requests
   
   URL = "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/search-tweets"
   HEADERS = {"ApiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"}
   
   
   def search(query, pages=5):
       body, tweets = {"query": query, "order": "latest"}, []
       for _ in range(pages):
           r = requests.post(URL, headers=HEADERS, json=body)
           r.raise_for_status()
           page = r.json()
           tweets += page["tweets"]
           cursor = page.get("next_cursor")
           if not cursor:
               break
           body["next_cursor"] = cursor
       return tweets
   
   
   rows = search('"x api pricing" since:2026-10-01')
   print(len(rows), "tweets, each with its author")
   

   const URL = "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/search-tweets";
   const headers = {
     ApiKey: "YOUR_API_KEY",
     "Content-Type": "application/json",
   };
   
   const body = { query: '"x api pricing" since:2026-10-01', order: "latest" };
   const tweets = [];
   for (let page = 0; page < 5; page++) {
     const res = await fetch(URL, {
       method: "POST", headers, body: JSON.stringify(body),
     });
     if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`HTTP ${res.status}`);
     const data = await res.json();
     tweets.push(...data.tweets);
     if (!data.next_cursor) break;
     body.next_cursor = data.next_cursor;
   }
   console.log(tweets.length, "tweets, each with its author");
   

4. Check what you spent. GET /key-usage-info (opens in a new tab) returns the requests left and the date they renew, and the call itself is free.

A 401 or 403 answer means the key is wrong, missing or out of requests; a 429 means more than 20 requests in one second, so pause for a second and retry.

#How X API pay-per-use billing works

X API pay-per-use is a prepaid meter: you buy credits in the X Developer Console, and each response draws them down by the objects it returns, not by the calls you make. The rules that decide a read bill:

• Billed per object, not per call. A search that returns 100 posts is 100 post reads, $0.50. X's team confirmed it on the developer forum (opens in a new tab) when a developer asked why one following list cost $10: it was charged "per user returned, not per request", 1,000 accounts at $0.010.
• Owned reads. Your own app reading its own account (its posts, mentions, followers, likes, bookmarks, lists) pays $0.001 per object.
• One charge per object per day. X deduplicates within a 24-hour UTC day, so a post fetched twice before midnight UTC is billed once.
• Events cost too. Webhook events from the X Activity API are billed per event delivered: $0.005 for a new post, $0.010 for a follow or a direct message received.
• A monthly cap. Pay-per-use stops at 3M post reads per billing cycle; above it, X sells only Enterprise contracts.
• Requests stop with the money. An empty balance or a reached spending limit blocks calls until you top up or the next cycle starts.

Access takes a developer account at console.x.com, signed in with an X account, plus an app and bearer-token or OAuth credentials. Each endpoint also has its own request limits, listed in X API rate limits. Sorsa API needs none of that: one key in the ApiKey header and 20 requests per second on every plan.

#From November 22, X bills author profiles

From November 22, 2026, the official X API bills every object returned through expansions, so a post that arrives with its author's profile costs $0.015 instead of $0.005. Expansions are how the official X API attaches related objects to a response: the author, media, polls, places and quoted or replied-to posts. Until now X did not count them; its expansions billing notice (opens in a new tab) of October 23 sets users at $0.010 and media, polls, places and posts at $0.005 each.

For a search job that triples the bill: 1,000 results with their authors go from $5.00 to as much as $15.00. Authors who appear more than once in a UTC day are billed once, so a real bill lands between the two.

Sorsa API never splits a tweet into billable parts. Every tweet object carries the author's full profile in user, a quoted tweet in quoted_status and media links in entities, all for one price: from $0.07 per 1,000 search results and from $0.014 per 1,000 tweets by ID.

Good to know

If your code asks the official X API for expansions=author_id, the same requests cost up to three times as much from November 22, with no change on your side. Check your expansions before your next top-up.

#What Twitter/X API jobs cost per month

A typical read job costs from $500 to $45,000 a month on the official X API and from $1.40 to $210 on Sorsa API, authors included. The table prices five common jobs at both, before and after X starts billing authors.

• Track 100K brand mentions

  Sorsa API

  from $7

  Official X API until Nov 21

  $500

  Official X API from Nov 22

  up to $1,500

• Export 1M followers

  Sorsa API

  from $7

  Official X API until Nov 21

  $10,000

  Official X API from Nov 22

  $10,000

• Enrich 100K profiles

  Sorsa API

  from $1.40

  Official X API until Nov 21

  $1,000

  Official X API from Nov 22

  $1,000

• Rehydrate 1M tweets by ID

  Sorsa API

  from $14

  Official X API until Nov 21

  $5,000

  Official X API from Nov 22

  up to $15,000

• Collect 3M search results

  Sorsa API

  from $210

  Official X API until Nov 21

  $15,000

  Official X API from Nov 22

  up to $45,000

Each row counts every result once. Follower exports and profile lookups return users, so November leaves them unchanged; mention tracking and search carry an author on every post, so they triple at most. Rehydration, fetching full tweets from a list of IDs, runs 100 IDs per Sorsa API request, which is why a million tweets start at $14.

#The 3M read cap and X API Enterprise pricing

Pay-per-use on the official X API stops at 3M post reads per billing cycle, which is $15,000 of posts; past that, X offers only an Enterprise contract with a price it does not publish. When X introduced Enterprise access in 2023, contracts were reported from $42,000 a month (opens in a new tab).

X's Enterprise pricing page (opens in a new tab) describes custom packages on committed contracts: read volumes above the cap, the full firehose and language streams, likes streams, engagement metrics, Account Activity, higher rate limits and a named account manager.

Sorsa API has no monthly read cap. The 3M tweets that close the official pay-per-use meter cost from $42 on Sorsa API, about a thousandth of that reported Enterprise price, and the next 3M cost the same again.

From the Platform plan up, Sorsa API adds higher rate limits on request, with a dedicated account manager from Business, custom contract terms from Scale and dedicated infrastructure on Hyperscale. For volumes past the largest plan or for custom terms and invoices, talk to sales.

#How Twitter API pricing changed from 2023 to 2026

X no longer sells fixed monthly API plans: its Free tier users moved to pay-per-use credits on February 6, 2026, Basic subscriptions moved at their first renewal after June 1, and Pro subscriptions after September 1, 2026.

The plans date from March 30, 2023, when X replaced free API access with paid tiers (opens in a new tab): a write-only Free tier and Basic at $100 a month with 10K post reads, with Enterprise above. The Premium v1.1 API, with its premium search, was retired on April 20, 2023. On October 23, 2024, X doubled Basic to $200 a month (opens in a new tab) and raised its read cap to 15K posts, kept Pro at $5,000 and cut Free to 500 posts a month.

In October 2025 X began a pay-per-use pilot (opens in a new tab), then launched pay-per-use for everyone (opens in a new tab) on February 6, 2026, then retired legacy Basic (opens in a new tab) and legacy Pro (opens in a new tab): each subscription ended at its cutover date and reopened as a credit balance under the same 3M cap. The question is the Twitter API free has its own answer, and why the X API is so expensive covers the reasons behind each step.

#What posting costs on the official X API

Since April 20, 2026, the official X API charges $0.015 for each post you publish and $0.20 for a post that contains a link, while summoned replies stay at $0.010. The same April pricing update (opens in a new tab) removed follows, likes and quote-posts through the API from every self-serve plan.

Other writes on the official rate card: direct messages and user interactions $0.015 per request, deletions $0.010, bookmarks and media metadata $0.005. A product that publishes 1,000 link posts a month pays $200 for them.

Sorsa API is read-only by design: it never posts, likes or follows, and it never asks for your X login or cookies, so your X account carries zero risk. Products that publish pair the two: the official X API for the writes, Sorsa API for the reads, which are usually most of the bill.

#What to compare before you buy X API credits

Six things decide what reading X data costs you: the price per 1,000 results, what each result includes, the monthly cap, the rate limit, the setup and the risk to your X account. Sorsa API meets each one with a number.

• Price per 1,000 tweets

  Sorsa API

  from $0.014, author included

  Official X API

  $5.00, authors $10.00 more from Nov 22

• Monthly read cap

  Sorsa API

  None

  Official X API

  3M posts, then Enterprise

• Rate limit

  Sorsa API

  20 requests per second on every plan, up to 2,000 tweets a second

  Official X API

  Set per endpoint

• Setup

  Sorsa API

  One API key

  Official X API

  Developer account, app, OAuth or bearer token

• History

  Sorsa API

  Search back to 2006

  Official X API

  Full-archive search at $0.005 a post

• Risk to your X account

  Sorsa API

  None: no login or cookies

  Official X API

  Developer account tied to your X account

Sorsa API, formerly TweetScout API, has run in production since 2022 with 6B+ requests served and 99.9% uptime. Failed requests are never charged, and every call to any endpoint counts as one request, with no multipliers by endpoint. The same six criteria run through every comparison in Twitter API alternatives.

#Price your X data job before you buy credits

The number that decides an X data bill is the price per 1,000 results: $5.00 per 1,000 posts on the official X API, up to $15.00 with authors from November 22, against from $0.014 per 1,000 tweets on Sorsa API with every author included. Read your own job's first 10K tweets on the free requests and see the difference on your data.

#FAQ