Best Twitter Scrapers in 2026: 10 Tools Priced & Compared

By Sorsa Editorial

Published March 25, 2026. Updated September 23, 2026: rebuilt around ten scrapers checked this month, with current pricing for Apify, Bright Data, Octoparse, PhantomBuster, Scrapingdog, and Thunderbit, the open-source libraries that broke in 2026, and a per-1,000 cost comparison. Prices and repository status verified September 2026.

The best Twitter scraper depends on the job. For bulk tweet collection without code, Apify's Tweet Scraper V2 is the default pick at $0.40 per 1,000 tweets. For managed, enterprise-scale pulls, Bright Data charges $1.50 per 1,000 records. Octoparse, PhantomBuster, and Thunderbit cover no-code exports, and twscrape and Scweet are the open-source Python libraries still working in September 2026, after Twikit, Tweet Harvest, and Nitter all went down this year.

Every scraper needs fixes when X changes its site, and with the cheaper and open-source options, those fixes are your job. If you need the data rather than a tool to maintain, a read-only X data API such as Sorsa API returns public tweets and profiles as JSON through documented endpoints, from $0.02 per 1,000 tweets with author profiles included. The full comparison is below.

Contents

• The best Twitter scrapers in 2026 at a glance
• What is a Twitter scraper?
• Apify: Twitter scraper actors and what they cost
• Managed scraper APIs: Bright Data and Scrapingdog
• No-code Twitter scrapers: Octoparse, PhantomBuster, and Thunderbit
• Open-source Twitter scrapers that still work in 2026
• Cost per 1,000 tweets: scrapers vs APIs
• Skip the scraper: X data APIs
• Scraper or API: how to choose
• FAQ
• Getting started

The best Twitter scrapers in 2026 at a glance

Not a scraper, but often the better fit: X data APIs such as Sorsa return profiles, tweets, search results, and follower lists as JSON from $0.02 per 1,000 tweets. See Skip the scraper: X data APIs.

How we compared them: every price is normalized to cost per 1,000 tweets, rows, or records and was checked against the vendor's own pricing page on September 23, 2026. Each open-source project was checked against its GitHub releases and issue tracker the same week, so the list only includes tools that still return data. Maintenance is judged by who fixes the scraper when X changes: the vendor, a single actor developer, or you.

What is a Twitter scraper?

A Twitter scraper is software you run, or rent per run, to collect data from X.com pages, either by driving a browser or by calling the site's internal endpoints with logged-in sessions. Four kinds of tools share the label:

• Marketplace actors (Apify) are scrapers built by independent developers that you run on a shared cloud and pay for per result.
• Managed scraper APIs (Bright Data, Scrapingdog) run the scraping infrastructure and sell you the records.
• No-code tools and extensions (Octoparse, PhantomBuster, Thunderbit) wrap a scraper in a visual interface.
• Open-source libraries (twscrape, Scweet, Rettiwt-API) run on your own machine with your own X accounts.

Two things are not scrapers: the official X API, which sells access per post read, and read-only X data APIs, where you call documented endpoints with an API key and run nothing yourself. Both are compared later in this guide. If you want the step-by-step mechanics of scraping X.com yourself, the guide on how to scrape Twitter covers them.

Apify: Twitter scraper actors and what they cost

Apify is a marketplace, not a single scraper. Independent developers publish scrapers called actors, you run one on Apify's cloud, and you pay per result out of your plan's credits. Plans start free with $5 of usage a month, then Starter at $19, Scale at $199, and Business at $999 a month, each including the same amount in usage.

The actors that matter for X in September 2026:

• Tweet Scraper V2 (API Dojo). The most used X actor, with more than 100,000 users. It costs $0.40 per 1,000 tweets on every plan, requires each query to return at least 50 tweets, and needs no X account from you. Apify advertises 30 to 80 tweets per second. On the free plan it is limited to 5 runs a month of 10 items each.
• The "cheapest" tweet scraper (Kaito). $0.25 per 1,000 tweets on the free plan, falling to $0.22 on Starter, $0.20 on Scale, and $0.18 on Business. Its own README says minimum charges per call are billed as mock data items, so you pay for, and then filter out, placeholder rows.
• Follower and profile actors. Kaito's follower scraper lists about $0.15 per 1,000 users. API Dojo's user scraper charges $0.40 per 1,000 users plus $0.016 per follower query, $0.008 per search, and $0.004 per profile URL, so looking up profiles one at a time costs about $4.40 per 1,000.

At 100,000 tweets, Tweet Scraper V2 costs $40 and the cheapest actor $18 to $25, before retries. The catch is maintenance you don't control: each actor is maintained by its own developer, so when X changes its site, your pipeline waits for that developer's fix.

Managed scraper APIs: Bright Data and Scrapingdog

Managed scraper APIs run the proxies, browsers, and retries themselves and bill you for delivered data. They cost more per record than marketplace actors, and in exchange the vendor owns the breakage.

Bright Data

Bright Data is the largest managed option. Its Twitter Scraper API has ready-made collectors for posts by URL, posts by profile, and profile data, returns JSON, NDJSON, or CSV, and bills only for delivered records. Pay-as-you-go costs $1.50 per 1,000 records with 5,000 free records a month, and the Scale plan costs $499 a month for 384,000 records, with extra records at $1.30 per 1,000. Pre-collected X datasets start at $2.50 per 1,000 records with a $250 minimum order. It is built for enterprise buyers: strong for multi-site programs and procurement, expensive for a single X project.

Scrapingdog

Scrapingdog's X Scraper API takes a tweet ID or a profile username and returns parsed JSON for 5 credits per request. On the $40 Lite plan (200,000 credits), that works out to about $1.00 per 1,000 requests, with 200 free credits to test. It fits enrichment of posts and profiles you already know rather than keyword discovery.

Why general scraping APIs are missing from this list

Several "best Twitter scraper" lists include general scraping APIs such as ScraperAPI, ZenRows, Oxylabs, Decodo, and Zyte. As of September 2026, none of them offers a dedicated X scraper or template: you get raw pages or proxy access and write and maintain the X parsing yourself. That makes them a proxy layer for a do-it-yourself scraper, not a finished Twitter scraper.

No-code Twitter scrapers: Octoparse, PhantomBuster, and Thunderbit

No-code tools suit people who need a spreadsheet, not a pipeline. All three work, and all three hit limits quickly once volume grows.

Octoparse

Octoparse offers point-and-click templates with cloud runs and scheduling, and its Twitter templates are active in 2026. The advanced search template costs $0.30 per 1,000 rows, and the followers and following template has no extra fee. Plans are Free (10 tasks), Standard at $83 a month or $69 billed annually, and Professional at $299 or $249. Templates are rigid: once your workflow leaves them, you are back to a custom task that breaks when X's page layout changes.

PhantomBuster

PhantomBuster is built for lead generation. Its X automations, the Follower Collector, Profile Scraper, and Search Export, all run on your own X session cookie, so your account carries the risk. Limits on the X side keep volumes small: the Follower Collector returns only about the 70 most recent followers of an account, and PhantomBuster recommends about 60 profile scrapes a day. Plans are Start at $69 a month ($56 billed annually), Grow at $159 ($128), and Scale at $439 ($352), with a 14-day trial. For complete follower lists, the guide to extracting Twitter followers compares the methods that scale.

Thunderbit

Thunderbit is an AI Chrome extension that reads the page you are viewing and exports it to a sheet. It runs inside your own logged-in browser, which makes it quick for a one-off export and impractical for volume: the free plan covers 6 pages a month, and Starter costs $15 a month for 500 rows, or $9 a month billed yearly for 5,000 rows a year, which works out to about $22 to $30 per 1,000 rows.

Open-source Twitter scrapers that still work in 2026

Open-source libraries cost nothing to license, but every working one needs logged-in X accounts for search and followers, and each account you use risks suspension. Here is where the main projects stood on September 23, 2026:

twscrape is the strongest pick for Python: it manages a pool of accounts and ships fixes fastest. Scweet is the easiest to start with, and Rettiwt-API is the most active option for Node.js. None of them is fast in the way a paid service is, because X throttles each account, so throughput grows only with the number of accounts you keep alive.

Broken or discontinued in 2026

If you are looking for a Twint or snscrape alternative, twscrape and Scweet are the working replacements, with the account requirement those older tools did not have. And if you'd rather not maintain a scraper at all, the API route works from Python or Node.js with a single key.

Cost per 1,000 tweets: scrapers vs APIs

Sticker prices hide most of the bill. Here is every option normalized to cost per 1,000 tweets, rows, or records, with what you pay on top:

Rates from each provider's public pricing page, checked September 23, 2026.

Open-source libraries are missing from the table because their cost is not per tweet: it is residential proxies billed per gigabyte, spare X accounts to replace suspended ones, and engineering hours every time X changes. For a team, that usually outweighs any per-record fee.

Flat per-request pricing changes the math because one request returns many tweets. On Sorsa's Pro plan, 1,000 tweets cost about $0.10 through search (50 requests) and from $0.02 through batch lookups by tweet ID (10 requests), with every author profile included. To price your own volume, the X API cost calculator compares official pay-per-use with flat per-request plans.

Skip the scraper: X data APIs

An X data API returns X data through documented REST endpoints: you send a request with an API key and get structured JSON back, in the same response schema every time. There is nothing for your team to run or patch.

Sorsa is a read-only REST API for public X data, built for exactly that. It covers profiles, tweets, search with advanced search operators, followers and following (up to 200 per request), replies, quotes, retweeters, lists, and verification checks for follows, retweets, and comments. Every tweet arrives with its author profile at no extra charge, batch endpoints return up to 100 tweets or profiles per request, and every plan runs at 20 requests per second, which is up to 2,000 tweets a second through batch lookups. You don't need an X account or an X developer app: sign up, copy your API key, and call any endpoint.

A search takes one request:

curl -X POST "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/search-tweets" \
  -H "ApiKey: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "from:NASA -filter:replies", "order": "latest"}'

The response holds about 20 tweets with their authors and a next_cursor for the next page.

Against the official X API, the gap is widest on read-heavy work. The official API bills $0.005 per post read and $0.010 per profile and caps pay-per-use at 3 million post reads a month; the full X API pricing breakdown has every rate. The same workloads on Sorsa's flat plans:

TwitterAPI.io is the other pay-as-you-go X data API worth knowing: it charges $0.15 per 1,000 tweets and $0.18 per 1,000 profiles, with a minimum charge per call. On the Pro plan, Sorsa costs about $0.10 per 1,000 tweets through search and $0.02 per 1,000 profiles through batch lookups. The roundup of Twitter API alternatives covers the wider field.

Scraper or API: how to choose

• A few hundred tweets for a one-off report: Thunderbit or Octoparse.
• Bulk tweets for a one-time analysis, without code: Apify's Tweet Scraper V2.
• Lead lists from profiles and followers: PhantomBuster, within X's caps and with your account at risk.
• Enterprise, multi-site programs with procurement needs: Bright Data.
• Free and fully under your control: twscrape or Scweet in Python, Rettiwt-API in Node.js, if you can run accounts and proxies.
• Production pipelines, dashboards, research datasets, and AI agents that need a stable schema and nothing to maintain: an X data API such as Sorsa.
• Posting, DMs, and other write actions: the official X API.

FAQ

What is the best Twitter scraper in 2026?

It depends on the job. Apify's Tweet Scraper V2 is the best general pick for bulk tweet collection without code at $0.40 per 1,000 tweets, Bright Data suits managed enterprise pulls at $1.50 per 1,000 records, and twscrape is the strongest open-source Python library. For production pipelines that need clean JSON without running or maintaining a scraper, a read-only X data API such as Sorsa is cheaper, from $0.02 per 1,000 tweets.

Do Twitter scrapers still work in 2026?

Commercial scrapers such as Apify actors and Bright Data still work, and so do the open-source libraries twscrape, Scweet, and Rettiwt-API. Several others broke: Twikit and Tweet Harvest stopped working in March 2026, Nitter was archived again in September 2026 after legal action from X, and snscrape and Twint have been dead since 2023. Working scrapers need fixes whenever X changes its site.

Is it legal to scrape Twitter (X)?

It depends on how and where you do it. X's Terms of Service prohibit crawling or scraping without prior written consent, and for violations that involve requesting, viewing, or accessing more than 1,000,000 posts in 24 hours, they set liquidated damages of $15,000 per 1,000,000 posts. In the United States, the Ninth Circuit found that scraping public data likely does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but a court later found that hiQ Labs breached LinkedIn's User Agreement, and hiQ accepted a $500,000 judgment in 2022. You are responsible for how you collect and use data; this is general information, not legal advice.

What is the best open-source Twitter scraper?

In September 2026, twscrape is the best open-source option for Python: it is actively maintained, covers search, timelines, profiles, followers, and replies, and manages a pool of X accounts. Scweet is the simplest Python setup, with a single session cookie, and Rettiwt-API is the most active TypeScript library. All three need logged-in X accounts for search and followers.

What is the cheapest Twitter scraper?

By sticker price, the cheapest commercial scrapers are Apify actors at $0.18 to $0.40 per 1,000 tweets, and open-source libraries such as twscrape have no license fee but need X accounts, proxies, and upkeep. If you don't need a scraper at all, a flat per-request X data API is usually cheaper at recurring volume: Sorsa costs from $0.02 per 1,000 tweets on batch endpoints and about $0.10 per 1,000 on search, with author profiles included.

How much does the Apify Twitter scraper cost?

Apify's Tweet Scraper V2 costs $0.40 per 1,000 tweets on every plan, with a minimum of 50 tweets per query. Apify plans start with a free tier worth $5 of usage a month, then Starter at $19, Scale at $199, and Business at $999 a month. Cheaper third-party actors charge $0.18 to $0.25 per 1,000 tweets depending on the plan.

How much does Bright Data's Twitter scraper cost?

Bright Data's X scraper costs $1.50 per 1,000 records on pay-as-you-go, with 5,000 free records a month. The Scale plan costs $499 a month for 384,000 records, with extra records at $1.30 per 1,000, and ready-made X datasets start at $2.50 per 1,000 records with a $250 minimum order.

Which Twitter scraper is fastest?

Among scrapers, managed services are usually fastest: Apify advertises 30 to 80 tweets per second for Tweet Scraper V2. Open-source speed depends on how many X accounts you run, because X throttles each one. For predictable throughput without a scraper, Sorsa allows 20 requests per second on every plan, which is up to 2,000 tweets per second through batch lookups.

Can you scrape Twitter without coding?

Yes. Octoparse offers point-and-click Twitter templates, including an advanced search template at $0.30 per 1,000 rows on top of a plan from $69 a month, PhantomBuster runs profile and follower automations from $56 a month, and Thunderbit exports from your browser from $9 a month billed yearly. If you need the data rather than a scraper, you can build queries in the Sorsa search builder without signing up and run them in the playground with a free API key, no code needed.

What is the difference between a Twitter scraper and a Twitter API?

With a scraper, you or its developer run the data collection and fix it whenever X changes its site. With an API, you call documented endpoints with a key and get JSON in a fixed schema. The official X API charges $0.005 per post read, while read-only X data APIs such as Sorsa bill per request, from $0.02 per 1,000 tweets.

Getting started

If you need X data rather than a scraper to maintain, price your volume first: the cost calculator compares official X API rates with Sorsa's per-request plans. Build the exact query you need in the search builder without signing up, then run it in the browser playground with the free key every new account gets: 100 free requests with no credit card and no expiry, enough for up to 10,000 tweets or 20,000 profiles. The quickstart takes you from key to first JSON response in a few minutes, and plans start from $0.02 per 1,000 tweets on batch endpoints, with 20 requests per second on every plan.

Reviewed by Keksich, founder of Sorsa, marketer and X API researcher.

This guide draws on our team's hands-on work running the live Sorsa API since 2022 and pricing X data workloads across providers. Every price was checked on September 23, 2026 against each vendor's own pricing or product pages, open-source status was read from each project's GitHub releases and issue tracker the same week, and the legal points come from X's current Terms of Service and published coverage of hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn. Sorsa is an independent company and is not affiliated with X Corp. More on our team is on the about page. Verified September 2026.