How this calculator works
This calculator is independent of X and prices both providers from their published rate cards. The official X API side multiplies each monthly volume by X's public pay-per-use rates, re-verified on September 4, 2026: $0.005 per post read, $0.010 per user or follower read, $0.005 per list or Space item, and $0.010 per trends request. Read operations bill per resource returned, so every post, profile, or follower in a response is a separate charge, and pay-per-use accounts stop serving post reads at 3 million per monthly billing cycle. The full rate card and its 2026 changes are covered in the Twitter API pricing breakdown.
The Sorsa side converts the same volumes into API requests using documented page sizes: up to 20 tweets per search or timeline request, up to 100 tweets or profiles per batch lookup, and up to 200 accounts per follower or following request. One request costs one unit from a monthly plan quota, regardless of endpoint, and the calculator picks the smallest plan that covers the total.
Owned reads, DM events, like, mute and block reads, webhook events, and all write actions are excluded. Sorsa is a read only API for public X data, so those categories have no Sorsa equivalent. For reference, the official API bills $0.015 per standard post created and $0.20 per post containing a URL.
How to calculate Twitter API costs by hand
Official X API monthly cost = (posts read x $0.005) + (author profiles x $0.010) + (followers or following read x $0.010) + (list and Space items x $0.005) + (trends requests x $0.010).
Flat-rate requests needed = (posts read / 20) + (profiles / 100) + (followers or following / 200) + (verification checks x 1).
Pick the smallest plan whose monthly quota covers that number: Starter covers 10,000 requests, Pro 100,000, Enterprise 500,000.
Example: 100,000 mentions per month with author profiles. Official: 100,000 x $0.005 = $500 in post reads plus 100,000 x $0.010 = $1,000 in user reads, $1,500 in total. Flat rate: 100,000 / 20 = 5,000 requests, which fits the Starter plan at $49 with author profiles already inside every response. Fetching known tweet IDs through the batch endpoint needs 5x fewer requests again.
What 10,000, 100,000, and 1 million tweets cost on the X API
Official pay-per-use cost scales linearly with volume. The table uses $0.005 per post read, $0.010 per author profile, and search-style requests of about 20 tweets on the Sorsa side.
| Tweets per month | Official X API, posts only | Official X API, with author profiles | Sorsa requests (search, 20 per request) | Sorsa plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $50 | $150 | 500 | Starter, $49 |
| 50,000 | $250 | $750 | 2,500 | Starter, $49 |
| 100,000 | $500 | $1,500 | 5,000 | Starter, $49 |
| 500,000 | $2,500 | $7,500 | 25,000 | Pro, $199 |
| 1,000,000 | $5,000 | $15,000 | 50,000 | Pro, $199 |
| 3,000,000 (official monthly cap) | $15,000 | $45,000 | 150,000 | Enterprise, $899 |
| Above 3,000,000 | Enterprise contract required | Enterprise contract required | 150,000+ | Enterprise, $899 up to 10 million tweets; custom plans above |
Batch lookups by tweet ID return up to 100 tweets per request, so the same volumes need one fifth of the requests shown. The official pay-per-use plan blocks post reads for the rest of the billing cycle once 3 million have been fetched, regardless of remaining credit.
Per resource vs per request: why the bills differ
The two providers meter fundamentally different units. One search call on the official X API returns about 20 posts and bills 20 post reads at $0.005 each, or $0.10. Request the author profiles and the same call adds 20 user reads at $0.010 each, another $0.20. The identical call on Sorsa API is one request from a monthly quota, with every author profile included.
Per resource billing also compounds through batching. Fetching 100 tweets with authors through official endpoints costs $1.50. The same 100 tweets through a single batch request cost a fraction of a cent on any Sorsa plan. Depending on the workload mix, flat per request billing works out up to 50x cheaper than official per resource rates. The structural reasons behind the gap are covered in why the Twitter API is so expensive.
Sorsa API cost per 1,000 tweets and profiles
Sorsa pricing starts from $0.02 per 1,000 tweets and from $0.01 per 1,000 profiles when batch and list endpoints are used. Effective per item rates by plan:
| Data type | Items per request | Starter | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tweets (batch endpoint) | up to 100 | $0.05 per 1,000 | $0.02 per 1,000 | $0.018 per 1,000 |
| Tweets (search, timelines, replies) | ~20 | $0.25 per 1,000 | $0.10 per 1,000 | $0.09 per 1,000 |
| Profiles (follower lists) | up to 200 | $0.025 per 1,000 | $0.01 per 1,000 | $0.009 per 1,000 |
Plans: Starter is $49 for 10,000 requests, Pro is $199 for 100,000, Enterprise is $899 for 500,000. Every plan runs at 20 requests per second and includes all 40 endpoints. Picking batch endpoints over single lookups is the main cost lever; the patterns are documented in optimizing API usage.
What real workloads cost: official X API vs Sorsa plan
| Workload | Official X API | Sorsa plan |
|---|---|---|
| Brand monitoring: 100,000 mentions plus author profiles per month | $1,500 / mo | Starter, $49 per month (5,000 requests) |
| Competitor tracking: 10 rivals, 20,000 posts plus authors and 50,000 follower reads per month | $800 / mo | Starter, $49 per month (1,250 requests) |
| Giveaway verification: 5,000 follow checks per month | No single-call equivalent; each check means paging a follower list at $0.010 per profile | Starter, $49 per month (5,000 requests) |
| Research dataset: 500,000 posts plus authors | $7,500 | Pro, $199 per month (25,000 requests) |
| Real-time monitoring: 24/7 polling, about 1.73M posts plus authors per month | $25,950 / mo, 58% of the 3M read cap | Pro, $199 per month (86,500 requests) |
At full plan volume the gap widens: Starter's 10,000 requests cover about 200,000 tweets that cost $1,000 in official post reads, Pro's 100,000 requests cover about 2 million tweets ($10,000 official), and Enterprise's 500,000 requests cover about 10 million tweets, a volume the official pay-per-use plan cannot serve at all past its 3 million post read cap. Teams moving an existing integration can follow the migration guide.
What can change your real bill
- 24 hour deduplication: X charges each post or profile once per UTC day, so polling jobs that re-fetch the same items pay less than volume multiplied by rate. X calls this a soft guarantee, so it is not a number to budget against.
- Page density: narrow search queries return fewer than 20 tweets per response. On any per-request provider that raises the effective cost per tweet, while the official per-resource bill stays the same. Broader queries and batch lookups by ID bring the request count back down.
- The 3 million post read cap: once a pay-per-use account fetches 3 million posts in a billing cycle, post read endpoints stop until the next cycle regardless of remaining credit. The only official route past it is an Enterprise contract, historically from around $42,000 per month. Sorsa plans have no read cap beyond the request quota, and custom plans go above 500,000 requests.
- Rate limits are separate from cost: the official API still enforces per-endpoint request windows and returns HTTP 429 long before the cap, so paying more does not buy throughput. Sorsa runs a flat 20 requests per second on every plan. The per-endpoint windows are mapped in the Twitter API rate limits guide.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate my Twitter API monthly cost?
Multiply each monthly volume by its rate: posts read x $0.005, author profiles and follower reads x $0.010, list and Space items x $0.005, trends requests x $0.010, then add the results. For a flat-rate plan, divide tweets by 20, profiles by 100, and followers by 200 to get the request count, and pick the smallest plan quota that covers it. The calculator above runs both formulas for you.
What do 10,000, 100,000, and 1 million tweets cost on the X API?
At official pay-per-use rates, 10,000 post reads cost $50, 100,000 cost $500, and 1 million cost $5,000. Adding author profiles triples each figure to $150, $1,500, and $15,000. The same volumes through search endpoints on Sorsa take 500, 5,000, and 50,000 requests: the Starter plan at $49 covers the first two, and the Pro plan at $199 covers 1 million tweets, author profiles included.
Does the X API charge per request or per tweet?
The official X API charges per resource returned, not per request. A search call that returns 20 posts is billed as 20 post reads at $0.005 each, and any author profiles expanded in the response are billed separately at $0.010 each. Credits are bought upfront in the Developer Console and deducted in real time. Sorsa bills per request: one call is one unit from the plan quota, whether it returns 1 item or 200.
Why do author profiles make the official X API more expensive?
Every tweet returned by the official API belongs to an author, and requesting author data adds a $0.010 user read per post on top of the $0.005 post read. That triples the cost of a typical monitoring workload. Sorsa includes the full author profile in every tweet response at no extra charge.
How many API requests does my workload need on a flat-rate plan?
Divide each volume by the documented page size: search and timeline requests return up to 20 tweets, batch lookups up to 100 tweets or 100 profiles, and follower or following requests up to 200 accounts. Each verification check is one request. A workload of 100,000 tweets from search plus 50,000 follower profiles needs 5,000 + 250 = 5,250 requests, which fits the Starter plan's 10,000-request quota.
How accurate is this calculator?
The official X API side uses the per resource rates published on X's pricing page, re-verified on September 4, 2026, including the 3 million post read cap. The Sorsa side converts volumes into requests using documented page sizes of 20, 100, and 200 items. Real official bills can be lower when X's 24 hour deduplication removes repeat fetches, and per-request costs can be higher when narrow queries return fewer than 20 items per response.
Does the calculator include posting, DM, or webhook costs?
No. Sorsa is a read only API for public X data, so write actions such as posting, liking, following, and direct messages, along with webhook event delivery, are out of scope. The official X API bills those separately: $0.015 per standard post, $0.20 per post containing a URL, $0.015 per DM sent, and $0.005 to $0.010 per billable webhook event.
Run the same workload on 100 free requests
Every new Sorsa account includes 100 free requests: no card, no expiry, valid on all 40 endpoints, enough for up to 2,000 tweets from search or 10,000 tweets through batch lookups. Run the exact calls behind this estimate in the API playground, then pick a plan when the numbers make sense.