The X (Twitter) Social Listening API

Track every conversation about your brand, product, or market on X. Keyword and hashtag search, mention tracking, full reply and quote threads, and history back to 2006, returned as clean JSON from a single API key. Flat-rate, up to 50x cheaper than the official X API.

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Problem

Built for X. Not bolted onto it.

Multiplatform tools go shallow on X

General-purpose listening platforms spread across a dozen networks and reach X through a thin shared connector. They miss the replies, the quote tweets, and the accounts that actually amplified a post.

X is where your category lives

If X is where your category actually launches, argues, and complains, you need depth: every reply and quote under a post, the full advanced-search operator set, and history back to 2006. We do one platform completely instead of many platforms partially.

A data API, not a locked dashboard

Because this is a data API, you get structured JSON you pipe into your own BI, your own product, or an AI agent. No seat limits, no fixed dashboard, no data you cannot export.

That clean data layer is the Sorsa API: every matching tweet with metrics and the full author profile attached, ready to score, store, and join against your own data.

Alternatives

Dedicated X API vs a multiplatform listening connector

Most listening platforms reach X through a shared connector built to look the same across a dozen networks. A dedicated X API treats X as the primary surface, and the difference shows up exactly where listening matters.

Capability	Multiplatform connector	Sorsa (X-native)
Reply & quote threads	Usually top-level posts only	Full replies, quotes, and retweeters on any post
Advanced search	A reduced keyword filter	The complete X advanced-search operator set
Historical reach	Recent window, or archive at extra cost	Date-windowed search back to 2006
Author context	Limited, or a separate enrichment call	Full author profile on every tweet, no extra call
Data delivery	Vendor dashboard, capped exports	Raw JSON, no seat or export limits
Pricing model	Per seat or per mention	Flat per request, 20 req/sec on every plan

Building blocks

Everything social listening on X needs, in one API

Keyword & hashtag search

Find any topic, hashtag, or boolean query with the full set of advanced search operators.

/search-tweets

Mention tracking, tagged and untagged

Catch direct @handle tags and the far larger volume of posts that name your brand in plain text. See how to track every brand mention.

/mentions + /search-tweets

Full conversation context

Pull the replies, quote tweets, and the accounts that retweeted any post, so you see the whole thread, not just the original.

/comments · /quotes · /retweeters

Account & audience tracking

Monitor any account's timeline, followers, and following graph; batch up to 100 profiles per request.

/user-tweets · /followers · /info-batch

Trends by location

Read trending topics for any region by WOEID to tell an isolated spike from a real market movement.

/trends

Historical archive to 2006

Date-windowed search reaches the full public X archive, so you can benchmark a launch from years ago.

since_date / until_date

Developer experience

One request. Clean JSON. That is the whole learning curve.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/search-tweets" \
  -H "ApiKey: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "\"your brand\" min_faves:10 lang:en -filter:retweets", "order": "latest"}'

JSON

{
  "tweets": [
    {
      "id": "1788246135503892480",
      "full_text": "Switched our brand monitoring to this and the depth is night and day.",
      "created_at": "2026-06-04T09:12:44Z",
      "likes_count": 142,
      "retweet_count": 23,
      "reply_count": 9,
      "view_count": 18734,
      "lang": "en",
      "user": {
        "username": "devorah_builds",
        "display_name": "Devorah",
        "followers_count": 8421,
        "verified": true
      }
    }
  ],
  "next_cursor": "DAABCgABF7c2hF..."
}

Every result already carries engagement metrics and the full author profile. No second call to enrich, no OAuth, no expansions to remember.

Score sentiment on the results Build the query visually

Use cases

What teams build on it

Brand & reputation monitoring

Track mentions and sentiment-loaded keywords, route hits to Slack or Discord, and respond before a complaint spreads. Set up near-real-time alerts.

Competitive intelligence

Run the same analysis across competitor handles, map audience overlap, and measure share of voice from one key. Benchmark competitors.

Campaign & launch measurement

Date-windowed pulls quantify volume, reach, unique voices, and top posts for any launch window.

Market & financial sentiment

Sub-300ms responses surface ticker and keyword signals before mainstream coverage picks them up.

Metrics

Share of voice, sentiment, and reach from one feed

Listening is only useful once raw tweets become numbers a team can act on. Because every result already carries engagement metrics and the full author profile, the analytical layer is something you compute directly on the response, with no enrichment calls.

Share of voice: run the same query across your brand and each competitor handle, then compare matched tweet volume and total reach across the result sets.
Sentiment: classify the text of each result to track positive, negative, and neutral movement over a launch or a quarter.
Reach & amplification: read view counts, retweets, and quote volume to size how far a conversation actually traveled. Pull the underlying tweet metrics, or the retweeters, repliers, and quote authors behind a post.
Top voices: rank authors by follower count and engagement to find who is driving the conversation, not just how loud it is.

Every metric above comes from the same flat-rate feed, so a viral spike never turns into a surprise invoice.

Cost

Flat-rate, and built for spiky volume

from $0.02Sorsa API / 1K tweets

$5.00Official X API / 1K tweets

Listening volume is unpredictable. With per-resource billing, a viral spike becomes a surprise invoice. With flat-rate it costs nothing extra, and the author profile is included free on every tweet.

See full pricing

Pricing

Pick a plan

1 request equals 1 action, on every endpoint, on every plan. Same 20 req/sec on Starter as on Enterprise.

Starter

10Krequests

$49/mo

Billed monthly

$5,000 worth of data at official API rates

10,000 monthly requests
from $0.049 per 1,000 tweets
~1M tweets or ~2M profiles included
20 req/sec rate limit
Full advanced-search operators

Get Starter

Pro

100Krequests

$199/mo

Questions, answered

X exposes data endpoints (search and mentions among them) under pay-per-use pricing and OAuth, but there is no dedicated social listening product. Third-party APIs like ours package the same public X data behind a single key with flat monthly pricing, which is what most listening builds run on.

A tool gives you a finished dashboard you log into. An API gives you the raw structured data to build your own dashboard, embed listening inside your product, or feed an AI agent. We are the data layer, not a dashboard, so nothing is locked in and everything is exportable.

Yes. The mentions endpoint catches direct @handle tags, and tweet search catches your brand name in plain text, which is usually the larger share of the conversation. Run both and deduplicate by tweet ID. The mention-tracking guide covers the pattern.

Yes. Poll the search or list endpoints on a short interval and push new posts to Slack, Discord, or any webhook. End-to-end latency is your interval plus about 300ms, which is near real-time for brand and market monitoring. The real-time monitoring guide has production-ready code.

Date-windowed search reaches the full public X archive back to 2006, so you can run the same analysis on a campaign from years ago for benchmarking.

Flat monthly plans: $49 Starter, $199 Pro (most popular), $475 Growth, $899 Enterprise, plus high-volume plans from 1M to 10M requests a month. Yearly billing gives 2 months free, and pay-as-you-go extra requests cover a busy month at your plan’s rate. On Pro that works out to roughly $0.02 per 1,000 tweets, up to 50x cheaper than the official X API, and traffic spikes never cost extra.

Yes. Run the same search across your brand and each competitor handle, then compare matched tweet volume and total reach across the result sets. Because the author profile and metrics ship with every tweet, the numbers come from one feed with no extra calls.

Poll the search or mentions endpoint on a short interval and fire an alert when volume or negative-sentiment hits cross a threshold. End-to-end latency is your interval plus about 300ms, fast enough to respond before a complaint spreads. The real-time monitoring guide covers the polling pattern.

Public data only: public posts, profiles, and engagement counts. It is read-only and never returns private accounts, direct messages, or protected content. You remain responsible for how the data is used under applicable law.

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