Pricing guide
Prices checked Nov 5, 2026X (Twitter) API pricing in 2026
The official per-post, per-profile and per-write rates, what 10,000 to 1,000,000 posts a month cost on the official API and at unofficial providers, and how to pick one without overpaying.
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The short answer
In 2026 the X (Twitter) API is pay-per-use: you buy credits in advance, with no subscription or minimum spend, and most reads are charged per resource returned. A post read costs $0.005, a user profile $0.010 and creating a post $0.015 ($0.200 if it contains a URL), so reading 1,000 posts costs $5.00. There is no permanent free tier, only one-time credits of up to $70 ($20 after the first credit purchase plus up to $50 matching the first auto-recharge) that expire after 3 months. Unofficial providers that bill per post, none of them affiliated with X Corp., charge $0.15 (twitterapi.io) to $0.40 (Apify Tweet Scraper V2, plus a paid Apify plan) for the same 1,000 posts.
Last updated: . Prices checked on November 5, 2026 from each provider’s official page; every figure below links to its source.
How much does the official X API cost?
X sells API access by usage. You buy credits in the Developer Console and every call draws them down: reads are charged per resource returned, writes per request. The pricing page puts it plainly: “No contracts, subscriptions, or minimum spend.”
Access is self-serve: sign in to the Developer Console, accept the developer agreement and create an app to get keys. A bearer token covers read-only access to public data; posting, DMs and anything done on behalf of a user need OAuth user credentials (getting access).
| Read, charged per resource returned | Price per resource | Per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|
| Posts | $0.005 | $5.00 |
| Users (profiles) | $0.010 | $10.00 |
| Followers and following | $0.010 | $10.00 |
| DM events | $0.010 | $10.00 |
| Lists, Spaces, Communities, Notes | $0.005 each | $5.00 |
| Likes, mutes, blocks | $0.001 each | $1.00 |
| Owned reads (your own account, on listed endpoints) | $0.001 | $1.00 |
| Charged per request | Price per request | Per 1,000 requests |
|---|---|---|
| Create a post | $0.015 | $15.00 |
| Create a post that contains a URL | $0.200 | $200.00 |
| DM interaction: create | $0.015 | $15.00 |
| User interaction: create | $0.015 | $15.00 |
| Interaction: delete | $0.010 | $10.00 |
| Bookmark | $0.005 | $5.00 |
| Trends | $0.010 | $10.00 |
| Counts: recent | $0.005 | $5.00 |
| Counts: all (full archive) | $0.010 | $10.00 |
Source: X API pricing page, checked November 5, 2026. The page lists a few more write types (lists, media metadata, privacy updates) at $0.005 to $0.010 a request.
The rules that change the bill
- Deduplication. Resources are deduplicated within a 24-hour UTC day, so a post returned by several queries that day is billed once. X calls this a “soft guarantee”; the window resets at midnight UTC.
- Only data is billed. Successful responses that return data are charged; a request that returns nothing is not.
- Monthly cap. Pay-per-usage accounts are capped at 3 million post reads per monthly billing cycle. Above that X points to an Enterprise plan, which has no published price.
- Spending controls. You can set a maximum spend per billing cycle, after which requests are blocked until the next cycle, and an auto-recharge that tops the balance up when it falls below a threshold.
- Owned reads. When the user id in the request is the authenticated user who owns the app, endpoints such as
/2/users/{id}/tweetsand/2/users/{id}/followerscost $0.001 per resource.
Sources: pricing, usage and billing.
Is there a free tier?
No permanent free tier is listed. X offers one-time credits instead, under rules updated on October 13, 2026 and still rolling out:
- $20 once an account with its first eligible card completes its first purchase of API credits. Adding a card alone no longer qualifies, and prepaid cards do not count.
- A match of up to $50 on the account’s first successful automatic recharge.
- At most $70 in total. Free credits are spent before purchased ones and expire 3 months after they are granted.
Source: X API free credits.
What happened to Basic and Pro?
X’s current pricing and overview pages list only pay-per-usage credits, with Enterprise above the 3 million cap. The Free, Basic and Pro monthly tiers that third-party articles still quote are not on them, so budget from docs.x.com.
What does reading 10,000, 100,000 or 1,000,000 posts cost?
The same three monthly volumes, priced five ways. Every line is unit price times quantity, at the prices checked on November 5, 2026. The assumptions:
- Public posts from search or timelines, over a 30-day month, with no post read twice on the same UTC day.
- The X API, twitterapi.io, SocialData and Apify bill every post returned.
- Pinlyx bills per request: a live X call returns up to 100 posts and costs 8 requests from the budget on Starter, 6 on Growth and 4 on Scale. The lines assume every call returns a full page of 100. A short page costs the same, so the real cost per post can be higher.
- Where a provider needs a plan, the line shows the cheapest plan that covers the volume.
| Provider | Calculation | 10,000 posts | 100,000 posts | 1,000,000 posts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| X API (official) | posts × $0.005Source: docs.x.com | $50.00 | $500.00 | $5,000.00 |
| twitterapi.io | posts × $0.00015 (15 credits per tweet; $1 buys 100,000 credits)Source: twitterapi.io | $1.50 | $15.00 | $150.00 |
| SocialData | posts × $0.0002Source: docs.socialdata.tools | $2.00 | $20.00 | $200.00 |
| Apify Tweet Scraper V2 | posts × $0.0004, drawn from a paid Apify plan’s included usage (Starter $19 includes $19, Scale $199 includes $199), then overageSource: actor page, apify.com/pricing | $19.00 (Starter; $4 of usage) | $40.00 (Starter $19 + $21 overage) | $400.00 (Scale $199 + $201 overage) |
| Pinlyx Data API | posts ÷ 100 = calls; calls × 8 (Starter) or × 6 (Growth) must fit the plan’s requestsSource: Data API plans | $69 (Starter: 100 calls use 800 of 20,000 requests) | $69 (Starter: 1,000 calls use 8,000) | $249 (Growth: 10,000 calls use 60,000 of 150,000) |
The official API caps pay-per-use accounts at 3 million post reads per billing cycle, so all three volumes fit within it.
At these volumes twitterapi.io is the cheapest way to read X, and Pinlyx is not: live X data starts at $69 a month however little you use. Per-request pricing only pays off at high, steady volume in full pages. Growth covers up to 2,500,000 posts in 30 days for $249, which buys about 1,660,000 posts on twitterapi.io; Scale covers up to 18,750,000 for $749.
What does monitoring 50 accounts a day cost?
The job: read the new posts of 50 accounts once a day. Over 30 days that is 1,500 requests. Each account posts 5 times a day and you ask only for new posts (the official timeline endpoint accepts since_id), so 7,500 posts a month.
| Provider | Calculation | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| X API (official) | 7,500 posts × $0.005, plus 50 profile lookups once to get the account ids (50 × $0.010)Source: pricing, timeline endpoint | $37.50 + $0.50 once |
| twitterapi.io | 7,500 tweets × $0.00015Source: twitterapi.io | $1.13 |
| SocialData | 7,500 posts × $0.0002Source: docs.socialdata.tools | $1.50 |
| Pinlyx Data API (Starter) | 1,500 calls to the account timeline endpoint × 8 = 12,000 of 20,000 requests | $69.00 |
If a provider cannot filter to new posts and returns 20 recent posts on every call, you pay for 30,000 posts instead: $4.50 on twitterapi.io and $6.00 on SocialData. Pinlyx’s price does not move with page size, which is exactly why it loses this job: a call that returns 5 posts costs the same as one that returns 100.
What does pulling the reposters of one post cost?
The job: list every account that reposted one post with 2,000 reposts, with profiles. X and Pinlyx return up to 100 accounts per call, so 20 calls.
| Provider | Calculation | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| X API (official) | GET /2/tweets/{id}/retweeted_by returns user objects, priced as user reads: 20 pages of 100, 2,000 × $0.010Source: endpoint, pricing | $20.00 |
| SocialData | 2,000 user profiles × $0.0002Source: docs.socialdata.tools | $0.40 |
| twitterapi.io | Has a retweeters endpoint, but its pricing page lists no rate for itSource: twitterapi.io | Not published |
| Pinlyx Data API (Starter) | 20 calls of 100 to the reposters endpoint × 8 = 160 requests, 0.8% of the Starter budget | About $0.55 of a $69 plan |
X does not document a total cap on how many reposters the endpoint returns. If fewer come back, every line falls in proportion.
Which X API alternatives cost less?
Eight ways to read X, checked on each provider’s own pricing page on November 5, 2026. None of the unofficial ones is an X product: twitterapi.io, SocialData and Data365 state on their own sites that they are not affiliated with X Corp., EnsembleData calls its product a “Twitter Unofficial API”, and the Apify actor is published by a third-party developer, apidojo.
We make Pinlyx. It is listed where it fits, with its limits.
| Provider | Pricing model | 1,000 posts | Free allowance and its real condition | Platforms | Official? | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| X API | Pay-per-use credits; no subscription or minimum | $5.00 | No free tier. One-time credits up to $70 ($20 after the first credit purchase, up to $50 matching the first auto-recharge), expiring after 3 months | X | Yes | docs.x.com |
| twitterapi.io | Prepaid credits, charged per result; minimum $0.00015 a call | $0.15 | Up to $1 of credit, no card, after a bot check; expires after 31 days | X | No | twitterapi.io |
| SocialData | Prepaid balance, per item; no subscription or minimum | $0.20 | None. Its FAQ says “We do not currently offer a free plan”, despite “Try for Free” buttons | X | No | socialdata.tools |
| Apify Tweet Scraper V2 | Pay per event inside an Apify plan; each query must return at least 50 tweets | $0.40, plus a paid plan from $19 a month | The free Apify plan runs it in demo mode only: 5 runs a month, 10 items each, no API access | X (other networks are separate actors) | No (third-party actor) | apify.com |
| ScrapeCreators | Credit packs, 1 credit per request | Not comparable: $1.88 (Freelance) or $0.99 (Business) per 1,000 requests; user tweets returns up to 100 popular tweets, not the latest | 100 credits | X, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and more | No | scrapecreators.com |
| EnsembleData | Monthly plan with daily units; X user tweets cost 4 units a call | Not verifiable: posts per call are not documented. Plans from $100 a month for 1,500 units a day | Free trial, 50 units a day | X (3 endpoints), TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and more; no LinkedIn | No | ensembledata.com |
| Data365 | Monthly plan plus credits, billed in euros | About €0.60 (Basic) to €0.85 (Standard) if the whole quota is used, from €300 a month; worked out from its general 1 credit per post example | 14-day trial through a form and the sales team | X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Reddit and more; no YouTube or LinkedIn data | No | data365.co |
| Pinlyx Data API (ours) | Monthly plan with a request budget; a live X call returns up to 100 posts and costs 4 to 8 requests | $0.04 to $0.28 at full pages and full plan use; live X data from $69 a month | 100 requests per 30 days, one key, no card; catalogue reads only, live X starts on Starter | X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram, Bluesky, LinkedIn | No | pinlyx.com/data-api |
Five things to check before you trust a price
- Affiliation. Unofficial means not affiliated with X Corp. Do not describe any of them, Pinlyx included, as official, approved or an X partner, and do not expect any of them to grant rights to X data that X has not granted.
- Vendor comparison tables. Several vendor sites compare themselves with X API tiers that X’s current pricing page no longer lists. Take the official price from docs.x.com, not from a competitor’s table.
- “Free” labels. X’s credits are one-time and expire after 3 months; twitterapi.io’s $1 expires after 31 days; SocialData shows “Try for Free” buttons but says it has no free plan; the free Apify plan cannot call Tweet Scraper V2 through the API; the free Pinlyx plan does not include live X endpoints.
- Currency and minimums. Data365 bills in euros, from €300 a month. EnsembleData starts at $100 a month, Apify needs a paid plan for API use and Pinlyx needs Starter ($69) for live X data. The X API, twitterapi.io and SocialData have no monthly minimum.
- Units. Per post (X, twitterapi.io, SocialData, Apify), per request (ScrapeCreators, Pinlyx) and per unit or credit (EnsembleData, Data365) are different prices. A per-request price means little until you know how many posts a request returns, and a short page costs the same as a full one.
Where does the Pinlyx Data API fit?
We make the Pinlyx Data API, so weigh this section accordingly. It is one HTTPS API with one key across seven networks (X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram, Bluesky and LinkedIn), 127 endpoints in all. 25 of them read X live: advanced post search with X’s own operators, account timelines, mentions, replies, threads, quotes, reposters, followers, lists, communities and the trending board for a location. They are read only. Nothing posts, likes, follows or reads a DM, and Pinlyx is not affiliated with X Corp.
It is priced per request, not per post. Each plan is a 30-day request budget, and a live X call takes more than one request from it:
| Plan | Price per 30 days | Requests | One live X call costs | Live X calls | Posts at 100 per call | Per 1,000 posts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100 | Not included | 0 | 0 | Not available |
| Starter | $69 | 20,000 | 8 requests | 2,500 | 250,000 | $0.28 |
| Growth | $249 | 150,000 | 6 requests | 25,000 | 2,500,000 | $0.10 |
| Scale | $749 | 750,000 | 4 requests | 187,500 | 18,750,000 | $0.04 |
Per 1,000 posts = price ÷ (requests ÷ live call cost × 100) × 1,000. That is the best case: full pages of 100 and the whole budget used. The live call costs are the ones listed on each plan in the Pinlyx panel; prices are confirmed at checkout, overage is off by default, and Enterprise (5,000,000 requests) is quoted on request. The free plan reads the account catalogue (profiles and follower history), not live X posts.
The honest summary: if you only need X and want the lowest price per tweet, twitterapi.io or SocialData cost less at most volumes, and per-post billing suits small or uneven jobs. Pinlyx makes sense when you also need TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or Telegram data under the same key, or when you read X at high, steady volume in full pages. If you also use the Pinlyx CRM, Pro with Data API Starter is $79 a month on one bill (pricing).
Because it is plain HTTPS with one key, an AI agent can call it like any other HTTP tool; the docs list every endpoint’s parameters, scopes and errors, and the endpoint index has a page per call. The Pinlyx MCP server is a different product: it lets Claude, Cursor or VS Code work with contacts, conversations and deals in the CRM, not with the Data API.
Check the data before you pay
The free plan gives you a key and 100 catalogue requests. Live X search, timelines and reposters start on Starter.
How do you choose an X data source?
Work down the list. The first question that applies usually decides.
- Do you need to write or act for a user? Posting, replying, sending DMs, liking and following need the official API with OAuth user credentials, at $0.015 per post ($0.200 with a URL). If what you actually need is scheduling posts and answering DMs on your own accounts rather than building an app, a scheduler is simpler: Pinlyx Pro ($24.99 a month) includes 50 X posts a month, 20 of them with links, plus an X DM inbox (X post scheduler).
- Do you need X’s permission on paper? If customers, auditors or your own lawyers will ask where the data came from, use the official API. X’s Terms of Service prohibit crawling or scraping without X’s prior written consent, and no unofficial provider can give you that consent.
- Is it X only, read only and a modest volume? A per-item provider is cheapest: twitterapi.io at $0.15 per 1,000 tweets or SocialData at $0.20. You pay only for what comes back, which suits uneven work such as watching a few accounts.
- Do you need several networks under one key? Compare coverage before price: ScrapeCreators, EnsembleData, Data365 and Pinlyx each cover a different mix of networks (see the table above).
- How much, and in what shape? Per-post billing wins small and uneven jobs. Per-request billing wins only when calls come back full and volume is high and steady: Pinlyx Growth beats twitterapi.io only past roughly 1.66 million posts a month. Above 3 million post reads a month, the official API needs Enterprise.
- How fresh, deep and reliable must it be? The official API answers from X itself and offers full-archive search, while its recent search covers the last 7 days. Pinlyx’s post search passes your query to X’s own search, which our search reference describes as an index, not an archive, and ScrapeCreators’ X search uses Google-indexed results. Unofficial providers also depend on their own scraping capacity: plan for retries on 503 errors and respect each provider’s rate limits.
Once you have the data, two free Pinlyx resources help you read it: the X reach and engagement research (what share of followers a post actually reaches) and the X engagement rate calculator.
Sources, all checked November 5, 2026
- X API pricing (docs.x.com)
- X API free credits (docs.x.com)
- X API usage and billing (docs.x.com)
- About the X API (docs.x.com)
- Getting access to the X API (docs.x.com)
- Get Reposted By endpoint (docs.x.com)
- Get Posts, the user timeline (docs.x.com)
- Search Recent Posts (docs.x.com)
- Search All Posts, the full archive (docs.x.com)
- X Terms of Service, effective October 9, 2026
- twitterapi.io pricing
- SocialData pricing
- SocialData home page and FAQ
- Apify Tweet Scraper V2
- Apify platform pricing
- ScrapeCreators pricing
- ScrapeCreators user tweets endpoint
- EnsembleData pricing
- EnsembleData Twitter API
- Data365 pricing
- Data365 X (Twitter) API
X API pricing questions
Related reading
Pinlyx Data API
Seven networks behind one key: account data, daily follower history, live X content and the plans.
All Data API endpoints
The full index with a reference page for every call, including the 25 live X endpoints.
X reach and engagement in 2026
What share of its followers a typical X post reaches, measured on 158,475 accounts and 7.6M posts.
X engagement rate calculator
Work out an account’s reach and engagement rate and compare it with accounts of similar size.
What a rate limit is
Burst and daily quotas, 429 responses and how to tell a short pause from a wait until midnight.
Pinlyx MCP server
Let Claude, Cursor or VS Code work with the contacts, conversations and deals in your CRM.
Ready to ship
Read X, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube with one key.
Start on the free Data API plan: one key, 100 catalogue requests, no card. Live X endpoints start on Starter at $69 for 30 days.