Pricing · calculator · prices as listed in 2026
What is the cheapest Twitter (X) API in 2026?
There is no single answer, because providers price different units. Per-call resellers win when every search comes back full; per-post pricing wins when most calls return little or nothing; flat monthly plans win at steady high volume; the official X API is the most expensive by a wide margin. Put your own workload into the calculator below — including how often your searches come back empty and the request rate you need.
Each advanced-search call returns up to 20 posts.
Lower this if many of your searches come back empty or short (monitoring jobs usually do).
User info / follower pages, priced per profile on most APIs.
Vendors with a lower published limit are flagged.
| Provider | Pricing model | Per 1K posts | Monthly cost | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GetXAPI | Growth plan | $0.025 | $49.00 | not published |
| TwitterAPIs.com | $0.0008 per call | $0.044 | $88.00 | 600 rpm (10 rps) |
| TwitterAPI.io (pay-as-you-go) | $0.15 / 1K posts, $0.18 / 1K profiles, min $0.00015 per call | $0.151 | $302 | 3 rps (0.2 before first payment): below your 5 rps |
| SocialData | $0.0002 per item returned | $0.201 | $402 | 120 rpm (2 rps): below your 5 rps |
| TwitterAPI.io (subscription) | Scale plan, 50 rps | $0.249 | $499 | 5–500 rps by tier |
| Sorsa | Enterprise plan (500,000 requests) | $0.449 | $899 | 20 rps |
| Official X API | $0.005 per post read, $0.010 per user read | $5.05 | $10,100 | per-endpoint limits |
Prices from each provider's own pricing page (sources below). Per-call providers charge the same for a call that returns 20 posts or none; TwitterAPI.io charges per post with a 15-credit ($0.00015) minimum per call. SocialData doesn't charge empty responses up to 3 a minute; the calculator assumes your requests are spread evenly across the month. Rows are sorted by monthly cost for the workload above.
Three workloads, three different winners
Monthly cost for three common patterns, from the same price table as the calculator. A monitoring job that polls a watch list every minute mostly gets empty or short results, which is where per-call and per-post pricing diverge the most.
| Provider | Small bot | Monitoring job (mostly empty polls) | Research pull |
|---|---|---|---|
| TwitterAPI.io (pay-as-you-go) | $30.18 | $90.90 | $1,518 |
| TwitterAPI.io (subscription) | $29.00 | $99.00 | $1,499 |
| TwitterAPIs.com | $8.80 | $244 | $480 |
| GetXAPI | $11.00 | $99.00 | $349 |
| Sorsa | $199 | $899 | custom |
| SocialData | $40.20 | $121 | $2,020 |
| Official X API | $1,010 | $3,050 | $51,000 |
Workloads: small bot = 10K full searches + 1K profiles; monitoring = 300K searches averaging 2 posts + 5K profiles; research = 500K full searches + 100K profiles. “custom” = above the largest published plan.
Why the headline prices don't compare
Most “cheapest Twitter API” lists put a per-call price next to a per-1,000-posts price as if they were the same unit. They aren't. An advanced-search call returns up to 20 posts, so a provider that charges per call is cheap per post only when calls come back full. TwitterAPI.io charges per post returned ($0.15 per 1,000 posts, with a $0.00015 minimum per call), so a search that finds 2 posts costs 2 posts, not a whole call — but a full search costs more than at the per-call resellers.
- Per call: fixed price whether a call returns 20 posts or none. Cheapest for full pages; expensive for polling.
- Per post (per 1K): you pay for what comes back, usually with a small minimum per call. Cheapest for monitoring and sparse searches.
- Monthly plans: a request allowance for a flat fee. Cheapest when volume is steady and near the plan size; wasted when it isn't.
- Official X API: per resource read on pay-per-use pricing — the first-party option, and the most expensive.
Price isn't the only line on the bill
The rate-limit column matters as much as the price column. A provider capped at 10 or 20 requests per second can't serve a backfill or a busy monitoring fleet no matter how cheap each call is; you end up running several accounts or waiting. Before you choose on price, check:
- Rate limit — published requests per second or per minute.
- Endpoint coverage — search and profiles are everywhere; push delivery (webhooks, WebSocket filter rules), communities, Spaces, trends and write actions are not.
- Who runs it — a company name, a status page and support you can reach; an API your product depends on needs to be there next year.
- Empty-result and minimum charges — the detail that decides the bill for monitoring jobs.
Where TwitterAPI.io stands: not the lowest per full call, typically lower on sparse workloads, with subscription tiers that bring the effective rate down at volume and raise the request limit from 5 to 500 per second (see pricing), with webhooks and WebSocket filter rules included. Pay-as-you-go accounts are limited to 3 requests per second, so high-rate work needs a subscription. If your workload is nothing but full 20-post searches at a few requests per second, a per-call reseller will be cheaper on paper — the calculator shows by how much.
Questions
- What is the cheapest Twitter API?
- It depends on the workload. Per-call resellers are cheapest for full 20-post searches; per-post pricing is cheaper when many calls return few or no posts; flat monthly plans win at steady high volume. Use the calculator with your own numbers rather than a single headline price.
- Why do Twitter API prices look so different between providers?
- Providers quote different units: per API call, per 1,000 posts, per request in a monthly plan, or per resource read. A $0.001 call that returns 20 posts is $0.05 per 1,000 posts, while a $0.15 per 1,000 posts price is $0.003 for the same full call. Convert everything to the same workload before comparing.
- Is the official X API cheaper now that it has pay-per-use pricing?
- No. X's pay-per-use price is listed per post read, which works out to roughly $5 per 1,000 posts — far above third-party APIs — though it is the only first-party option.
- Is TwitterAPI.io the cheapest Twitter API?
- Not on list price for full searches: the per-call resellers in the table are 3–4× cheaper per full call. TwitterAPI.io is usually cheaper when searches return few posts, and its subscription tiers go up to 500 requests per second; the rest of its case is endpoint coverage (webhooks, WebSocket filter rules, communities, trends) and reliability rather than the lowest headline price.
Sources (each provider's own pricing page, prices as listed in 2026)
- TwitterAPI.io (pay-as-you-go) — $0.15 per 1K tweets, $0.18 per 1K users, 15-credit minimum per call, 0–1 results still charged 15 credits
- TwitterAPI.io (subscription) — Starter $29 → Business $1,499 a month, 3.13M–224.85M credits, 5–500 requests per second
- TwitterAPIs.com — $0.0008 per call; 600 requests per minute and 20 concurrent per key
- GetXAPI — $0.001 per call pay-as-you-go; plans $15 / $49 / $99 a month include 40K / 140K / 350K calls ($0.50–$0.33 per 1K); no numeric rate limit published
- Sorsa — $49 / 10K, $199 / 100K, $899 / 500K requests a month; one search page (~20 posts) is one request; 20 requests per second
- SocialData — $0.0002 per tweet or profile returned; empty responses free up to 3 a minute; 120 requests per minute
- Official X API — pay-per-use: $0.005 per post read, $0.010 per user read; prices subject to change