The short version
Pick it if
- Your legal team will only sign off on a sanctioned source
- You need full-archive search back to 2006
- You post, reply or send DMs from an app, and want to do it with X’s blessing
Skip it if
- You read X data at volume and cost matters
- You pull follower lists: 100,000 followers cost $1,000
- You need a bill that won’t change under you
Since February 2026 the only self-serve plan is pay-per-use. You buy credits and pay per resource returned: $0.005 a post and $0.010 a user or follower record, so $5 and $10 per 1,000. There’s no subscription or minimum spend, but there’s a cap of 3 million post reads a month, about $15,000, above which you need an Enterprise contract at an unpublished price. What you get is the real thing: recent and full-archive search, timelines, followers, likes, lists, Spaces, Communities, Community Notes, trends, DMs, a filtered stream, webhooks and writes, with an official SDK and an MCP server.
It ranks third on X because the third-party APIs do the reads most people need for a fraction of the price: $0.15 per 1,000 tweets at twitterapi.io and $0.20 at SocialData. And the bill is hard to trust. In 2026 X retired its Free, Basic and Pro plans, moved paying subscribers onto pay-per-use with $200 and $5,000 initial credit charges, repriced posts containing a link to $0.20 each, and restricted programmatic replies. From 22 November 2026 it starts charging for expansions too.
X API at a glance
- Company
- X Corp, acquired by xAI in March 2025
- Product type
- Official platform API
- Platforms
- X only
- Billing
- Prepaid credits, per resource returned
- Price
- $5 per 1,000 posts, $10 per 1,000 users
- Monthly cap
- 3 million post reads, then Enterprise
- Free tier
- None for new developers
- Search
- Recent (7 days) and full archive back to 2006
- Auth
- OAuth 2.0 Bearer tokens; OAuth 1.0a for user context
- SDKs
- XDK, Playground and MCP server
Pricing
Pay-per-use charges reads per resource returned and writes per request. The same resource is charged once per 24-hour UTC window, which X calls a “soft guarantee”. From 22 November 2026, objects returned through expansions are billed at the standard rate. Spend earns a rebate of up to 20% in xAI API credits, usable only on the xAI API.
100,000 X posts a month, compared
At each provider’s entry rate, before volume discounts, from our X ranking.
Using X API
Signing up
Sign up at console.x.com, create an app and get a Bearer token. You have to buy credits before you can call anything; X’s pricing page offers $20 of credit after you save a card and make a first purchase, though October 2026 forum threads report it missing or arriving as $5. Forum threads also suggest some features return 403 until X approves your use case.
Making a request
v2 is the current API; v1.1 survives for some media uploads. Reads use an app-only OAuth 2.0 Bearer token, and acting for a user takes OAuth 2.0 PKCE or OAuth 1.0a. Rate limits run per 15 minutes and are separate from billing: recent search (GET /2/tweets/search/recent) allows 450 requests per app, full-archive search 300 plus one a second, and follower lists 300.
Documentation
docs.x.com is complete and machine-readable, with a pricing page, rate-limit tables and per-plan search limits. X notes that prices can change and that the console has the current rates, which, given 2026, is fair warning.
Support
Support runs through the developer forum and the console. Forum threads show billing and access problems, such as missing vouchers and 402 errors on positive balances, handled one to one by staff over DMs.
Verdict
Use the X API where you have to, not by default. It’s the only option with no question over access, and the only one with full-archive search back to 2006 and sanctioned writes, which makes it the right call for compliance-heavy products and apps that post. For reading public posts, profiles and followers, it costs 25 to 33 times what twitterapi.io and SocialData charge, caps you at 3 million post reads a month, and has changed its prices and plans repeatedly in 2026. Most teams should read through a third party and keep the official API for what only it can do.
Visit X APIAlternatives
Questions
Is there a free X API tier?
Not for new developers. X deprecated the Free tier when it launched pay-per-use in February 2026. The only free scaled access left is for apps X classes as public utilities.
How much does the X API cost?
On pay-per-use, $0.005 per post read and $0.010 per user or follower record: $5 and $10 per 1,000. Creating a post costs $0.015, or $0.20 if it contains a link. Enterprise pricing isn’t published.
What happened to the Basic and Pro plans?
Both were retired in 2026. Basic subscribers moved to pay-per-use after 1 June, with a $200 initial credit charge for monthly subscribers. Pro followed after 1 September, with a $5,000 initial charge.
Can I get full-archive search on pay-per-use?
Yes. X’s docs list full-archive search on pay-per-use, with queries up to 1,024 characters and 500 posts per request. Some third-party pages say it’s Enterprise-only; X’s own docs say otherwise.
Is there a limit to how much I can read?
Pay-per-use caps you at 3 million post reads per monthly billing cycle, about $15,000. Above that you need an Enterprise contract.
Why do third-party X APIs cost so much less?
They aren’t sanctioned by X. twitterapi.io charges $0.15 per 1,000 tweets and SocialData $0.20, against $5 here. The trade-off is no compliance or deletion feeds, and no guarantee they’ll keep working.