X API pricing tiers explained
Last updated September 26, 2026
X no longer sells API access as monthly subscription tiers. Basic and Pro are retired, there is no free tier, and self-serve access is pay-per-use: $0.005 per post read, $0.010 per user read and $0.015 per post written, capped at 3 million post reads a month before Enterprise. TwitterAPIs.com meters differently again, at $0.0008 a call.
Every rate here is the pricing TwitterAPIs publishes. The billed rate is $0.0008 per call; $0.04 per 1,000 tweets is derived from it at a full 20-tweet page, which is the default page size rather than a guaranteed yield (source: twitterapis.com/pricing).
The old ladder, from Basic to Enterprise
X stopped giving reads away in February 2023 and replaced free access with a subscription ladder. Basic sat at the bottom at $200 a month, Pro was the next rung at $5,000 a month, and Enterprise carried no published rate. That ladder is now history. X closed Basic and Pro to new signups in February 2026, and its pricing page today reads: no subscriptions, pay only for what you use. The rung you were on no longer decides what a request costs; the resource it returns does.
What the meter charges today
Pay-per-use prices the resource, not the month. Reads bill per resource returned: $0.005 a post, $0.010 a user, $0.010 a follower or following record, $0.005 for lists, spaces, communities and notes, and $0.001 for likes, mutes and blocks. Reads of your own data bill $0.001. Writes bill per request: $0.015 to create a post, $0.200 when that post carries a URL, and $0.015 for a direct message or a user interaction.
Where the meter stops
Pay-per-use is capped at 3 million post reads per monthly billing cycle. Past that line there is no bigger self-serve plan to buy: the next step is an Enterprise contract, which X does not price publicly. A widely repeated five-figure monthly figure for Enterprise traces back to 2023 press coverage of a plan X has since retired, not to anything X publishes today.
Why the per-tweet figure is $5 to $10 per 1,000
The number everyone quotes used to be derived by dividing a rung's monthly fee by its allowance. Under metering it falls straight out of the rate card: 1,000 post reads at $0.005 is $5, and a job that also resolves each author at $0.010 a user drifts toward $10. There is no flat fee underneath any more, so an idle month costs nothing, but every resource the API hands back is billed, including the ones your code throws away.
What a different meter looks like beside it
TwitterAPIs.com also has no plan to choose, but it prices the call rather than the resource. One standard read is $0.0008 and returns about 20 tweets, which lands at $0.04 per 1,000. The comparison that matters is the unit: the official meter counts every post and user it returns, while a per-call meter counts requests. For a job that reads thousands of posts, that unit decides the bill.
Official X API pricing in 2026, the retired tiers and the current meter
| Option | Published price | How access is sized | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | None | No free allowance | Not offered, X lists no free tier |
| Basic (legacy) | $200 a month | Fixed monthly allowance | Retired, closed to new signups February 2026 |
| Pro (legacy) | $5,000 a month | Larger fixed allowance | Retired, closed to new signups February 2026 |
| Pay-per-use | $0.005 per post read, $0.015 per post write | Per resource read, per request written | Current default, capped at 3 million post reads a month |
| Enterprise | Not published | Negotiated contract | Required above the pay-per-use cap |
| TwitterAPIs.com | $0.0008 a call | Metered per call, about 20 tweets each | No monthly fee |
No subscriptions, pay only for what you use.
Questions and answers
- What did the Basic tier cost, and can I still buy it?
- Basic was $200 a month and bundled a fixed monthly allowance. It is retired: X closed it to new signups in February 2026 and its pricing page now lists no subscriptions at all. New developers start on pay-per-use, where a post read is $0.005.
- Does X still have a free tier for reading posts?
- No. X withdrew free read access in February 2023, and the current pricing page lists no free tier at all. Every read on the official platform is billed from the first request, at $0.005 per post and $0.010 per user returned.
- What happened to the Pro tier?
- Pro, at $5,000 a month, was the rung for continuous collection at scale. It closed to new signups alongside Basic in February 2026. That job now falls to pay-per-use up to 3 million post reads a month, and to an Enterprise contract above that.
- Why does X not publish an Enterprise price?
- Because Enterprise is a negotiated contract sized to the workload rather than a plan you buy off a page. You reach it by crossing the 3 million post read monthly cap on pay-per-use. The five-figure monthly number people repeat comes from 2023 press coverage of a plan X has since retired.
- How do I work out what the official API costs per tweet?
- Multiply the resources your job returns by the rate card. A thousand post reads is $5 at $0.005 each, and resolving each author adds $0.010 a user, which is where the widely quoted $5 to $10 per 1,000 tweets comes from. Writes add $0.015 per post, or $0.200 when the post carries a URL.
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