PAY PER USE
X API Pay-Per-Use Pricing 2026
X API pay-per-use pricing is a consumption-based model where you pay only for each API call you make, with no monthly subscription. TwitterAPIs provides this at $0.0008 per call (~20 tweets per call), versus $0.005 per single-resource read on the official X API. No subscription, no monthly minimum, no surprise tier upgrade.
How we source these numbers
Written by Emma, twitterapis developer relations
We priced every standard call at a flat $0.0008 (source: our published pricing), about 20 tweets each, so a medium workload of 50,000 calls a month runs $40 versus $250 on the official X API pay-per-use rate.
Rates re-checked June 13, 2026 against our published pricing and X's developer pricing page.
What “pay-per-use” actually means for the X API
Pay-per-use (also called consumption-based or usage-based pricing) means you are billed for each API call you make, instead of a flat monthly fee for a tier. The official X API moved to pay-per-use on February 9, 2026, retiring the old Basic / Pro / Enterprise tiers. TwitterAPIs has run on pay-per-use from day one.
Two things make pay-per-use cheap or expensive: the cost per call, and how much data each call returns. On the official X API, one resource = one tweet, so 1,000 tweets costs about $5. On TwitterAPIs, one call returns about 20 tweets, so 1,000 tweets costs $0.04. For the brand-level breakdown of every endpoint see the TwitterAPIs pricing page. For the head-to-head comparison against the official X API pay-per-use rates, see Twitter API pricing 2026. The per-call rate is only one of the three variables that set a real invoice, and the Twitter API cost breakdown adds volume and waste on top of it. The premium band is where most surprises live, so sending a DM through the API walks the three message routes and what each call is billed.
Cost per call, every endpoint
Every endpoint, the cost per call, and the implied cost per 1,000 calls. Every standard call (reads plus simple write actions like, retweet, bookmark, follow, and their undos, plus delete) is $0.0008 per call; a few premium endpoints cost more (DM reads and tweet creation $0.0016, full account history $0.0024, full thread $0.004), with no subscriptions and no minimum spend.
Endpoint Price List
Showing 41 of 41 endpoints
| Endpoint | Price / Call | Price / 1,000 Calls |
|---|---|---|
tweet/advanced_search | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/search | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
tweet/thread | $0.0040 | $4.00 |
tweet/detail | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
tweet/replies | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
tweet/retweeters | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/tweets/complete | $0.0024 | $2.40 |
user/affiliates | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/bookmark_search | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/bookmarks | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/check_follow_relationship | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/home_timeline | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/info | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/info_by_id | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/likes | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/media | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/mentions | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/tweets | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/tweets_and_replies | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/user_about | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/followers | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/followers_v2 | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/followers_you_know | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/following | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/following_v2 | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/verified_followers | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
list/members | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
dm/conversation | $0.0016 | $1.60 |
dm/list | $0.0016 | $1.60 |
tweet/create | $0.0016 | $1.60 |
dm/send | $0.0016 | $1.60 |
media/upload | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
tweet/bookmark | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
tweet/delete | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
tweet/favorite | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
tweet/retweet | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
tweet/unbookmark | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
tweet/unfavorite | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
tweet/unretweet | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/follow | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
user/unfollow | $0.0008 | $0.80 |
3 ROI scenarios: light, medium, heavy
Three real-world usage profiles, each modeled with monthly call volume, approximate tweets returned, and the pay-per-use bill on TwitterAPIs vs the official X API pay-per-use tier.
Light usage
Indie hacker, prototype, weekend project with small daily tweet pulls.
- Monthly calls: 5,000
- ~Tweets: 100,000
- TwitterAPIs: $4/mo
- Official X API: $25/mo
- Save $21/mo (84%)
Medium usage
Funded startup, growth dashboard, daily sentiment runs at moderate scale.
- Monthly calls: 50,000
- ~Tweets: 1,000,000
- TwitterAPIs: $40/mo
- Official X API: $250/mo
- Save $210/mo (84%)
Heavy usage
Production analytics platform, full firehose-style ingestion, multi-tenant.
- Monthly calls: 500,000
- ~Tweets: 10,000,000
- TwitterAPIs: $400/mo
- Official X API: $2,500/mo
- Save $2,100/mo (84%)
Scenario rates assume tweet/user/search reads at the official X API $0.005 per-resource rate. Run your exact bill in the cost calculator.
Official X API pay-per-use rates (Feb 2026 onwards)
Source: developer.x.com/#pricing. One resource on the official API = one tweet, one user, or one DM event.
| Resource | Official X API | TwitterAPIs Equivalent | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Posts: Read (tweet search, lookup) | $0.005 | $0.0008 per call | 1 tweet returned per resource |
| User: Read (profiles, followers) | $0.010 | $0.0008 per call | 1 user returned per resource |
| DM Event: Read | $0.010 | $0.0008 per call | 1 DM event per resource |
| Content: Create (post tweet) | $0.010 | $0.0008 per call | 1 tweet write per resource |
| User Interaction: Create (like, retweet) | $0.015 | $0.0008 per call | 1 interaction per resource |
| DM Interaction: Create (send DM) | $0.015 | $0.0008 per call | 1 DM send per resource |
TwitterAPIs typically returns ~20 tweets per call, so the effective per-tweet cost is 100x cheaper than the official X API single-resource read. Last verified May 30, 2026.
Pay-per-use pricing FAQ
Pay-per-use means you pay only for each API request you make, with no monthly subscription, no minimum spend, and no fixed tier. The official X API moved to a consumption-based pay-per-use model on February 9, 2026. TwitterAPIs has used pay-per-use pricing from day one at $0.0008 per call (~20 tweets per call).
Yes. For tweet search and tweet detail (the most common use case), TwitterAPIs is 6x cheaper per call ($0.0008 vs $0.005) and 125x cheaper per tweet because each TwitterAPIs call returns ~20 tweets while the official resource returns 1 tweet. For user reads and follower-graph reads it's 12.5x cheaper per call.
Tweet search on TwitterAPIs uses the tweet/advanced_search endpoint at $0.0008 per call, returning ~20 tweets per page. So 1,000 tweets of search results costs $0.04. The official X API charges $0.005 per single tweet returned via search, so 1,000 tweets costs $5, a 100x+ markup.
Yes. Use the cost calculator to plug in your tweet and user call volumes and see the side-by-side monthly bill for TwitterAPIs vs the official X API pay-per-use rates, with total savings percentage. For per-endpoint cost detail, see the pricing page.
The old X API tiers (Basic $200/mo, Pro $5,000/mo, Enterprise $42,000/mo) have been replaced by per-resource pay-per-use pricing: $0.005 to $0.015 per resource depending on whether it is a read, write, user, or DM. TwitterAPIs charges $0.0008 per call and returns ~20 tweets per call, so the effective rate is $0.04 per 1,000 tweets vs $5 per 1,000 single-tweet reads on the official API.
No. There is no minimum monthly spend and no subscription. You buy credits starting at $10 (12,500 API calls / ~250,000 tweets) and they never expire. New accounts get $0.50 in free credits at signup with no credit card required.
Because pricing is per-call with no tier, a usage spike just consumes credits faster. There is no overage penalty, no rate ceiling beyond standard fair-use, and no surprise tier upgrade. You can also set spend alerts in the dashboard. For comparison, the official X API also has no monthly caps under pay-per-use, but each request costs 5x to 100x more.
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