HEAD-TO-HEAD
TwitterAPIs vs Apify: Compute Units, Credit Expiry, and Real Cost
TwitterAPIs is a pay-per-call Twitter and X data API that returns typed tweet, user and search results at $0.0008 per call, with no monthly plan and credits that never expire. Apify is a general scraping platform where you run programs called Actors, charged as a monthly plan from $29 plus usage billed in compute units, where 1 CU is 1 GB of RAM running for one hour, and unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle. Because that unit measures RAM-time rather than results, identical output can cost different amounts from one run to the next.
How we source these numbers
Every Apify figure on this page was read from apify.com/pricing on 6 August 2026, not from a third-party summary. The compute-unit definition and the sentence about credits expiring are Apify's own wording. Our own rates come from our public pricing page, which is generated from the same billing configuration that charges your account. Pricing pages change: if you are reading this months later, check both before you commit to either.
Side by side
The row that matters most is the second one. Everything else follows from it.
| Dimension | TwitterAPIs | Apify |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pay per call, $0.0008 per read | Monthly plan plus usage billed in compute units |
| What a unit measures | One API call returning ~20 tweets | 1 CU = 1 GB of RAM running for 1 hour |
| Entry cost | $0, top-ups from $10 | $0 Free ($5 usage), then $29/mo Starter |
| Unused credit | Never expires | Expires at the end of each billing cycle |
| Twitter surface | 51 first-party endpoints, one account | Community Actors, surface depends on the Actor you pick |
| Free tier | $0.50 in credits at signup, no card | $5 of usage per month on the Free plan |
What it costs in three real patterns
Usage shape decides the winner more than the headline rate does.
Weekend project
5,000 calls in one month, then nothing for two months
TwitterAPIs
$4.00 total
5,000 x $0.0008. Nothing in the quiet months.
Apify
$29 minimum if you exceed the free tier
Starter is $29/mo. The two quiet months still cost $29 each unless you downgrade, and the included usage does not carry forward.
Steady build
50,000 calls per month
TwitterAPIs
About $40.00
50,000 x $0.0008 per call.
Apify
$29 plus compute
The $29 Starter includes $29 of usage. Whether 50,000 results fit inside that depends entirely on how long the Actor runs and how much RAM it holds, which is not a number you control.
Spiky usage
200,000 calls in March, near zero in April and May
TwitterAPIs
About $160 in March, $0 after
You pay for March. April and May cost nothing.
Apify
Plan fee every month regardless
Scale is $199/mo. April and May bill the same as March, and the unused March allowance does not roll into April.
Where Apify is genuinely the better tool
Apify is a platform, not a Twitter product, and that is its actual strength. If you need twenty unrelated sources, an e-commerce catalog, a maps listing and a job board alongside social data, running all of it on one platform with one billing relationship is worth real money in saved integration time. Its Actor catalog is large and its scheduling and storage are solid. Nothing on this page argues otherwise.
The trade shows up when Twitter and X are the data you actually need. Then you are paying platform prices for one target, your endpoint surface is whatever the Actor author decided to expose, and when Twitter changes something you wait for that author to notice. A first-party API takes that maintenance risk off your desk.
One call, one price
1curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \2 "https://api.twitterapis.com/twitter/user/tweets?username=jack&count=20"34# $0.0008 for this call, every time.5# The price does not move with response size or run duration.Other comparisons worth reading
Each vendor loses on a different axis, so the one that matters depends on how you buy. These three cover the rest of the field.
- TwitterAPIs vs Scrapingdog , the 5x Twitter credit multiplier.
- TwitterAPIs vs Scrape.do , raw pages against typed data.
- TwitterAPIs vs SociaVault , credit packs against a flat per-call rate.
- The full Twitter API alternatives roundup , every vendor we have priced, in one table.
Start with $0.50 in free credits
No subscription, no compute units to model, and nothing expires at the end of the month. Get an API key and pay only for the calls you make.
Frequently asked questions
Apify defines 1 compute unit as 1 GB of RAM running for 1 hour. That means your bill is a function of how long a program runs and how much memory it holds, not how much data you actually get back. Two runs that return identical results can cost different amounts if one Actor is less efficient. TwitterAPIs bills $0.0008 per call, so the same request always costs the same.
Not directly. Apify is a general platform for running scrapers, called Actors, many of them built by the community. Twitter data comes from whichever Actor you choose, so the endpoint surface, response shape and maintenance quality vary by Actor. TwitterAPIs is a first-party Twitter and X API with 51 documented endpoints and one response contract.
Yes, because there is no subscription to start. New accounts get $0.50 in free credits at signup with no credit card, which is roughly 625 calls, and top-ups start at $10 with no monthly commitment and no expiry.
No. Apify states that unused usage credits are not rolled over to the next billing cycle and expire at the end of it. TwitterAPIs credits never expire, so a quiet month costs nothing and a prepaid balance is still there when you come back.
When you need many different sites rather than deep Twitter coverage. Apify's catalog spans a large number of targets, and if your job is to scrape twenty unrelated sources, one platform for all of them is genuinely convenient. If Twitter and X are the data you need, a dedicated API is cheaper to run and far easier to predict.
Next read
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