Overview

X (formerly Twitter) API access is divided into three tiers with significant price jumps between them.

Tier Comparison

FeatureFreeBasicPro
Price$0/month$200/month$5,000/month
Post Reads100/month15,000/month1,000,000/month
Post Writes500/month50,000/month300,000/month
Projects111
Apps per Project123
Login with XYesYesYes
Full-archive SearchNoNoYes
Filtered StreamNoNoYes
Priority SupportNoNoYes

Free Tier Details

Cost: $0/month Intended For: Testing

What You Can Do

  • Read user profiles: Yes (via GET /2/users/me for authenticated user)
  • Read tweets: Yes, but only 100 posts per month
  • Post tweets: Yes, up to 500 posts per month
  • Login with X: Yes (OAuth)
  • Media upload: Yes

Limitations

  • Only 1 app
  • Very limited read access (100 posts/month is ~3 posts/day)
  • No full-archive search
  • No filtered stream access
  • Essentially a “testing only” tier

Rate Limits (Free Tier)

  • POST /2/tweets: 17 requests per 24 hours per app
  • App-level limit applies regardless of which user makes the request

Basic Tier Details

Cost: 100 in late 2024) Intended For: Hobbyists and prototypes

What You Get

  • 15,000 post reads/month
  • 50,000 post writes/month
  • 2 apps per project
  • Full v2 endpoints access

Pro Tier Details

Cost: $5,000/month Intended For: Startups scaling their business

What You Get

  • 1,000,000 post reads/month
  • 300,000 post writes/month
  • 3 apps per project
  • Full-archive search
  • Filtered stream access
  • Priority support

Key Takeaways

Can You Read User Profiles on Free Tier?

Yes, but limited:

  • Can read authenticated user’s own profile via GET /2/users/me
  • Reading other users’ profiles counts against the 100 reads/month limit

Can You Read Tweets on Free Tier?

Yes, but extremely limited:

  • Only 100 post reads per month
  • That’s approximately 3 tweets per day
  • Not viable for any real application

Recommendation

  • Testing/Learning: Free tier is adequate
  • Side Projects: Basic tier at $200/month minimum
  • Production Apps: Pro tier at $5,000/month for serious usage

Alternatives

For developers priced out of official API:

  1. Scraping libraries (unofficial, may violate ToS):

  2. Third-party API providers:

    • Various services offer X data at lower costs
    • May have reliability/compliance concerns

Sources

  1. X API Official Documentation
  2. X Developer Portal
  3. X API Pricing 2025
  4. Dev.to FAQ on Twitter API Changes