SocialData pricing: $0.20 per 1,000 X results, explained

November 9, 2026

SocialData (socialdata.tools) is an X-only data API with one main price: $0.0002 for each tweet or user profile it returns. It is simple to read, but a few rules decide your real bill: what counts as an item, when empty answers are free, and how monitors are billed by the hour. Here is all of it from SocialData's own docs, with worked costs and a comparison with TwitterAPI.io and the official X API.

SocialData API pricing

From the pricing docs:

Search returns about 20 tweets a page (search docs), so a full page costs about $0.004. When your balance hits zero, requests return HTTP 402 Payment Required.

Billing rules, free trial and refunds

• Prepaid balance: deposit any amount, with optional auto top-ups and low-balance alerts. No subscription, no seat fee, no monthly minimum (SocialData home page).
• No expiry: the balance does not expire and there are no monthly resets.
• Free trial: there is no free plan. Signing up is free with no card, and support may set up a free demo account if you describe your use case.
• Refunds: deposits made in the last 14 days can be refunded, no questions asked, if you have not used them.
• Volume pricing: custom, lower rates for high volume through support.
• MCP: tool calls cost the same as the REST calls. The follower and following tools bill a full page per call, and the docs warn that an agent told to fetch all followers will keep paging (pricing summary).

SocialData monitoring pricing

Monitors push new events to your webhook. From the monitoring pricing docs:

A user monitor (new tweets, new follows or profile changes) is a flat hourly fee however many events it sends. Tweets, following and profile monitors on the same account count as three. Search monitors have no hourly fee: $0.0002 per tweet delivered, plus $0.0002 for each run that finds nothing. The run frequency sets the floor: about $17.28 a month at the default 30 seconds, $8.64 at 60 seconds, $1.73 at 5 minutes and $0.14 at one hour. If your balance runs out, monitors pause and resume when you top up.

Rate limits

120 requests a minute per API key, shared across all endpoints. SocialData raises it at no extra charge if you email support (rate limit docs). At 20 tweets a page, 120 requests a minute is up to about 2,400 tweets a minute.

What SocialData costs at three volumes

TwitterAPI.io figures come from its pricing page and the X figures from X's pricing page: $0.005 per post read and $0.010 per user or follower read. We cover TwitterAPI.io's rules in detail in TwitterAPI.io pricing.

A worked example: watching 10 accounts

Say you want every new post from 10 competitor accounts, about 3,000 posts a month. Three ways on SocialData:

1. 10 user monitors: 10 x $4.99 = $49.90 a month, real-time.
2. One search monitor on from:brand1 OR from:brand2 OR ... every 5 minutes: $1.73 floor + 3,000 x $0.0002 = at most about $2.33 a month.
3. Polling search yourself with since_time: once an hour per account, spread out: 7,200 calls, and most return nothing. Empty answers under 3 a minute are free, so you pay only for new posts: about $0.60.

The first is the easiest to build. The second is 20 times cheaper for almost the same result. Pick the user monitor only when you need follow or profile-change events too.

Who each pricing option fits

• Pay-as-you-go balance: almost everyone. Research pulls, enrichment and backfills.
• Verify endpoints ($0.004 to $0.008): giveaway and campaign checks, where one answer replaces paging through a whole follower list.
• User monitors: alerts on a short list of accounts where minutes matter.
• Search monitors: keyword and brand alerts. Set the slowest run frequency you can live with.
• Custom rates: pipelines pulling tens of millions of items a month.

Is SocialData worth it?

For X-only work, yes. It beats a multi-platform API like ScrapeIO on X on price: $0.20 per 1,000 profiles is 5 to 9 times less than ScrapeIO's $0.99 to $1.88 per 1,000 calls, and ScrapeIO has no X follower export at all. Its free empty answers, free failures, non-expiring balance and 14-day refund also make it low-risk to try.

Where it is not the cheapest: follower exports. TwitterAPI.io charges about $0.01 per 1,000 followers in full pages against SocialData's $0.20, and about $0.15 per 1,000 tweets against $0.20. TwitterAPI.io does charge a minimum of $0.00015 on every call, empty or not, so polling-heavy jobs can still favor SocialData. If you need to post, DM or act for users, neither fits; that is the official X API (see is the X API free).

SocialData alternatives

• TwitterAPI.io: cheaper per tweet and per follower, with streaming. TwitterAPI.io pricing.
• The official X API: pay per use, much higher per read, but the only route for write actions. X API pricing alternative.
• A multi-platform API such as ScrapeIO, when X is one source among many. See SocialData alternative for the side-by-side, and best Twitter scrapers for more options.

Doing it with ScrapeIO

ScrapeIO reads public X data at 1 credit per call: the X profile API, X user tweets API, X search API with operators and X replies API. It costs more than SocialData on X alone. It pays off when the same creator also needs TikTok, Instagram or YouTube data, because one key and one set of field names cover 33 platforms. You get 100 free credits, credits never expire, and agents can use the X MCP server.

FAQ

How much does SocialData cost?

$0.0002 per tweet or profile returned, or $0.20 per 1,000 results, from a prepaid balance. A few check endpoints cost $0.001 to $0.008 per request.

Does SocialData have a free trial or free plan?

No free plan. Signup is free with no card, and support may set up a demo account. Unused deposits can be refunded within 14 days.

Does the SocialData balance expire?

No. There are no monthly limits or resets, and the balance stays until you use it.

Does SocialData charge for failed or empty requests?

Failed requests are free. Requests that return no data are free up to 3 a minute, then cost $0.0002 each.

What is the SocialData rate limit?

120 requests a minute per API key across all endpoints, raised for free on request.

Is SocialData cheaper than the X API?

For reading, yes: $0.20 per 1,000 tweets against $5 per 1,000 post reads on X's pay-per-use pricing.

Sources

Checked on 9 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change; follow the links before you decide.

• https://docs.socialdata.tools/getting-started/pricing/
• https://socialdata.tools/pricing.md
• https://socialdata.tools/
• https://docs.socialdata.tools/monitoring/pricing/
• https://docs.socialdata.tools/getting-started/rate-limits/
• https://docs.socialdata.tools/reference/get-search-results/
• https://twitterapi.io/pricing
• https://docs.x.com/x-api/getting-started/pricing