X (Twitter) API pricing and a cheaper way to read public posts
X moved its API to pay-per-use. Reading a post costs $0.005 and reading a user costs $0.010, so 1,000 posts is $5 and 1,000 profiles is $10. Reads cap at 3 million posts a month before Enterprise, and repeat reads of the same item within a UTC day are deduplicated. source
Side by side
| X API | ScrapeIO | |
|---|---|---|
| Profile lookups | $10 per 1,000 | 1 credit each ($0.99 to $1.88 per 1,000) |
| Post reads | $5 per 1,000 posts | 1 credit per call; timeline and search calls return a page of posts |
| Search operators | Yes | Yes, X operators work in /v1/twitter/search |
| Writes (posting, DMs) | Yes | No. Read-only |
| Free tier | No free tier for new developers | 100 credits on signup, no card |
| MCP | Official XMCP, needs your own X app | Hosted MCP server, agent skill, llms.txt, no X app needed |
| Other platforms | X only | 33 platforms: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, Threads, Pinterest and more |
When the X API is the better choice
If you need to post, reply, send DMs or act as a user, you need the official API. It also has an official MCP server. For read-only research, monitoring and enrichment, a per-call API is usually much cheaper and comes with the other platforms in the same format.
See every X endpoint on the X API page.
Sources
Prices and limits checked on 7 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages. They change; follow the source links before you decide.
100 free credits, no card. Credits never expire.
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