Guide
X API pricing in 2026
X's API moved to pay-per-use on 6 February 2026: no subscription, you buy credits and each read or post draws on them. Here is what everything costs, from X's own developer docs, what changed for follows and likes, and what a typical month adds up to.
By Lempile · Updated
How X charges now
X's pricing page sums it up as no subscriptions, pay only for what you use: you buy credits upfront in the Developer Console, and each call draws on them. X launched this model on 6 February 2026 after a pilot that started in October 2025. Basic and Pro plans remain available, with their subscribers free to switch to pay-per-use, Enterprise is on request, and X notes that prices are subject to change.
What each call costs
| What | Price (USD) | Counted per |
|---|---|---|
| Read a post | $0.005 | post |
| Read a user | $0.010 | user |
| Read a DM event | $0.010 | event |
| Read a like | $0.001 | like |
| Read your own data (owned reads) | $0.001 | resource |
| Create a post | $0.015 | request |
| Create a post with a link | $0.200 | request |
| Create a post when summoned | $0.010 | request |
Two rules change the totals:
- the same resource read twice in one UTC day is counted once;
- pay-per-use plans are capped at 3 million post reads per monthly billing cycle.
What a month costs
| Usage in a month | Cost |
|---|---|
| Read 10,000 posts | 10,000 × $0.005 = $50 |
| Look up 1,000 users | 1,000 × $0.010 = $10 |
| Publish 20 posts a day, no links | 600 × $0.015 = $9 |
| Publish 20 posts a day, each with a link | 600 × $0.20 = $120 |
Links are the expensive part: a post with a link costs over 13 times a post without one.
What changed in 2026
- 6 February: pay-per-use launched for everyone. Public Utility Apps keep free scaled access; recently active users of the old Free tier received a one-time $10 voucher.
- 20 April: owned reads dropped to $0.001, and following, likes and quote posts were removed from all self-serve tiers.
- 13 October: free credits (up to $70) no longer come from just adding a card; they expire three months after they're granted.
Another way: acting from real accounts
If your product needs what the self-serve API dropped (follows, likes, quote posts) or posts links at volume, the other approach is to act from your users' own X accounts. Lempile's X API does that: posts, replies, quotes, likes, reposts, follows, GIFs and Articles, plus the account's followers and who liked its posts, each account in its own browser session on its own IP.
- It's priced per connected account, like Lempile's LinkedIn API, with no per-call fees: €49 a month for up to 10 accounts, then €5.00 down to €3.00 per account. See pricing.
- Each account posts at a human pace: posts at least 45 seconds apart, 70 in 24 hours at most, plus 200 replies a day to people who answered it. X's own limits per account are in X (Twitter) limits in 2026.
- It's in early access, and acting from real accounts means following X's rules for automated activity, which X enforces on the accounts themselves.
For reading public data at scale, or a few posts without links, X's own API is often the cheaper choice.