Reading public data from X used to mean picking an official tier you could afford. In 2026 X has moved to pay-per-use billing, and a handful of third-party APIs return the same public tweets, profiles and follower lists at very different prices and with very different trade-offs.

This roundup compares six options for developers who need to read X data programmatically. We built one of them (InsightSocial), so we've tried to be straight about where it's the right pick and where it isn't. Every competitor price below was checked on the vendor's own pricing page in September 2026.

If you don't write code and just want a spreadsheet of tweets or profiles, skip the APIs entirely: our free Twitter/X Chrome extension exports from the page you're viewing.

Which Twitter/X data APIs are worth considering?

API	Pricing model	Headline read price (Sept 2026)	Free option	Other platforms	Best for
Official X API	Prepaid, pay per resource	$0.005 per post, $0.010 per user	None	No	Posting, DMs, your own account's data
InsightSocial	Credits per endpoint	20 credits per profile, 20–100 per timeline page	500 credits/month + 10 free calls	8 more	Multi-platform projects, AI agents, small to mid volume
twitterapi.io	Pay as you go	$0.15 per 1K tweets, $0.18 per 1K profiles	None (bonus credits on recharge)	No	Cheapest bulk tweet reads
Apify (Tweet Scraper V2)	Pay per result	$0.40 per 1,000 tweets	Limited demo runs	Via other actors	Batch jobs inside an existing Apify workflow
Bright Data	Pay per record or monthly plan	$1.50 per 1K records	5,000 records/month	Many	Enterprise volume and procurement
ScrapeCreators	Credits, never expire	$1.88 per 1K requests (smallest pack)	100 credits	Many	Occasional use, credits you don't want to lose

These units aren't directly comparable: some bill per tweet, some per request, some per record.

1. Official X API

What it is. X's own API, the only option that can write: post, reply, send DMs, like and follow on behalf of an authenticated user.

Pricing (as of September 2026). The old monthly Basic and Pro subscriptions are gone from X's pricing documentation. Access is now pay per use from credits you buy upfront in the Developer Console, with no free tier. Reads are priced per resource returned: $0.005 per post, $0.010 per user, $0.010 per follower or following record, and $0.001 for likes. Reading your own account's data ("owned reads") is $0.001 per resource. Writes are per request: $0.015 to create a post, $0.200 for a post that contains a URL. The same resource requested twice within 24 hours is charged once, and standard accounts are capped at 3 million post reads per billing cycle, beyond which X points you to Enterprise.

Strengths. It's first-party. It's the only route for write actions, and the owned-read price is hard to beat for analytics on your own account. You can set spending limits.

Weaknesses. At $5 per 1,000 posts and $10 per 1,000 user records, reading other people's public data adds up fast. It's X-only, and you still need a developer app, OAuth for user-context calls, and your own handling of X's data model.

Choose it if you need to post or act as a user, or you mainly analyze your own account.

2. InsightSocial

What it is. A REST API for public social data across nine platforms: Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, YouTube, Reddit and Pinterest. On X it covers 15 endpoints: profiles, user timelines and media, single tweets, replies, retweeters, followers and following, tweet and user search, communities, video transcripts, and a computed profile summary. Read-only.

Pricing. Every endpoint has its own credit price, listed publicly at endpoint pricing and at GET /v1/endpoints (no key needed). On X: 20 credits for a profile, a single tweet, or a page of followers, following or retweeters; 20–100 credits per page of about 20 timeline tweets; 20–180 per page of search; 20–100 per page of replies; 100 for the full profile summary; 200 for a video transcript. Metered endpoints reserve the ceiling and charge what the call actually read.

Credits come from the same balance as our extension exports: the free plan includes 500 a month, Pro gives 10,000 a month for $9.99 (or $7.99 billed yearly), and one-time packs never expire. Your first 10 calls priced at 200 credits or less are free.

To put that in dollars on Pro: a profile is about $0.02, and 1,000 timeline tweets (roughly 50 pages) costs between $1 and $5 depending on how much each metered page reads.

What makes the bill smaller. Failed calls and empty results cost 0. Re-running the exact same call from your account inside its window (24 hours for profiles, 6 for timelines and replies, 1 for search) is free. If the same public data was fetched recently by anyone, you pay 5 credits instead of the full price. See credits and caching.

Strengths. One key, one x-api-key header, and one response shape across all nine platforms, so a tweet, a TikTok video and a Reddit post share the same post object. Timelines support since and stop_at_id for incremental polling. Reply and post lists come back with model labels such as sentiment and sponsored-post flags at no extra cost. There's a guide for AI agents, and an ai-search endpoint that answers a plain-English question about X with cited posts.

Weaknesses. Be honest with yourself about volume. For raw bulk tweets, twitterapi.io is cheaper per tweet. For X user profiles specifically, 20 credits is about $0.02 on Pro, which is more than the official API's $0.010 per user. Each key allows 60 requests a minute and 10 concurrent requests, and there are no write endpoints.

Choose it if your project touches more than one platform, you're building an agent or a pipeline and want one schema, or your volume sits in the thousands to tens of thousands of records a month. Our Twitter/X scraping API guide has working Python, Node and cURL code.

3. twitterapi.io

What it is. A dedicated third-party X data API with a wide set of read endpoints.

Pricing (as of September 2026). Pay as you go with no minimum spend: $0.15 per 1,000 tweets, $0.18 per 1,000 user profiles, and tiered pricing for follower and following lists starting from $0.01 per 1,000. There's a minimum charge of $0.00015 per API call, waived for bulk responses. Recharged credits don't expire; the bonus credits that come with a recharge last 30 days.

Strengths. On price per tweet, it's the cheapest option in this list by a wide margin.

Weaknesses. X only. If you later add TikTok or Instagram, that's a second vendor and a second data model.

Choose it if you're doing high-volume, X-only reads and cost per tweet is your deciding factor.

4. Apify (Tweet Scraper V2)

What it is. An actor published by a third-party developer on Apify's scraping platform. You configure a run (search terms, handles, lists), it executes in Apify's cloud, and you collect a dataset.

Pricing (as of September 2026). The actor page lists $0.40 per 1,000 tweets, with a minimum of 50 tweets returned per query. Free-plan users are limited to demo mode: 5 runs a month of up to 10 items each.

Strengths. Good for scheduled batch jobs, and if your team already uses Apify for other sites, it slots into the same scheduler, storage and integrations.

Weaknesses. It's a run-and-collect job model rather than a request-response API, which is awkward for live lookups or agent tool calls. The 50-tweet minimum per query makes lots of small lookups inefficient, and actors are maintained by individual publishers, so quality varies across the store.

Choose it if you want scheduled bulk tweet collection and already live in the Apify ecosystem.

5. Bright Data

What it is. A large web-data company whose Twitter/X Scraper API is one of many prebuilt scrapers, backed by its own proxy network.

Pricing (as of September 2026). $1.50 per 1,000 records on the pay-as-you-go plan, a $499/month Scale plan that includes 384,000 records (then $1.30 per 1,000), and custom Enterprise pricing. There's a free tier of 5,000 records a month with no card required.

Strengths. Scale, unlimited concurrency on paid plans, SLAs and the paperwork large companies need for procurement.

Weaknesses. More expensive per record than the X-specialist APIs for plain tweet reads, and the product surface is large, which means a steeper learning curve for a small team.

Choose it if you're an enterprise team that needs contracts, SLAs and very high volume.

6. ScrapeCreators

What it is. A credit-based API covering a long list of social platforms, X among them.

Pricing (as of September 2026). Credits never expire and there are no subscriptions. One credit is one request for most endpoints. Packs run from $47 for 25,000 credits ($1.88 per 1,000 requests) to $497 for 500,000 ($0.99 per 1,000), with custom Enterprise pricing above that. New accounts start with 100 free credits.

Strengths. Simple per-request pricing and no expiry, which suits bursty or occasional workloads.

Weaknesses. Its X coverage is narrower than a dedicated X API; its site lists 6 Twitter endpoints. Check that the endpoints you need exist before buying a pack.

Choose it if you use social data occasionally and hate losing unused credits.

How do you choose a Twitter/X data API?

Start from the job, not the price list:

You need to post, reply or DM. Only the official X API can do it.
You're analyzing your own account. The official API's owned-read price is the cheapest route.
Millions of tweets, X only. twitterapi.io on price per tweet.
Scheduled batch jobs in an existing scraping stack. Apify.
Enterprise procurement, SLAs, huge volume. Bright Data.
More than one platform, or an AI agent calling tools. InsightSocial, for one key and one schema across nine platforms. Start with the quickstart or the social media API overview.

Whichever you pick, test your real workload on a small sample first: per-unit prices hide how many items a request actually returns.

FAQ

How much does the official X API cost in 2026?

As of September 2026, X bills pay per use from prepaid credits, with no free tier. Reading a post costs $0.005, reading a user costs $0.010, and creating a post costs $0.015 ($0.200 if it contains a URL). Standard accounts are capped at 3 million post reads per billing cycle.

Is there a free Twitter/X API?

Not from X itself any more. Several third-party APIs have free allowances: InsightSocial includes 500 credits a month plus 10 free calls, Bright Data offers 5,000 records a month, and ScrapeCreators gives 100 starting credits.

What is the cheapest way to get tweets at scale?

For X-only bulk reads, twitterapi.io had the lowest per-tweet price we found in September 2026, at $0.15 per 1,000 tweets. If you also need other platforms, weigh that against running a second integration.

Can third-party APIs post to X?

The read-focused APIs in this list don't. For posting, replying or sending DMs, use the official X API.

The third-party options here don't require an X account for public data. The official API requires a developer account, and user-context calls need OAuth.

Is using a third-party X data API legal?

These APIs return publicly visible data, but the law depends on your jurisdiction and how you use the data, especially if it includes personal information. Review X's terms and data-protection rules such as GDPR, and get legal advice for commercial use.