# X API pricing in 2026: what every read and write costs

The X API bills per resource from prepaid credits. A post read costs $0.005, a user read $0.010, and new developers get no free tier. Here are the full price list, the limits, and what common jobs cost.

Checked October 2026. Public pricing pages. No affiliate links.

In 2026 the X API has two ways to pay. Pay-per-use is the self-serve option: you buy credits and every call takes from them. Enterprise is a custom contract through X’s sales team. The free tier closed to new developers on February 6, 2026.

X bills for each post or user in the response, not for each call. A search that returns 100 posts is 100 post reads. That is the main thing to understand before you plan a budget.

## At a glance

| Criteria | X API | Openhandle |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Closed to new developers since February 6, 2026 | 100 free requests, no card |
| Pricing model | Prepaid credits. Billed for each post or user in the response | Pay per request from a balance. No credits, no subscription |
| Pricing | $0.005 per post read, $0.010 per user read. Capped at 3 million post reads a month | $2.50 per 1k, down to $2 per 1k at volume. 30-day cache hits are free |
| Rate limits | Set per endpoint in 15-minute windows. Recent search: 450 calls per app | 10 per second per key. Higher on request |
| Time to first call | Sign up in the developer console, create an app, and buy credits | Seconds. No approval wait |

## Read prices

These are the pay-per-use prices on X’s pricing page. Each price is for one resource in the response.

| What you read | Price per resource |
|---|---|
| A post | $0.005 |
| A user profile | $0.010 |
| An account in a followers or following list | $0.010 |
| A DM event | $0.010 |
| A list, Space, Community, or Community Note | $0.005 |
| A like, mute, or block | $0.001 |
| Post counts, last 7 days | $0.005 |
| Post counts, full archive | $0.010 |
| Trends | $0.010 |
| Your own data (owned reads) | $0.001 |

## Write prices

| What you write | Price per action |
|---|---|
| Create a post | $0.015 |
| Create a post with a URL | $0.20 |
| Reply when someone tags your account | $0.010 |
| Send a DM, or like, follow, or repost | $0.015 |
| Delete a post | $0.010 |

## Rules that change your bill

- **Repeat reads are free.** X bills the same post or user once per UTC day. A second read that day costs nothing.
- **A monthly cap.** Pay-per-use stops at 3 million post reads in a billing month. Past that, X points you to Enterprise.
- **Starter credits.** Since October 2, 2026, new accounts get $20 in credits after they save a card. X also matches the first auto-recharge up to $50. These credits expire after 3 months.
- **Spend controls.** You can turn on auto-recharge and set a spend limit in the developer console.
- **Rate limits still apply.** Credits do not lift rate limits. Recent search allows 450 calls per app in 15 minutes. Full-archive search allows 1 call per second and 300 per 15 minutes.

## What common jobs cost

Openhandle bills per request, not per post. One profile is one request. A page of posts is one request too, however many posts are on it. The first 100,000 requests in a month cost $0.0025 each.

| Job | X API | Openhandle |
|---|---|---|
| Look up 1,000 profiles | $10.00 | $2.50 |
| Look up 10,000 posts by ID | $50.00 | $25.00 |
| A search that returns 100 posts | $0.50 | $0.0025 per page |
| A followers list of 50,000 accounts | $500.00 | $0.0025 per page |
| Read the same 1,000 profiles again the next day | $10.00 | Free from the 30-day cache, or live again |

## Search: 7 days or the full archive

- **Recent search.** Posts from the last 7 days. Up to 100 results per call and a query of up to 512 characters.
- **Full-archive search.** Posts back to March 2006, on pay-per-use and Enterprise. Up to 500 results per call and a query of up to 1,024 characters.

Both bill per post returned. A full-archive search that returns 500 posts costs $2.50.

## Enterprise, Basic, and Pro

- **Enterprise.** Custom price through X’s sales form. It adds the full firehose, custom rate limits, and no 3 million post cap.
- **When X expects Enterprise.** X’s developer agreement says use beyond hobby projects, commercial prototypes, or a limited number of end users needs an Enterprise agreement.
- **Basic and Pro.** These were monthly plans before pay-per-use. X’s pricing page no longer lists them. Existing subscribers could stay on them or move to pay-per-use.

## Rules beyond price

- **Your use case is binding.** You describe your use case when you sign up. You need X’s approval before you use the data for something else.
- **No model training.** The developer agreement bans training or fine-tuning foundation or frontier models on X data.
- **Limits on sharing.** You can share at most 1.5 million post IDs per entity in 30 days.

## Another option for public reads

Openhandle reads public X profiles, posts, replies, followers, lists, and search. $0.0025 per request, down to $0.002 at volume. 30-day cache hits are free. It is read-only, so keep posting and DMs on the X API. See the [X API alternative](/compare/x-api-alternative) page for how to move your calls, and [is the X API free to read posts?](/questions/is-the-x-twitter-api-free-to-read-posts) for the short answer.

## Verdicts

- **The X API fits.** if you post, send DMs, read data behind a user login, or need full-archive search.
- **Openhandle fits.** if you read public posts, profiles, followers, and search, and want one price per request.

## How we checked

We read X’s pricing page, rate limit docs, search docs, changelog, and developer agreement at docs.x.com on October 25, 2026. X changes its prices often. If a number is out of date, tell us and we fix it.