Twitter API flat pricing vs per-tweet billing

#Per-request vs per-resource pricing: what each one bills

Per-request pricing charges one fixed price for each API call, whatever the response contains. Per-resource pricing, also called per-item or per-tweet billing, charges for every object a response returns: each tweet, profile and follower is its own line on the bill.

The official X API uses both. Its pay-per-use rate card (opens in a new tab) charges reads "per resource returned in the response" and charges writes, such as creating a post, per request. Reading is where the two models drift apart, because a single read can return hundreds of objects. To price your own month of tweets, profiles and followers under both, run the numbers in the free Twitter API Cost Calculator.

The difference in one table: the per-request bill grows with the number of calls you make, the per-resource bill with the number of items X sends back.

• You pay for

  Per-request (flat)

  Each call

  Per-resource (metered)

  Each tweet, profile or follower returned

• A response with 100 tweets

  Per-request (flat)

  1 charge

  Per-resource (metered)

  100 charges

• A search page with 20 tweets

  Per-request (flat)

  1 charge

  Per-resource (metered)

  20 charges

• Author profile inside each tweet

  Per-request (flat)

  Included in the call

  Per-resource (metered)

  A separate user charge on the official X API from Nov 22, 2026

• How you budget

  Per-request (flat)

  Calls × price per call

  Per-resource (metered)

  Items × price per item, plus attached objects

"Flat" has a second meaning too: a fixed monthly price. A monthly plan with a set number of requests gives you both, the same price per call and a bill you know before the month starts. The official X API has neither for new projects today: its last fixed plans, Basic at $200 a month and Pro at $5,000, moved to pay-per-use after June 1 (opens in a new tab) and September 1, 2026 (opens in a new tab).

#Sorsa API bills one request per call on every endpoint

For flat-priced X data, use Sorsa API, a Twitter (X) API and scraper that counts one call to any endpoint as one request, with no multipliers and no per-item charges. A batch of 100 tweets by ID, a page of 200 followers and a page of search results each cost exactly one request.

The rest of the bill follows the same rule:

• Every tweet comes whole. Each tweet object carries the author's full profile in user, the quoted tweet in quoted_status and media links in entities, inside the same request.
• Failed requests are never charged. A call that errors costs nothing, so a retry after a timeout or a 429 is paid for only when it succeeds.
• The monthly price is fixed. Plans run from 10K to 10M requests a month, each at a set price, with the quota refreshed every month and 20 requests per second on every plan.
• Checking your balance is free. GET /key-usage-info (opens in a new tab) returns the requests left on your key and never counts against them.

Here is one request that returns up to 100 tweets with their authors. Sign up for a key, then send tweet links or bare IDs to POST /tweet-info-bulk (opens in a new tab):

curl -X POST "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/tweet-info-bulk" \
  -H "ApiKey: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"tweet_links": ["2110347195528712192",
       "https://x.com/balcony_garden_logs/status/2110351260617097216"]}'

{
  "tweets": [
    {
      "id": "2110347195528712192",
      "full_text": "Seed trays are out. Tomatoes went in an hour ago.",
      "created_at": "2026-10-14T08:12:05Z",
      "likes_count": 41,
      "retweet_count": 3,
      "reply_count": 7,
      "view_count": 2208,
      "user": {
        "id": "1590336274510848000",
        "username": "balcony_garden_logs",
        "display_name": "Balcony Garden Logs",
        "followers_count": 1874,
        "verified": false
      }
    }
  ]
}

Whether the list holds 2 IDs or 100, the call above is one request. A 403 means the key is missing, invalid or out of requests; a 429 means more than 20 requests in one second.

#One response, two bills

On a per-request API the price of a response stays the same as it fills up; on a per-resource API it rises with every item. The same four responses show it:

• 100 tweets by ID

  Sorsa API, per request

  1 request, from $0.0014

  Official X API, per resource

  $0.50, up to $1.50 with authors from Nov 22

• 20 search results

  Sorsa API, per request

  1 request, from $0.0014

  Official X API, per resource

  $0.10, up to $0.30 with authors from Nov 22

• 200 followers

  Sorsa API, per request

  1 request, from $0.0014

  Official X API, per resource

  $2.00

• 100 profiles

  Sorsa API, per request

  1 request, from $0.0014

  Official X API, per resource

  $1.00

One request costs from $0.0014 on the largest plan to $0.0049 on Starter. Even at the Starter rate, a full 100-tweet response costs about a hundredth of the official X API's $0.50.

Move the controls to see how each bill reacts when a response holds fewer items:

Good to know

Deduplication softens the official X API's meter a little: X charges a resource once per UTC day, so the same post or author fetched twice before midnight UTC is billed once. Its docs call that a soft guarantee, so budget on the full count.

#Why page size sets your price per tweet

On a per-request API, the price per tweet is the price of a call divided by the items in it, so the endpoints that return the most items per call give the lowest price per item. That is the one thing to plan around: collect by ID in batches of 100 and page followers 200 at a time wherever the job allows.

Prices per 1,000 items, at Sorsa API's best plan rate and at the official X API's list rates:

• Followers

  Items per request on Sorsa API

  200

  Sorsa API per 1,000

  from $0.007

  Official X API per 1,000

  $10.00

• Tweets by ID

  Items per request on Sorsa API

  100

  Sorsa API per 1,000

  from $0.014

  Official X API per 1,000

  $5.00, up to $15.00 with authors

• Profiles

  Items per request on Sorsa API

  100

  Sorsa API per 1,000

  from $0.014

  Official X API per 1,000

  $10.00

• Search results

  Items per request on Sorsa API

  about 20

  Sorsa API per 1,000

  from $0.07

  Official X API per 1,000

  $5.00, up to $15.00 with authors

The official X API column never moves with page size: a search that returns 100 posts per page bills the same $0.005 per post as one that returns 10. Every route on Sorsa API's side stays below the official X API by a wide margin, from about 70x on search to more than 1,000x on followers. What a full dataset costs at these rates is worked out in what 1 million tweets cost.

Search pages hold about 20 tweets, so search is the per-request route with the highest price per tweet. When you already have tweet IDs, from a dataset or an earlier search, POST /tweet-info-bulk refreshes them 100 at a time; POST /search-tweets (opens in a new tab) is for finding new ones, with every X search operator back to 2006.

#How the official X API meters reads

The official X API sells reads as prepaid credits drawn down by each object a response returns: $0.005 per post, $0.010 per user and $0.010 per follower or followed account. X's team put it plainly in its expansions notice (opens in a new tab) of October 23, 2026: "usage is based on the data objects the API returns."

That notice adds the change that makes per-tweet billing heavier. From November 22, 2026, objects attached through expansions are billed at the standard rate: $0.010 for each author profile and $0.005 for each media item, poll, place or referenced post. A search result that used to cost $0.005 can cost $0.015 once its author comes with it.

Three more rules shape the bill. Pay-per-use stops at 3M post reads per monthly billing cycle, and past it X sells only Enterprise contracts from about $42,000 a month. An empty balance or a reached spending limit blocks every call until you add credits or the next cycle starts. And X needs a developer account and OAuth credentials before the first read. All of X's rates, from owned reads to posting, are in our guide to X API pricing.

#How to tell if a Twitter API is really flat

A Twitter API is flat-priced when one call has one price, no matter what the response holds. Some providers say "flat" or "pay per call" and still bill by the item through credits per returned tweet. Five questions sort them out, and here is how Sorsa API answers each:

1. Ask what one call costs when it returns the maximum. Sorsa API: one request for 100 tweets, 100 profiles or 200 followers.

2. Ask whether every page of results is a new charge, and how big a page is. Sorsa API: each page is one request; search pages hold about 20 tweets.

3. Ask whether the author, quoted tweet and media cost extra. Sorsa API: they sit inside each tweet object at no extra charge.

4. Ask whether failed calls are billed. Sorsa API: never.

5. Ask what happens when the plan runs out. Sorsa API: calls stop with a 403 until the next month, an upgrade, or extra requests you switch on yourself.

Extra requests are Sorsa API's pay as you go option on top of a plan: a prepaid balance in dollars that never expires, with a spending limit per billing period that you set. The full list of checks for picking a provider is in how to choose a Twitter API.

#Get flat pricing for your X data today

Per-tweet billing makes every full response expensive, and from November 22, 2026 the official X API adds a charge for each author too. For a bill you can predict, read X data through Sorsa API: one request per call on every endpoint, tweets from $0.014 per 1,000 and followers from $0.007 per 1,000, at 20 requests per second on every plan. Your first 100 requests read up to 10K tweets, with no card.

#FAQ