The X API (formerly the Twitter API) costs $0.005 per post read and $0.010 per user read, billed from prepaid credits, with no free tier and no monthly plan. Reading 50 accounts that post 7 times a day is about 10,500 posts, or roughly $53 a month; 500 accounts is about $525. Xanguard's flat plans run $49 for 50 accounts and $449 for 500. Updated October 2026; X prices checked 6 October 2026.
Need tweets from specific accounts in real time? Get a Xanguard key from $49 a month. Related comparisons: Xanguard vs the official X API (feature by feature) and twitterapi.io alternatives (for its stream and REST users).
Official X API Pricing (2026)
X's developer pricing page lists pay-per-use credits only. The old Basic ($200 a month) and Pro ($5,000 a month) subscriptions are no longer on it.
| Resource | Price (checked 6 October 2026) |
|---|---|
| Post read | $0.005 per post returned |
| User read | $0.010 per user returned |
| Following or follower list | $0.010 per account returned |
| Lists, Spaces, Communities, Notes | $0.005 per resource |
| Likes, mutes, blocks (read) | $0.001 per resource |
| Create a post | $0.015 per request ($0.20 with a link) |
| Reading your own data | $0.001 per resource |
| Monthly cap | 3 million post reads, then Enterprise (priced on request) |
| Starter credit | $20 after adding a card, plus a matched first top-up up to $50 |
Reads of the same resource are deduplicated within a UTC day. Rate limits still apply per app: for example 10,000 user-timeline requests and 300 following-list requests per 15 minutes, and 1 filtered-stream connection with up to 1,000 rules.
How Much Does the X API Cost for Monitoring Accounts?
Formula: posts per month = accounts × posts per day × 30; X API cost = posts per month × $0.005. Assumptions: every new post from a watched account is read once (new posts are never duplicates, so deduplication does not reduce this); only post reads are counted, so user lookups, follower lists and posting are extra; pay-per-use rates as of 6 October 2026. Posting rates are averages across accounts Xanguard customers track (7 days to 5 October 2026): 7 posts a day typical, 16 a day for the busiest tenth.
| Accounts watched | Posts a day each | Posts per month | X API (× $0.005) | Xanguard B2B Starter (flat) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | 7 | 10,500 | $52.50 | $49 (50 accounts) |
| 50 | 16 | 24,000 | $120 | $49 |
| 200 | 7 | 42,000 | $210 | $229 (250-account plan) |
| 200 | 16 | 96,000 | $480 | $229 |
| 500 | 7 | 105,000 | $525 | $449 (500 accounts) |
| 500 | 16 | 240,000 | $1,200 | $449 |
Read the table honestly: for typical accounts the two are close and the X API is cheaper at 200 accounts, because Xanguard's smallest plan covering 200 accounts is the 250-account tier. Xanguard pulls ahead as accounts get busier. Quiet watchlists (1 post a day) cost the X API about $8 a month for 50 accounts, far below $49. Follows, deletions and profile changes are not in the table: on the X API they are extra paid reads you build yourself, while Xanguard includes deleted tweets on every plan and adds follows and profile changes on higher tiers. Xanguard prices from the pricing page; payment is in SOL only and final.
Can I use API for free?
Not for ongoing use. X's pricing page lists no free tier: you buy credits and each read deducts from them. New developers get $20 in free credits when they save a payment card, and X matches the first auto-recharge up to $50. At $0.005 a post, $20 buys 4,000 post reads. Free alternatives are limited: Xanguard's Telegram bot tracks 1 account free forever, and ScrapeBadger lists a limited free tier.
How to get Twitter API access?
- Sign in at console.x.com with an X account and accept the Developer Agreement.
- Create an app, giving a name, description and intended use.
- Save the credentials shown once: API key and secret, bearer token, access token and secret, and OAuth 2.0 client ID and secret.
- Buy credits in the Developer Console (auto-recharge is optional), then call the endpoints.
Source: X's getting-access documentation, checked 6 October 2026. Xanguard skips all of this: you get a key from a Telegram bot and connect to the WebSocket.
What is rate limited Twitter?
Rate limiting caps the requests you can send to an endpoint in a time window, usually 15 minutes or 24 hours, per app (bearer token) or per user (OAuth). Exceed it and the API returns HTTP 429 "Rate limit exceeded" until the window resets; headers x-rate-limit-remaining and x-rate-limit-reset show your position. Examples from X's rate-limit table (checked 6 October 2026):
| Endpoint | Limit |
|---|---|
User timeline (/2/users/:id/tweets) | 10,000 per 15 min per app; 900 per user |
| Recent search | 450 per 15 min per app; 300 per user |
| Following or followers list | 300 per 15 min |
| Filtered stream | 1 connection, 1,000 rules, 250 posts a second |
Rate limits matter for monitoring because follow tracking by polling is capped: 300 following-list reads per 15 minutes means 50 accounts can each be checked about every 2.5 minutes.
When Should You Use the Official X API Instead?
- You need to post, reply or send DMs. Xanguard is read-only.
- You need search or older tweets. Xanguard has no archive; CA Search covers only the last 24 hours.
- Your watchlist is quiet or occasional. At 1 post a day per account, pay-per-use is cheaper than any flat plan.
- You need first-party data for compliance, or want to pay by card (Xanguard is SOL only).
- You watch by keyword at scale. The filtered stream takes 1,000 rules; Xanguard monitors accounts you list.
Many teams use both: the X API for writes and search, Xanguard for the real-time feed. Full comparison: Xanguard vs the official X API.
Types of X API Alternatives
Every option below falls into one of three groups. Scrapers (self-hosted scripts, Nitter-style front ends, or paid actors such as Apify) pull public pages on demand; they are cheap and flexible but break when X changes its site, and they are not real-time. Third-party read APIs (TwitterAPI.io, xAPIs, ScrapeBadger) sell per-request access to profiles and tweets; good for research and bulk lookups, still request-driven. Real-time streaming services (Xanguard, TweetStream, TweetCatcher) watch the accounts you choose and send each new tweet to you over WebSocket, webhook or chat; this is the group to pick for alerts and trading bots. X's free Academic Research track, once a fourth option, was discontinued in 2023.
The 7 Best X API Alternatives for Real-Time Monitoring
Third-party prices and features below were checked September 2026 unless a row says otherwise; TweetStream and TwitterAPI.io were rechecked on 5 October 2026.
1. Xanguard: Best for Crypto Trading Bots
| Price | From $49/mo (B2B API) · Free tier for Telegram |
| Delivery | WebSocket and REST (B2B API); Telegram and signed webhooks on Tweet Alerts paid plans |
| Latency | ~200 ms median tweet detection (published live) |
| Unique features | Tweets, deleted tweets, profile changes, new followers and follow/unfollow on one WebSocket (5 modules, by tier); community monitoring and convergence tracking as separate products |
| Best for | Crypto traders, DeFi protocols, trading bots, AI agents |
| Payment | SOL (on-chain) |
Of the seven options here, Xanguard is the only one that also offers community membership tracking alongside tweet alerts and follow/unfollow detection. If you're building anything in crypto that needs Twitter/X signals, this is the most feature-complete option at the lowest price. Try it → or compare it with the official API in Xanguard vs X API.
2. TweetStream.io: Best for OCR + Token Enrichment
| Price | $199/mo for 50 accounts and 3 WebSocket connections, $499/mo for 250, Scale from $750; 3-day trial (checked 5 Oct 2026) |
| Delivery | WebSocket, REST API |
| Latency | 170 ms 7-day median on its live page (read 5 Oct 2026) |
| Unique features | OCR image text extraction, token enrichment with live prices, news and Binance Square feeds, pump.fun callouts |
| Best for | Trading desks, quantitative research |
TweetStream excels at extracting data from tweet images via OCR and enriching token mentions with live DexScreener data. If you need image-to-text, news or market data baked into the feed, it is a strong pick. It costs about four times Xanguard's entry plan and has no community monitoring.
3. TwitterAPI.io: Best for Pay-Per-Call Data
| Price | REST $0.15/1K tweets · $0.18/1K profiles; stream plans $29/mo (6 accounts) to $999/mo (2,000) |
| Delivery | REST API; stream over WebSocket or webhook |
| Latency | Stream: states "under 500 ms median"; low-latency path covers authors with 5,000+ followers (checked 5 Oct 2026) |
| Unique features | Cheapest per-request pricing, high volume |
| Best for | Data research, bulk analysis, historical data |
TwitterAPI.io is popular for pay-per-call search, profiles and follower exports, and it now sells a stream too. If you already use its stream, Xanguard serves the same stream routes and payloads, so switching is a base-URL and key change: see twitterapi.io alternatives and the migration guide.
4. xAPIs (xapis.dev): Best Budget Alternative
| Price | From $9.99/mo |
| Delivery | REST API |
| Latency | <100ms response time claim |
| Unique features | 47+ endpoints, closest to official API mirror |
| Best for | Developers who need cheap read access |
5. Apify Twitter Scrapers: Best for No-Code
| Price | Pay per result (from $0.25/1K records) |
| Delivery | API, Zapier, webhooks |
| Latency | Not real-time |
| Best for | Market research, content aggregation |
6. TweetCatcher: Best for Discord Communities
| Price | From EUR 70/mo (as listed April 2026, when its X account was suspended; check current status) |
| Delivery | WebSocket, Discord, Telegram |
| Unique features | Follow tracking, profile updates, Truth Social support |
| Best for | Discord-based trading groups |
7. ScrapeBadger: Best Free Tier
| Price | Free tier available |
| Delivery | REST API |
| Best for | Small projects, prototyping |
Comparison Table
Checked September 2026, except TweetCatcher (April 2026) and X API, TweetStream and TwitterAPI.io (5 October 2026).
| Service | Starting Price | Real-Time WS | Follow Detection | Community Monitoring | OCR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| X API (pay-per-use) | $0.005 per post read | Filtered stream, 1 connection | No | No | No |
| Xanguard | $49/mo | Yes | Yes (Enterprise tier) | Yes (Community Watch) | Enterprise tier |
| TweetStream | $199/mo | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| TweetCatcher | EUR 70/mo | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| TwitterAPI.io | $0.15/1K (REST); stream from $29/mo | Yes (stream plans) | No | No | No |
| xAPIs | $9.99/mo | No | No | No | No |
Twitter Scraper vs a Real-Time API: Is Xanguard a Scraper?
No. A Twitter scraper pulls public pages on demand, and "twitter scraper" searches usually mean bulk collection of tweets, profiles or followers. Xanguard is a monitoring feed: you choose accounts and it pushes their new tweets, deletions, profile changes and follows to you. It does not do bulk search, historical archives or follower exports; for those use a scraper or a read API such as those compared here.
A home-built scraper keeps asking X "is there anything new?" and, because of rate limits and blocks, usually checks each account every 30 seconds to 5 minutes. A streaming service sends you each new tweet as soon as it detects it, so you judge it by its measured speed. Monitoring 100 accounts with 1-minute checks is about 4.3 million requests a month that you have to host, route and keep unblocked.
| Aspect | Your own scraper | Real-time monitoring API |
|---|---|---|
| Latency | 30 seconds to 5+ minutes | Depends on the provider (Xanguard: median ~200 ms on paid plans, published live) |
| Cost | Servers, IPs and maintenance that grow with every account | Fixed monthly plan |
| Reliability | Rate limits, blocks, site changes, silent gaps | Provider handles breakage |
| Setup | Polling, retry and dedupe logic you write | One WebSocket or webhook integration |
When scraping still makes sense
- Historical analysis. Real-time services cover new content, not deep archives, so research on past tweets needs a scraper or a historical data provider.
- Custom processing. If you need raw page data or unusual metadata, owning the scraper gives you full control.
- Tiny, slow workloads. A few accounts with no latency requirement can run on a simple script. (Xanguard's free plan covers 1 account on Telegram, and 10 accounts cost $19/month.)
Legal and Compliance Checklist
- X's Terms of Service restrict automated access and scraping regardless of technical feasibility, and X's robots.txt disallows most automated crawling. Commercial use draws more scrutiny than personal or academic use.
- Personal data. Tweets and profiles are personal data under GDPR and similar laws. Set a retention period, delete what you no longer need, and check the rules for cross-border transfers.
- Vendor terms. When you buy from a third-party provider, read its terms on redistribution before you resell or republish the data.
- For business use, get legal advice for your jurisdiction.
Which Alternative Should You Choose?
- Building a crypto trading bot? → Xanguard ($49/mo for tweets + deletes over WebSocket; all 5 modules from $249/mo)
- Need OCR + token enrichment? → TweetStream ($199-499/mo)
- Bulk scraping for research? → TwitterAPI.io (pay per result)
- Tightest budget possible? → xAPIs ($9.99/mo) or ScrapeBadger (free)
- Discord community alerts? → TweetCatcher (from EUR 70/mo, as listed April 2026)
Get Started with Xanguard
- B2B API: @B2B_Xanguard_bot (from $49/mo)
- Free Telegram alerts: @Xanguard_bot
- API docs: docs.xanguard.tech
Frequently Asked Questions
Not for ongoing use. X's pricing page (checked 6 October 2026) lists no free tier, only pay-per-use credits: $0.005 per post read. New developers get $20 in credits when they save a payment card, and X matches the first auto-recharge up to $50. Xanguard's Telegram bot tracks 1 account free.
Sign in at console.x.com with an X account, accept the Developer Agreement, create an app, and save the keys it shows once (API key and secret, bearer token, access token and secret, OAuth 2.0 client ID and secret). Then buy credits in the Developer Console. Xanguard needs none of this: you get a key from a Telegram bot.
Rate limiting caps how many requests you can send an endpoint in a window, usually 15 minutes. Past the cap the API returns HTTP 429 until the window resets. Examples from X's docs: 10,000 user-timeline requests per 15 minutes per app, 300 following-list requests, and 1 filtered-stream connection with 1,000 rules.
No. A scraper fetches public pages on demand. Xanguard is a monitoring feed: you pick accounts and it pushes new tweets, deleted tweets, profile changes and follow events to you over WebSocket or Telegram, from $49 a month for 50 accounts. It does not offer bulk search, historical archives or follower exports.
X's developer pricing page (checked 5 October 2026) lists pay-per-use credits only, with no monthly subscriptions: $0.005 per post read, $0.010 per user read, $0.010 per account returned from following or follower lists, and $0.015 per post created ($0.20 with a link). Post reads are capped at 3 million a month before Enterprise, which is priced on request. New developers get $20 in credits after adding a card.
For real-time tweets from accounts you choose, Xanguard: a WebSocket feed of tweets and deleted tweets with ~200 ms median detection published live at xanguard.tech/speed, from $49 a month for 50 accounts, with profile changes, new followers and follow events on higher tiers. TweetStream (from $199 a month) and twitterapi.io's stream (from $29 for 6 accounts) are the other common choices.
About $0.005 per post delivered. 50 accounts posting 7 times a day is roughly 10,500 post reads, or about $53 a month; 50 busy accounts at 16 a day is about $120. Follows and profile changes cost extra reads and are rate-limited. Xanguard charges a flat $49 a month for 50 accounts including deleted-tweet events.
Many alternatives provide features the official API lacks, like profile change detection, follow/unfollow alerts, community monitoring, and Telegram delivery. Xanguard streams deleted tweets, profile changes, new followers and follow/unfollow events on one B2B WebSocket (modules depend on tier), with community monitoring and Telegram delivery as separate products.
Yes. Xanguard is built for crypto use cases with ~200 ms median tweet detection, deleted-tweet events, follow detection, profile change monitoring and separate community tracking. Plans start at $49 a month for 50 accounts, billed flat rather than per read.
Not for reading at scale. The official X API is pay-per-use with no free read tier; new developers get $20 in credits after adding a card. ScrapeBadger offers a limited free tier, and Xanguard's Telegram bot tracks 1 account free (Telegram delivery only).
The full Firehose is part of X's Enterprise offering, priced on request; it was widely reported at about $42,000 a month under the old tier system. Most developers do not need it: monitoring specific accounts through the pay-per-use filtered stream or an alternative such as Xanguard costs far less.
Since Elon Musk's acquisition, X has raised API prices to earn revenue and limit scraping. In 2026 X moved developers to pay-per-use credits, and its pricing page no longer lists the Basic and Pro subscriptions. Enterprise pricing is on request.