--- title: "X API Pricing 2026: Cost per Read and Post | Mentio" description: "The X API is pay per use: $0.005 per post read, $0.015 per post created, a 3M read monthly cap. What a bot, a dashboard and a keyword monitor cost." canonical: https://mentio.dev/blog/x-api-pricing/ markdown: https://mentio.dev/blog/x-api-pricing/index.md last-updated: 2026-10-23T06:35:37.198Z --- # X API Pricing 2026: Cost per Read and Post | Mentio > The X API is pay per use: $0.005 per post read, $0.015 per post created, a 3M read monthly cap. What a bot, a dashboard and a keyword monitor cost. Source: https://mentio.dev/blog/x-api-pricing/ Ask what the X API costs and you will find three answers: the free tier that no longer exists, the $200 and $5,000 plans that closed to new developers, and the per-request price list that replaced them. Only the last one applies if you sign up today. This post is that price list, read off [X’s developer documentation](https://docs.x.com/x-api/getting-started/pricing) on October 1, 2026, and what it adds up to for the three things people usually build: a bot that posts, a dashboard that reads, and a keyword monitor. Key takeaways - The X API is pay per use: prepaid credits, no subscription, no free tier. - Reads: $0.005 per post, $0.010 per user, $0.001 per resource for your own data. Writes: $0.015 per post, $0.20 for a post with a URL. - Pay-per-use accounts are capped at 3 million post reads a monthly cycle; past that is Enterprise, sold by quote (reported at around $42,000 a month). - A keyword with 5 new posts an hour costs about $18 a month in reads alone; with 20 an hour, about $72. - If you only need to know when you or a competitor is mentioned, Mentio is $5 per keyword a month plus $0.008 per matched post, with search, scoring and alerts included. ## What does the X API cost per request? Everything is priced per resource returned (reads) or per request (writes), drawn from credits you buy in advance in the Developer Console. These are the rates on X’s pricing page: What Price Unit Post read $0.005 per post returned User read $0.010 per user returned Followers and following $0.010 per user returned DM events $0.010 per event Lists, Spaces, Communities, Notes $0.005 per resource Likes, mutes, blocks $0.001 per resource Owned reads (your own app’s data) $0.001 per resource Create a post $0.015 per request Create a post with a URL $0.20 per request Summoned post $0.010 per request DMs and user interactions $0.015 per request Delete an interaction $0.010 per request Two rules change the arithmetic. Resources are **deduplicated within a 24-hour UTC day**, so reading the same post twice on one day is billed once. And pay-per-use accounts are capped at **3 million post reads per monthly billing cycle**. X also notes that prices are subject to change and that the console always shows the current ones. ## What happened to the free, Basic and Pro plans? X [announced pay-per-use pricing in February 2026](https://www.medianama.com/2026/02/223-x-developer-api-pricing-pay-per-use-model/), replacing the fixed monthly plans: **Basic at $200 a month and Pro at $5,000 a month**. Those plans closed to new sign-ups, and X’s current pricing page lists only the per-request rates above. There is no free tier on it. Enterprise is the exception to the price list. X does not publish a figure; it is sold by quote, and third-party guides put it at around **$42,000 a month**. It is the route for more than 3 million post reads a month and for full-archive search, since recent search, the endpoint most apps use, covers the last seven days. ## What does a typical app cost on pay per use? Three common builds, at the published rates: Build Monthly volume X API cost A bot that posts 10 times a day, no links 300 posts $4.50 The same bot, every post with a link 300 posts with a URL $60.00 A dashboard reading 50,000 posts and their 5,000 authors 50,000 post reads, 5,000 user reads $250 + $50 = $300 A research job reading the full monthly cap 3,000,000 post reads $15,000 The link surcharge is the one that surprises people: a post with a URL costs more than thirteen plain ones. For reads, the bill follows the data, not the number of calls, so an empty poll costs nothing and polling more often is a latency choice rather than a cost one. ## What does it cost to monitor a keyword on X? Monitoring is the case where the bill is hardest to predict, because you pay for every post the search returns, relevant or not. One keyword, searched with recent search and `since_id` so no post is read twice: Keyword Posts a month Post reads Plus each author’s profile Mentio Niche brand, 1 post an hour 720 $3.60 +$7.20 $5 + $5.76 = $10.76 Quiet brand, 5 posts an hour 3,600 $18.00 +$36.00 $5 + $28.80 = $33.80 Busy brand, 20 posts an hour 14,400 $72.00 +$144.00 $5 + $115.20 = $120.20 The author column is an upper bound: it assumes every post comes from a different person and you want their bio and follower count, which is how you tell a customer from a bot. Mentio’s column assumes every post the search returns is a match; keyword rules (required and excluded words) cut that down, and a post they reject is never billed. Read the table honestly: per post, the X API is cheaper than Mentio’s $0.008 per matched mention. What the API price does not include is everything after the read. You still need a scheduler and a cursor per keyword, a database that dedupes the same post across keywords, a model call per post to decide whether it matters, and the code that posts to Slack with retries. And X is one platform: the same keyword on Mentio is also searched on Reddit, Hacker News, LinkedIn, GitHub and 11 more without another integration. When the raw API is the right call If you need every post, the full payload, or more than a few hundred thousand reads a month for research, build on the API: it is the only source with the whole of X, and at volume the per-post rate wins. If you need to _know_ when your product or a competitor comes up, a monitor is the smaller bill. ## What does Mentio charge for X instead? Mentio searches X for each keyword every hour, as a quoted phrase with reposts left out, and keeps posts and replies with the author, their follower count and the post a reply answers. Every match is scored 0 to 100 against a description of your company and tagged with sentiment and intent, then sent to Slack, Telegram, email, a webhook or your AI agent over MCP. The price has two parts and no per-read fee: **$5 per keyword per month**, charged a day at a time, and **$0.008 per matched post**. There is no plan, no seat and no annual commitment; you top up a prepaid balance, and a keyword can be capped so a viral day cannot surprise you. The [Twitter keyword alerts guide](/blog/twitter-keyword-alerts/) walks through the five-minute setup and the other tools that watch X. Skip the X API bill Add your product name as a keyword restricted to X. The $5.80 welcome credit covers a month of it plus 100 mentions, no card, and the first matches arrive within the hour. claude mcp add --transport http mentio https://mcp.mentio.dev/mcp [Start free](https://app.mentio.dev/login?mode=signup&utm_source=blog&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=x-api-pricing)[Read the docs](https://docs.mentio.dev/mcp) ## Which should you choose? - **Posting bot:** the X API directly. $0.015 a post is cheap; keep links out of the posts that do not need them. - **Analytics or research:** the X API, budgeted against the 3 million read cap, or Enterprise above it. - **Knowing when you or a competitor is mentioned:** a monitor. On [Mentio](/x/) that is $5 per keyword a month plus $0.008 per matched post, across X and 15 more platforms, scored and delivered. For Reddit, the [Reddit API guide](/blog/reddit-api-pricing/) covers the same ground, and the [best social listening tools](/blog/best-social-listening-tools/) compares the paid options. Prices are from X’s developer documentation and each vendor’s own page on October 1, 2026. X changed its API pricing more than once during 2026; when it changes again, this page will too. ## Frequently asked questions How much does the X API cost in 2026? It is pay per use with prepaid credits and no subscription. Reading a post costs $0.005, reading a user $0.010, reading your own data $0.001, and creating a post $0.015, or $0.20 when it contains a URL, according to X's developer documentation on October 1, 2026. Pay-per-use accounts can read up to 3 million posts in a monthly billing cycle. Is the X API free? No. X's pricing page lists no free tier: you buy credits and every request draws from them. Resources are deduplicated within a UTC day, so reading the same post twice on one day is billed once. What happened to the X API Basic and Pro plans? X announced pay-per-use pricing in February 2026, replacing the fixed monthly plans: Basic at $200 a month and Pro at $5,000 a month. They closed to new sign-ups; X's current pricing page lists only pay-per-use rates. How much does the X API Enterprise plan cost? X does not publish it. Enterprise is sold by quote, and third-party guides put it at around $42,000 a month. It is the route for more than 3 million post reads a month and for full-archive search. How much does it cost to monitor a keyword with the X API? It depends on how many posts match, because X bills the posts it returns. A keyword with 5 new posts an hour is about 3,600 reads a month, $18; with 20 an hour, 14,400 reads and $72. Fetching each author's profile adds $0.010 per user. On Mentio the same keyword is $5 a month plus $0.008 per matched post, with search, scoring and delivery included. Is there a cheaper alternative to the X API for brand monitoring? If you only need to know when your product or a competitor is mentioned, a monitoring tool is usually cheaper than building on the API once storage, scoring and alerts are counted. Mentio charges $5 per keyword a month and $0.008 per matched post, covers 15 more platforms with the same keyword, and starts with $5.80 of free credit. Where this applies - [X (Twitter) monitoringPosts and replies for your keywords, searched every hour.](/x/) - [Twitter keyword alertsEvery way left to get alerts from X, free ones included.](/blog/twitter-keyword-alerts/) - [Pricing$5 per keyword per month, $0.008 per matched mention, no plan.](/pricing/) - [Reddit API in 2026The same questions for Reddit: keys, limits, pricing.](/blog/reddit-api-pricing/) Written by Pau Guirao, founder of Mentio. Prices and product facts were checked on October 1, 2026; if one has changed, [tell us](/contact/) and we will fix it. ## Related posts [![](/blog/twitter-keyword-alerts/cover.png)](/blog/twitter-keyword-alerts/) Sep 14, 2026 ## [Twitter keyword alerts in 2026: what still works on X](/blog/twitter-keyword-alerts/) X has no keyword alerts of its own, the API now bills per post read, and the free tools died with the old API. Every way left to monitor a Twitter account or a keyword, what each costs, and a five-minute setup. - [Platforms](/blog/tag/platforms/) - [X](/blog/tag/x/) - [Alerts](/blog/tag/alerts/) [![](/blog/reddit-api-pricing/cover.png)](/blog/reddit-api-pricing/) Sep 13, 2026 ## [Reddit API in 2026: keys, limits, pricing and alternatives](/blog/reddit-api-pricing/) How to get Reddit API keys and why new apps now need approval, the 100 requests a minute limit, what the search API returns, the $0.24 per 1,000 calls that ended third-party apps, and the alternatives when you only need to watch Reddit. - [Platforms](/blog/tag/platforms/) - [Reddit](/blog/tag/reddit/) - [APIs](/blog/tag/apis/) [![](/blog/best-social-listening-tools/cover.png)](/blog/best-social-listening-tools/) Oct 1, 2026 ## [The best social listening tools in 2026, compared honestly](/blog/best-social-listening-tools/) Brand24, Mention, Awario, Talkwalker, Brandwatch, Syften, Octolens, F5Bot, Google Alerts and Mentio: who each social listening tool is for, what it covers, what it costs where the price is published, and where it falls short. - [Tools](/blog/tag/tools/) - [Social listening](/blog/tag/social-listening/) ## Start monitoring brand mentions One request tracks your first keyword. The first scored mention lands within minutes, in Slack, a webhook, or your agent. [Get your API key ›](https://app.mentio.dev/login?mode=signup)[Read the docs ›](https://docs.mentio.dev) $5.80 free credit · no card · no subscription