X API Pricing: What It Costs to Post to X

The X API costs $0.015 per post you create, $0.20 per post that contains a link, and $0.005 per post you read. X moved every new developer onto this pay-per-use model on February 6, 2026. There's no monthly subscription and no minimum spend: you buy credits in the X Developer Console and X deducts them per request. The numbers in this post come from X's pricing docs and changelog, checked on September 29, 2026. X has changed its pricing several times since 2023, so check those pages before you budget.

How much does the X API cost?#

Writes are charged per request and reads per resource returned. Here are the rates that matter if you're building social posting:

Action	X API price	Notes
Create a post	$0.015 per request	POST /2/tweets, text or media, no link
Create a post with a link	$0.20 per request	Any post containing a URL, about 13× a plain post
Create a summoned reply	$0.010 per request	A reply to a post whose author @mentioned or quoted your account
Delete a post	$0.010 per request	Billed as "Interaction: Delete"
Read a post	$0.005 per post returned	Includes reading back a post's metrics
Read a user	$0.010 per user returned	Profile lookups
Read your own data ("Owned Reads")	$0.001 per resource	Only when the authenticated user owns the developer app
Post read cap	3 million per billing cycle	Above that, X points you to Enterprise

Source: X API pricing and the April 16, 2026 changelog entry, both fetched 2026-09-29.

Four billing rules change the math:

• The link price is recent. X raised posts containing a URL from $0.01 to $0.20, effective April 20, 2026. The same change set plain posts at $0.015 and removed following, likes, and quote-posts from all self-serve plans.
• Owned Reads rarely help a SaaS product. The $0.001 rate only applies when {id} matches the authenticated user and that user owns the developer app. When your customers connect their accounts to your app, reading their posts costs the full $0.005.
• Reads are deduplicated per day. Fetch the same post twice in one UTC day and X usually charges once.
• Credits can run out mid-day. If your balance hits zero or goes slightly negative, X blocks requests until you add credits. Auto-recharge helps, but it won't run while the balance is at or below zero.

These per-post fees apply whether you call the X API yourself or go through Adeli's X API, which passes them through at X's rates. Adeli handles the X developer app, X's review, and token refresh for you.

Is the X API free?#

No. X ended free access for new developers when it launched pay-per-use on February 6, 2026. Two groups still get something for free:

• Public Utility Apps, which X says "continue to receive free scaled access."
• Recently active Legacy Free users, who moved to pay-per-use with a one-time $10 voucher.

Everyone else pays from the first request. X does let you set a spending cap, and since there's no minimum spend, a prototype that posts a few times a day costs cents.

If a guide describes a free tier with a monthly post allowance, it's out of date. That tier closed to new sign-ups with the Feb 6, 2026 changelog entry.

What happened to the Basic, Pro, and Enterprise tiers?#

X is folding Basic and Pro into pay-per-use. Enterprise is still a separate, sales-led plan. X's current pricing page lists only pay-per-use rates and an Enterprise interest form.

Tier	Status	Source
Free	Replaced by pay-per-use on Feb 6, 2026. Public Utility Apps keep free access.	X changelog
Basic (was $200/month)	X deprecated Basic and began migrating subscribers to pay-per-use after June 1, 2026	X Developers on X
Pro (was $5,000/month)	X announced on Aug 14, 2026 that Pro subscriptions end at each account's cutover date after Sept 1, 2026, and move to pay-per-use	X Developers forum
Enterprise	Custom pricing, custom rate limits, no published price	X API pricing
Pay-per-use	The default self-serve plan	X API pricing

Enterprise has no public price. The monthly figures quoted around the web come from reports on older contracts, not from X. You'll get a number only after talking to X's sales team.

What does it cost to post to X at your scale?#

Plain posts are cheap on the X API. Links are where the bill grows. This table counts post-creation charges only, over a 30-day month:

Scenario	Posts per month	All plain posts	Half with links	All with links
Founder posting for one brand (1 account, 2 posts a day)	60	$0.90	$6.45	$12
Scheduling SaaS (50 customer accounts, 3 posts a day each)	4,500	$67.50	$483.75	$900
AI agent product (500 accounts, 5 posts a day each)	75,000	$1,125	$8,062.50	$15,000

Calculated from X's rates of $0.015 per plain post and $0.20 per post with a link (X API pricing, fetched 2026-09-29).

The table leaves out:

• Analytics reads. Reading back a post's metrics once a day for its first 7 days costs 7 × $0.005 per post. For the scheduling SaaS, that adds about $157.50 a month. For the agent product, it adds about $2,625.
• Engineering time. Registering an X developer app, building OAuth, refreshing tokens, and keeping a credit balance topped up are all work your team owns.
• The Enterprise question. X's terms may push the larger scenarios off self-serve entirely. See the next two sections.

What are the X API rate limits?#

Posting is capped at 10,000 posts per 24 hours per app and 100 posts per 15 minutes per user. Rate limits and billing are separate systems: you can stay within the limits and still run up a bill, or hit a limit without spending anything.

Endpoint	Per app	Per user	What it's for
POST /2/tweets	10,000 / 24 hours	100 / 15 min	Create a post
DELETE /2/tweets/:id	—	50 / 15 min	Delete a post
POST /2/media/upload	50,000 / 24 hours	500 / 15 min	Upload images and video
GET /2/tweets	3,500 / 15 min	5,000 / 15 min	Look up posts by ID
GET /2/users/:id/tweets	10,000 / 15 min	900 / 15 min	A user's timeline
GET /2/tweets/search/recent	450 / 15 min	300 / 15 min	Search the last 7 days

Source: X API rate limits, fetched 2026-09-29. Enterprise customers get custom limits.

The per-app cap is the one SaaS builders hit. Every customer who connects an X account to your app shares the same 10,000 posts a day. The agent product above, at 2,500 posts a day, fits. A product with 3,000 accounts posting 5 times a day would need 15,000 and wouldn't.

What's the catch for SaaS and AI-agent builders?#

Three X rules can cost a growing product more than the per-post price:

• Self-serve is meant for limited end users. X's Developer Agreement describes the pay-per-use, Basic, and Pro plans as built for "hobbyists, commercial prototyping, initial development," and apps with "a limited number of end-users." Beyond that scope, it says you must apply for Enterprise. X doesn't define the number, so a growing SaaS product can't know in advance where that line is.
• Programmatic replies need a summons. Since February 23, 2026, self-serve apps can only reply through the API when the original post's author has @mentioned the replying account or quoted one of its posts. An AI agent that replies to trending posts on its own won't work on self-serve. The rule doesn't apply to Enterprise.
• Links cost more than the post. At $0.20 a post, a product that shares blog posts, product pages, or tracking links pays 13× the plain rate. After the change, some publishers stopped including links in their automated posts.

Should I use the X API directly or through a unified API?#

X's per-post fees are the same either way. Adeli passes them through at X's published rates, so the choice comes down to the work around the fees: the developer app, X's review, tokens, and every other network you need.

Situation	Better fit	Why
One brand account, X only	Direct X API	60 plain posts a month cost under $1, and one developer app is easy to run
Your own accounts, and a team that wants to own the integration	Direct X API	You keep full control of the app and pay only X
Customers connect their own X accounts	Unified API	Adeli holds the X developer app, has passed X's review, and refreshes every account's tokens
X plus Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or Facebook	Unified API	One endpoint instead of five integrations to build and maintain

What Adeli charges, and what it covers:

• X's fees, passed through. Adeli passes X's API usage fees through at X's published rates. The scenario table above is what X charges either way.
• Adeli's own price is per connected account. One X account is one connected account. The first 3 are free, then $5 each for accounts 4–10, $3 each for 11–50, $2 each for 51–100, and $1 each up to 2,000. Every tier includes scheduling, post analytics, and full API access.
• No X developer app to own. Adeli maintains the X developer app, has passed X's review, and refreshes tokens for every connected X account.
• Other networks in the same request. Add "x" to the platforms array alongside Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook (how the posting API works). If a post fails on X, you get a per-platform status and a webhook, and the other networks still go out.

For the scheduling SaaS, X's fees come to $67.50 to $900 a month either way, depending on how many posts carry links. Adeli's own price for those 50 accounts is $155 a month, with X's fees passed through on top. If you post from a few of your own accounts on X alone, build direct. If your customers connect their own accounts, or you'll add a second network within a year, see how Adeli handles X.