X API pricing in 2026: what a post actually costs

X's API is pay-per-use: you buy credits and pay per call. Publishing a post costs $0.015. A post that contains a link costs $0.20. Reading a post, including its metrics, costs $0.005 per post returned. There's no free tier for new developers, and the old Basic and Pro subscriptions are being retired. For a brand posting once a day and checking each post five times, that's about $1.20 a month without links and about $6.75 with them.

I run Harbor's X integration on this pricing, so these are the numbers I actually pay. Prices below were checked against X's own pricing page and changelog on October 17, 2026.

The short version

What you do	Price
Publish a post	$0.015
Publish a post that contains a link	$0.200
Read a post (with its metrics)	$0.005 per post returned
Read your own data ("owned reads", see below)	$0.001
Look up a user	$0.010 per user returned
Delete a post	$0.010 (per third-party price tables; X's page doesn't name the row)
Add alt text to media	$0.005

You prepay credits. There's no subscription, no contract and no minimum. You can set a spending limit, and requests are blocked once you hit it.

How we got here

2023 and 2024: tiers. Free, Basic and Pro. Pro launched at $5,000 a month in May 2023. Basic went from $100 to $200 a month in October 2024.
February 6, 2026: pay-per-use launches. Free access stays only for public-utility apps, and new developers pay per call.
April 20, 2026: links get expensive. A post with a URL went from $0.01 to $0.20. A plain post became $0.015, and reads of your own data dropped to $0.001. X also removed likes, follows and quote-posts from self-serve access.
Mid to late 2026: legacy plans migrate. Several developer guides report legacy Basic plans moving to pay-per-use after June 1 and Pro after September 1. I couldn't confirm the exact dates from X's forum, so treat them as approximate.

If you're starting today, pay-per-use (or Enterprise) is the only option.

What a scheduling app actually pays

A scheduler does two things on X: it publishes, and it reads each post back to see how it did. Harbor reads every post at 1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours, 3 days and 7 days. That's five reads.

One post, read five times:

Without a link: $0.015 + 5 × $0.005 = $0.04
With a link: $0.20 + 5 × $0.005 = $0.225

One brand, one post a day, for a month:

	No links	Every post has a link
30 posts, 5 reads each	$1.20	$6.75

Five brands posting daily, no links, is about $6 a month. The same five brands with a link in every post is about $34.

X deduplicates reads of the same post within a UTC day, and calls that a "soft guarantee". A post's 1-hour and 6-hour checks often fall on the same UTC day, so the real bill can come in a little under these numbers.

What people get wrong

Links cost 13 times as much as a plain post. $0.20 against $0.015. This only applies to posts made through the API, not ones you type into X yourself.
Batching reads doesn't save money. Reads are billed per post returned, so fetching 100 posts in one request costs the same as 100 requests. Batching saves rate limit, not credits.
"Owned reads" at $0.001 are narrow. They apply to the GET /2/users/{id}/... endpoints, and only when that account owns the developer app. If you build a tool for other people's accounts, their reads cost the normal $0.005.
The detailed metrics expire. Link clicks, profile clicks and other non-public metrics need user-context auth, and X only returns them for posts from the last 30 days. Read them while you can.
Rate limits are separate from credits. For example, 100 posts per user every 15 minutes. Having credits doesn't lift them.
Automated replies are restricted. Since February 2026, a programmatic reply needs the original author to have summoned the replier. Plan threads and replies with that in mind.

How to keep the bill small

Set a spending limit in the developer console before you write any code. A bug in a polling loop is the expensive kind.
Leave the link out when it isn't the point. A post that earns attention without a link is 13 times cheaper to send.
Read on a schedule, not on demand. Five checkpoints tell you the shape of a post's growth. Polling every few minutes mostly buys duplicate numbers.
Don't read what you won't use. Harbor leaves reading X replies off until you turn it on, because every reply read is a billed call.

Harbor is open source, and self-hosted Harbor posts through your own X developer app. You pay X directly, at these rates, under your own spending limit. The integration is in the repo, and what every social API gives you compares X with LinkedIn, Instagram and Threads, which don't charge per call.

FAQ

How much does it cost to post a tweet through the X API?

$0.015 per post under pay-per-use pricing. A post that contains a link costs $0.20.

Is there still a free X API tier?

Not for new developers. Since February 6, 2026, free access is limited to public-utility apps. Everyone else buys credits.

How much does it cost to read a post's metrics?

$0.005 per post returned. Reads of your own data through the owned-reads endpoints cost $0.001, but only when the account owns the developer app.

Do X API Basic and Pro plans still exist?

They're being retired. New developers get pay-per-use or Enterprise, and legacy Basic and Pro plans have been moving to pay-per-use through 2026.

Why do posts with links cost more?

X raised the price of API posts containing a URL to $0.20 on April 20, 2026, saying it wanted to curb misuse. Posts made in the X app itself aren't affected.

How much does a social media scheduler cost to run on X?

For one brand posting daily and checking each post five times, about $1.20 a month without links and about $6.75 with a link in every post.

Sources

X API pricing and changelog, X Developer Platform (checked October 17, 2026)
Rate limits and metrics, X Developer Platform
X makes it more expensive to post links through its API, TechCrunch, April 22, 2026
X makes its Basic API tier more costly, TechCrunch, October 30, 2024