Last updated October 1, 2026
The best twitterapi.io alternative depends on what you are optimizing for. If you want the lowest price per tweet at high volume, twitterapi.io is cheaper than twitr.sh: it lists $0.15 per 1,000 tweets, and we charge $1.20. twitr.sh is the better fit when an AI agent has to work without a human setting it up. There is no account and no API key. The agent pays each call in USDC, sees the exact price before it pays, and can post through an account you connect in your own browser. The official X API is the only one of the three that X sanctions. All figures below were checked on each provider's own pages in October 2026.
| Read | twitterapi.io | twitr.sh | Official X API |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tweets | $0.15 | $1.20 ($0.0012 each) | $5.00 ($0.005 per post) |
| User profiles | $0.18 | $1.20 | $10.00 ($0.010 per user) |
| Followers / following | From $0.01, tiered by page size | $1.20 | $10.00 |
| Minimum per call | $0.00015, waived for bulk responses | $0.0024 per paid call; $0 when nothing is returned | None listed; a resource re-read on the same UTC day is not billed again |
At 100,000 tweets a month that works out to about $15 on twitterapi.io, $120 on twitr.sh and $500 on the official X API. If your job is pulling large datasets and cost per tweet is all that matters, twitterapi.io wins by a wide margin. We would rather say so than hide it.
| twitterapi.io | twitr.sh | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | Sign up and get an API key; $0.10 free trial | Nothing to sign up for with a wallet. Optional Google sign-in for a card-funded balance and an API key |
| Payment | Pay-as-you-go top-ups, or a subscription with bonus usage and discounts | USDC per call (x402 on Base or Solana, MPP on Tempo), or a card-funded balance |
| Price before paying | Published rate card | Every call returns HTTP 402 with the exact amount before any money moves |
| MCP | Open-source server, 12 read-only tools, runs locally with your API key | Hosted at /api/mcp, 14 tools including posting and monitors, plus six installable skills |
| Posting | Write endpoints take the account's login cookies and a residential proxy you supply | Connect once in your own browser; the agent never sees the password (how it works) |
| Real time | Webhook / WebSocket tweet filter rules, checked every 0.05 s to 24 h | Account and keyword monitors, 21 event types, signed webhooks, prepaid by the hour |
| Breadth | 75+ endpoints, high throughput (docs cite up to 200 QPS per client) | 14 tools covering reads, search, bulk export, monitors, posting, DMs and communities |
Choose twitterapi.io when you are a developer with a server, a stable workload and a budget measured per million tweets. Its read prices are about 8× lower than ours per tweet and about 6.7× lower per profile. Follower pages get cheaper as they get bigger. It has more endpoints and is built for high request rates. It also offers academic discounts. If you already manage API keys and are happy to handle account cookies and proxies for the occasional write, it is hard to beat on cost.
Choose twitr.sh when the buyer is the agent itself. A Claude, Cursor or OpenClaw agent with a USDC wallet can find the API, read the price from the 402 response, pay and get data without anyone creating an account or copying a key. A few other details matter here:
You only pay for what comes back. Volume reads take a resultsLimit cap and bill per returned record, so an empty search is free and a runaway loop can never spend more than the cap it set. Posting needs no secrets in the agent. The agent sends a handle, you sign in on a link it gives you, and ownership is checked on every write. Real time has a hard stop. Monitors are prepaid by the hour and shut off at expiry, so there is no open-ended bill. You can also skip crypto entirely: sign in with Google, add a card balance and use an API key at the same prices.
The official X API is the only access X itself sanctions, and that matters for some companies more than price. It is pay-per-use now: you buy a prepaid balance in the X Developer Console, and X caps pay-per-use accounts at 3 million post reads per month, with Enterprise above that. It is cheaper than twitr.sh in a few places. Reading likes costs $0.001, reads of your own account's data cost $0.001, and a plain post costs $0.015 against our $0.036. A post with a link costs $0.200 on X and $0.036 on twitr.sh. The full side-by-side is on Twitter API vs twitr.sh and X API pricing.
Every tool is a POST with a flat JSON body. The first request returns the price, then you pay and retry:
# 1) ask for the price: no account, no key
curl -i -X POST https://twitr.sh/api/tools/x_search \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"q":"from:nasa","queryType":"Latest","resultsLimit":20}'
# -> HTTP/2 402
# "amount": "0.024000"
# "breakdown": [{ "label": "20 results × $0.001200" }]
# "billing": "per-returned-record", "empty_result_amount": "0.000000"
# 2) pay from a USDC wallet and retry in one step
npx agentcash fetch https://twitr.sh/api/tools/x_search -m POST \
-b '{"q":"from:nasa","queryType":"Latest","resultsLimit":20}'Run npx agentcash try https://twitr.sh to explore every tool first. Inside Claude Code or Cursor the same search is the x_search MCP tool. The docs cover the payment flow, and /tools lists every tool with its price.
| If you use twitterapi.io for… | On twitr.sh use… |
|---|---|
| Advanced tweet search | x_search |
| User info, batch tweets or users | x_read get-user · batch-tweets · batch-users |
| Followers, following, last tweets, replies, quotes | x_timeline |
| List and community endpoints | x_lists · x_communities |
| Tweet filter rules / user monitoring | x_monitor |
| Create tweet, like, retweet, follow, DM | x_write |
Both services are independent of X, so read X's terms for your use case either way. If you are only weighing options, our X API alternatives guide covers the wider field. The free shadowban checker and X algorithm checker use the same data, so you can see it work before you pay for anything.
twitterapi.io is an independent X/Twitter data API (it states it is not affiliated with X Corp). You sign up, get an API key, and pay per item: as of October 2026 it lists $0.15 per 1,000 tweets and $0.18 per 1,000 profiles, with follower lists tiered from $0.01 per 1,000.
No, not for bulk reads. twitterapi.io lists $0.15 per 1,000 tweets; twitr.sh charges $1.20 per 1,000 ($0.0012 each). If the lowest price per tweet at high volume is what matters most, twitterapi.io is the cheaper choice.
When the caller is an AI agent that should not need a human to sign up. twitr.sh needs no account or API key: the agent pays each call in USDC over x402 or MPP, reads the exact price before paying, and can post through an account you connect in your own browser. It also has a hosted MCP server and six installable skills.
Yes. Every request carries your twitterapi.io API key in a header. According to its site, signing up includes $0.10 of free trial usage and needs no card.
Yes. twitterapi.io publishes an open-source MCP server with twelve read-only tools. Its page says it cannot post, reply, like, follow, send DMs or log in, and it needs a twitterapi.io API key set as an environment variable.
Its docs list write endpoints for creating, liking, retweeting and deleting tweets, following users and sending DMs. They take the account's login cookies, which you get from its login endpoint, plus a residential proxy you supply. The create-tweet page listed a trial price of $0.003 per call.
You connect your X account once on a twitr.sh page in your own browser. The agent only ever sends your handle, so it never sees your password or cookies. A post or reply costs $0.036 and a like, follow or repost costs $0.012.
The official X API is pay-per-use: $0.005 per post read and $0.010 per user read, so 1,000 tweets cost $5.00. It is the only option X sanctions, and it is cheaper than twitr.sh for reading likes ($0.001) and for plain posts without links ($0.015).
No. Per-result reads charge only for records returned, so a search that finds nothing costs $0. A paid call that returns data costs at least $0.0024.
Yes. twitterapi.io offers webhook and WebSocket tweet filter rules you can check as often as every 0.05 seconds. twitr.sh offers account and keyword monitors with 21 event types, delivered by signed webhook or free polling and prepaid at about $0.025 per hour.