Last updated: August 2026
Is the X API free in 2026?
No. The free tier closed to new projects on 6 February 2026, and the $200 Basic tier was force-migrated to pay-per-use on 1 June 2026. Everything meters now: about $0.005 a post read, $0.015 a post, and $0.20 a post containing a link. There is no hobby tier and no trial credit.
Creating a developer account is still free. Making a call is not. Below: exactly what changed, what is still free, and what a real bot ends up paying.
What changed, in order
Old tutorials are the main source of confusion
A large amount of writing about the X API still describes a free tier with a monthly posting allowance, or a $100 Basic plan, or a $200 Basic plan. Those pages were accurate when written and are not now. If a guide does not mention pay-per-use, treat every number in it as out of date.What is actually still free
Creating an X developer account
Still free. It just does not let you call anything.
Creating an app and a project
Free, but the project must be enrolled in billing before writes work.
Reading posts
About $0.005 per post read, and a request can return many posts.
Publishing a plain post
About $0.015 each.
Publishing a post with a link
About $0.20 each. Around thirteen times the plain rate.
A hobby or trial allowance
There is none. No credit, no starter grant, no free calls.
The gap between the first two rows and the rest is where most people get stuck. You can complete the entire signup, create the app, hold real keys, and still get a 403 on your first post because the project is not enrolled in billing. That specific failure and its five siblings are in the X API 403 guide.
What a normal bot ends up paying
Per-call prices sound trivial until you multiply them by a schedule. Three cases, all modest by bot standards.
- Three plain posts a day. Ninety posts a month at about $0.015 is roughly $1.35. Genuinely cheap, and this is the case people quote when they say the API is affordable.
- Three posts a day that link somewhere. Ninety link posts at about $0.20 is roughly $18 a month. Most useful posts link to something, so this is the realistic case. A flat $29 Advanced plan, which includes link posts, pulls ahead at about five a day.
- A bot that also reads. Watching mentions or a keyword and reading 1,000 posts a day is about 30,000 reads a month, roughly $150. Reads bill per post returned, not per request, which is why polling gets expensive faster than people expect.
There is also a floor you cannot get under: auto-recharge tops up in $200 increments, so funding a project that writes at all means putting real money on the balance. The mechanics of the cap, and how to keep a retry loop from spending it, are in does X API pay-per-use have a spend cap. The full per-call breakdown is in X API pay-per-use explained.
If your workload is posting, not research
The honest split is this. If you need full-archive search, filtered streams, or first-party data at volume, you need the X API and there is no cheaper route. If you are publishing, threading, or scheduling, you are paying metered write prices for something a flat-fee service does without a developer app.
OpenTweet is $19.99 a month on Pro, $29 on Advanced, $49 on Agency, with no per-post fee. Link posts are included on Pro (1 a day), Advanced (10 a day) and Agency (20 a day), with link credits as an add-on. You never create an X developer app, so there is no project to enrol and no balance to fund. There is a 7-day free trial, which is the closest thing to free posting that exists in 2026.
curl -X POST https://opentweet.io/api/v1/posts \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ot_your_key" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"text":"Links cost the same as plain text here. https://example.com","publish_now":true}'Start at the quickstart, or read the side by side in OpenTweet vs the X API.
7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.
Frequently asked questions
Is the X API free in 2026?
No. The free tier closed to new API projects on 6 February 2026, and the legacy $200 per month Basic tier was force-migrated to pay-per-use on 1 June 2026 in a change that cannot be reversed. Every new project bills per call: roughly $0.005 per post read, $0.015 per post published, and $0.20 per post that contains a link.
What happened to the X API free tier?
It closed to new projects on 6 February 2026. The old free tier allowed a small monthly write allowance and essentially no reads, which was already too thin for most bots. There is no replacement free tier, no hobby tier, and no trial credit. Creating a developer account is still free, but making a call is not.
How much does the X API cost per post in 2026?
About $0.015 for a plain text post and about $0.20 for a post containing a link. The link surcharge is roughly thirteen times the plain rate and it is what makes most real-world bots expensive, because most useful posts link somewhere.
What happened to the $200 Basic tier?
It was force-migrated to pay-per-use on 1 June 2026 and the migration is irreversible. If you were budgeting the flat $200 as a ceiling, that ceiling is gone. What replaced it is a prepaid balance with a per-cycle spend cap you set yourself, plus auto-recharge that adds $200 when the balance drops below $10, capped at $400 per cycle.
Is there any free way to post to X programmatically?
Not through the X API. The realistic options are paying pay-per-use with your own developer app, or posting through a service that holds the X connection on a flat fee. OpenTweet is $19.99 a month on Pro with no per-post fee and no developer account required, and it includes a 7-day free trial.
Do I still need an X developer account in 2026?
Only if you call the X API directly. Creating the account is free, but the app has to be attached to a project and the project enrolled in billing before any write succeeds, otherwise you get a 403. If you post through OpenTweet you do not create a developer app at all.
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The free tier is gone. This is the flat-fee replacement.
Post and schedule on X for $19.99 a month. No per-post fee, no developer app. Link posts included from $29.
7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.