Top Twitter/X Data API Providers Compared (2026)

Why X (Twitter) Data APIs Matter in 2026

X (formerly Twitter) remains one of the most valuable sources of real-time public data. With over 500 million monthly active users, the platform generates massive amounts of data that businesses use for:

• Social Listening: Monitor brand mentions, sentiment, and trends
• Influencer Marketing: Identify and analyze influencers in your niche
• Market Research: Track industry conversations and competitor activity
• Lead Generation: Find potential customers based on their tweets and interests
• Content Strategy: Understand what content resonates with your audience
• Crisis Management: Real-time monitoring for brand reputation

However, accessing X data programmatically has become increasingly challenging since the platform's API changes in 2023. This guide compares the best alternatives for developers who need reliable X data access.

How We Evaluated These Providers

We tested each provider based on:

• Data Coverage: Users, tweets, followers, communities, trends
• API Performance: Response times and reliability
• Pricing: Cost per request and value for money
• Rate Limits: Requests per minute/day
• Documentation: Quality and ease of integration
• Data Freshness: Real-time vs cached data
• Compliance: Terms of service and legal considerations

1. Netrows

X Data Coverage

• Users: Profile info, about, batch lookup, tweets, followers, following, mentions, verified followers
• Tweets: Tweet details, replies, quotes, retweeters, threads, articles, search
• Lists: List followers and members
• Communities: Community info, members, moderators, tweets, search
• Trends: Trending topics by location
• Spaces: Space details and participants

Pros

• Most comprehensive X API coverage (26 endpoints)
• Flexible credit pricing: 1-50 credits per call based on data volume
• Combined with 48 LinkedIn endpoints (74+ total)
• Real-time data, not cached
• Fast response times (<2 seconds)
• Excellent documentation with code examples
• No annual contracts required
• 99.9% uptime SLA

Cons

• Newer X API offering (launched December 2025)
• No historical tweet archive access

Pricing

X endpoints use tiered credit pricing based on data volume: single-item lookups (user info, trends, spaces) cost 1 credit, paginated endpoints returning ~20 items cost 5 credits, batch endpoints (up to 100 items) cost 25 credits, and bulk endpoints (followers, following) cost 50 credits but return 200 profiles per request. With the $49/month Starter plan (10,000 credits), you get thousands of X API calls.

2. X (Twitter) Official API

Pros

• Official data source
• Full compliance with X terms
• Access to full archive (Enterprise)
• Streaming API available

Cons

• Extremely expensive ($5,000-$42,000/month for useful access)
• Severe rate limits on lower tiers
• Complex approval process
• Free tier practically unusable
• Frequent API changes and deprecations
• Poor developer experience

Pricing Tiers

• Free: 1,500 tweets/month read, 1 app
• Basic ($100/mo): 10,000 tweets/month read
• Pro ($5,000/mo): 1M tweets/month read
• Enterprise ($42,000+/mo): Full access, streaming

3. RapidAPI Twitter APIs

Pros

• Multiple providers to choose from
• Easy to test different options
• Some free tiers available
• Unified billing through RapidAPI

Cons

• Inconsistent data quality across providers
• Many providers are unreliable
• Limited support
• No SLA guarantees
• Providers frequently go offline

4. Apify Twitter Scrapers

Pros

• Flexible scraping options
• Can customize data extraction
• Good for bulk historical data
• Multiple Twitter actors available

Cons

• Not a real-time API
• Scraping can be unreliable
• May violate X terms of service
• Requires technical setup
• Rate limited by X's anti-scraping measures

5. Brandwatch

Pros

• Comprehensive social listening platform
• Historical data access
• Sentiment analysis included
• Multi-platform coverage

Cons

• Very expensive
• Not developer-focused (UI-first)
• Limited API access
• Annual contracts required
• Overkill for simple data needs

6. Sprout Social

Pros

• All-in-one social management
• Good analytics dashboard
• Team collaboration features
• Publishing and scheduling

Cons

• Not an API provider
• Limited data export options
• Expensive for data access alone
• Focused on marketing, not developers

7. Tweepy (Python Library)

Pros

• Free and open source
• Well-documented
• Active community
• Easy to use for Python developers

Cons

• Still requires X API access (expensive)
• Python only
• Subject to X API limitations
• No additional data beyond official API

Pricing Comparison Table

Which Provider Should You Choose?

For Developers & Startups

Recommendation: Netrows
Best value with 26 X endpoints at half-price credits. Combined with LinkedIn data, it's the most comprehensive B2B data API at $49/month. Perfect for building applications that need both professional and social data.

For Enterprise Social Listening

Recommendation: X Official API (Enterprise) or Brandwatch
If you need full historical access, streaming, and have budget for $42,000+/year, the official API is the safest choice. Brandwatch is better if you need a complete social listening platform with analytics.

For Quick Prototyping

Recommendation: Netrows or RapidAPI
Netrows offers 100 free credits to test. RapidAPI has various free tiers but quality varies significantly.

For One-Time Data Collection

Recommendation: Apify
If you need bulk historical data for a one-time project and don't need real-time access, Apify scrapers can work. Be aware of potential ToS issues.

Frequently Asked Questions