SocialPipe and the official X API
X charges for every record it sends back. We charge for the request. Most of the difference between the two comes from that.
How the billing works
X charges per resource returned, which is their wording. A post read costs $0.005 and a user read costs $0.010, counted once for every record in the response. Pull a timeline of a hundred posts and you are charged a hundred times.
We charge per call, at $5 per 1,000, and one call returns a whole page of results. Same money either way; what changes is how much comes back for it.
We are not going to put a number on that. How many results fit in a page is X's decision and they can change it, so any multiple we printed today could be wrong next month. Run the numbers on your own request volume instead.
Side by side
| SocialPipe | the official X API | |
|---|---|---|
| Billing unit | Per call | Per resource returned |
| Entry rate | $5 per 1,000 calls | $0.005 a post, $0.010 a user |
| A page of results | One call | One charge per record in it |
| Platforms | 9 | X only |
| Endpoints | 329, 238 at one credit | The official surface, reads and writes |
| Failed calls | Free, and so are cached and declined ones | Billed per resource returned |
| Commitment | Free tier, then $20 a month | No subscription, pay-per-use credits |
| Ceiling | Your credit balance, then requests stop | 3 million post reads a month |
We took their side of this table from their own pricing page on 20 September 2026. They can change it without telling us, so check before you decide. Ours comes from the same price sheet that bills you.
When the official API is the right answer
In a few cases. Worth knowing before you sign up here.
- You need to write. Posting, replying, direct messages, managing lists — anything that changes something on X. We only read public data, so we cannot help with this at all.
- You need your own account's data. X charges $0.001 a resource for reads of your own posts, followers and bookmarks. That is cheaper than anything here, and there is no third party in between.
- You need a direct agreement with the platform. If your compliance review needs the data to come from X under X's own terms, we do not meet that.
- You need it in real time. Their webhooks push events as they happen. We answer requests when you make them.
When we are the better fit
- You are reading pages, not single records. Timelines, comment threads, follower lists, search results. Paying per call rather than per record adds up fastest here.
- You need more than X. The same key reaches 9 platforms, so you write one integration instead of one per network. Full list in the API reference.
- You want a hard spending limit. When your balance hits zero, requests are refused instead of billed. No plan has an overage rate.
- You are building an agent. There is an MCP server so a client can call this itself.
One more thing worth knowing: what comes back is the platform's own JSON, passed through in a data field with nothing renamed. So you are reading X's field names, not ours, and X's own docs still apply. Full pricing is on the pricing page.
Switching from the X API
The questions that come up when the billing unit changes.
For anything this FAQ does not cover, read the docs.
Start pulling clean JSON today.
100 credits to start, no card required. The free tier is the whole API.