Purpose
TwitterAPI.io is a public social data API for developers and AI agents, used to retrieve public data on X (formerly Twitter). It is officially positioned as a developer-friendly alternative to the official API, providing real-time and historical tweet data as well as write operations (posting, liking, etc.), and it claims that no approval process through an X developer account is required—after registering, you can get an API Key and start calling it. The official statement is that it is an independent third-party service and is not affiliated with X Corp.
Main Capabilities
It officially lists 76 endpoints, providing the following capabilities through a unified REST API and a hosted MCP server:
- Tweet search: supports advanced search with query filters, date windows, and batch subqueries.
- User timeline: retrieve the latest tweets, mentions, and tweet history of any public account.
- User profile: retrieve user information, bio, and about data in a single call or in batches by ID.
- Follower graph: retrieve followers, following, and follower IDs, with support for pagination scale adjustment.
- Replies, quotes, and retweeters: retrieve the reply tree, quote tweets, and retweeter list of any tweet.
- Trends: retrieve trending topics by region.
- Lists: retrieve list members, followers, and list tweet timelines.
- Communities: retrieve community tweets, members, and admins.
- Real-time delivery: Webhook filter rules and WebSocket streams, which are officially claimed to provide sub-second delivery.
In addition, it also provides a set of no-login web tools, including shadowban check, follow relationship check, user ID lookup, account age check, account location, and engagement rate calculator, all based on the same set of real-time data.
How to Use
The officially described onboarding process is: create a free account, copy the API Key, and then call the REST or WebSocket endpoints. The documentation provides Swagger docs, a Postman collection, and code snippets that can be pasted directly. Login is via Google Sign-In, and it is officially stated that only the Google name, email, avatar, and account ID are used to create and identify the account.
It is officially stated that real-time data can be provided directly to Claude, GPT, Cursor, or any MCP client without additional glue code.
Pricing and Quotas
Billing is based on returned results, with a minimum of $0.00015 per request:
- Empty search: $0.00015
- Get tweet by ID: $0.00015
- User profile: $0.00018 USD
- Followers: $0.01 / 1,000
- Following IDs: $0.0045 / 1,000
New accounts can receive $1 in free credit after passing the stealth bot check (limited to once per person per network; $0.10 within 30 days for the same IP), the free credit expires after 31 days, and no credit card is required. Subscriptions can provide up to an additional 90% credit: the official statement says the Business plan gives an additional 50% credit in the first month, then returns 40% each month for the following 12 months, and the bonus credit expires after 31 days; see the pricing details page for the specific calculation and other plans. The official FAQ also gives the wording of $0.15 / 1,000 tweets and $0.18 / 1,000 profiles.
Regarding rate limits, the official statement says the highest subscription tier can reach 1,000 QPS; see the /qps-limits page for details by tier, and contact the official team if exceeded.
Use cases
- Developers integrating X public data into applications or data pipelines.
- Data analysis and academic research: the official statement says academic discounts are available, and 50% credit has been returned after paper publication; applications require sending a .edu email and a brief description of the research project to hello@twitterapi.io.
- Providing real-time social data for AI agents and MCP clients.
- Scenarios requiring real-time monitoring, Webhook, or WebSocket streaming.
Performance and availability
The official statement says the median response is under 500 milliseconds, a global CDN is used, servers are distributed across more than 12 regions, a 99.99% availability SLA and automatic failover are provided, data is continuously updated with sub-second latency, and it is said to withstand traffic spikes.
Limitations and notes
- The official statement declares that it is an independent third-party service and is not affiliated with X Corp; "Twitter" and "X" are trademarks of X Corp.
- Free credit is subject to limits on number of uses, network, and validity period; the specific rules are subject to the official explanation.
- User reviews mention occasional latency fluctuations and that the "retweet -> undo retweet -> retweet again" process may lose the second retweet event; such feedback comes from public reviews, is not an official promise, and no further explanation of the specific behavior is currently provided.
- The service's specific compliance, completeness of data coverage, parameter details for each endpoint, and the enforcement of SLA terms are not fully laid out on the official page and must be based on the actual documentation.
