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What X data actually costs per 1,000 calls
Probe Uranus is a managed, read-only HTTP API for public X profiles, timelines, search, and tweet engagers. Below is the list price of each option, the volume where each one wins, and the cases where you should buy something else. Competitor figures are their published list prices as of 15 September 2026 — every one links to the page it came from.
Cost per 1,000 calls
| Probe Uranus | Official X API | TwitterAPI.io | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billing model | Flat $5.00 / month | Metered per call | Metered per call |
| Per 1,000 posts | $0.05 at full use | $5.00 | $0.15 |
| Per 1,000 profiles | $0.05 same allowance | $10.00 | $0.18 |
| Bill at 1,000 calls/mo | $5.00 | $5.00 | $0.15 |
| Bill at 10,000 calls/mo | $5.00 | $50.00 | $1.50 |
| Bill at 50,000 calls/mo | $5.00 | $250.00 | $7.50 |
| Bill at 100,000 calls/mo | $5.00 | $500.00 | $15.00 |
| Try before paying | 7-day free trial, card required | Nothing — credits are bought up front | $0.10 in free credits, no card |
Where the flat plan stops being the expensive one
A monthly plan is worse than metered billing until you use enough of it. That crossover is the number worth checking before you buy, so here it is rather than buried:
- vs Official X API: break even at about 1,000 calls a month. Below that, paying $5.00 per 1,000 is cheaper than $5.00 a month. Above it, we are.
- vs TwitterAPI.io: break even at about 33,334 calls a month. Below that, paying $0.15 per 1,000 is cheaper than $5.00 a month. Above it, we are.
If you make a few hundred calls a month, buy metered credits from someone — possibly not us. The flat plan is for steady, predictable load, where the appeal is a bill that does not move when your traffic does.
Everything that is not price
| Probe Uranus | Official X API | TwitterAPI.io | Self-hosted / DIY | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auth | Google sign-in + API key | OAuth + developer account | Email signup + API key | Whatever you build and maintain |
| Setup | Minutes | Days to weeks | Minutes | Days, then ongoing breakage |
| Reads | Profiles, tweets, search, mentions, lists, communities, Spaces, broadcasts, trends, follow graph, thread context, engagers and winners | Full platform, including enterprise firehose | Broad read coverage | Whatever you keep working |
| Writes | None — reads only | Posting, DMs, ads, partner products | Some write actions | Possible, and the fastest way to get banned |
| Streaming | No — request/response only | Filtered stream and firehose tiers | No | Only if you build it |
| Volume ceiling | 100,000 calls/mo on the public plan | 3M post reads per cycle before Enterprise | No stated ceiling | Your infrastructure and your luck |
| Agent discovery | Public GET /v1, OpenAPI, and llms-full.txt | Official docs | Swagger / MCP on their site | None unless you write it |
| You operate | An API key. We run the stack. | A developer account and OAuth apps | An API key. They run the stack. | The whole pipeline, and its downtime |
Use Probe Uranus when
- You make roughly 33,334 calls a month or more and want one predictable bill instead of a meter.
- You want a key for a bot, giveaway tool, or side project in minutes, with no developer-account review.
- You need a tweet engager pool or seeded random winners (
GET /v1/tweet/:id/engagers). Try it free, without an account, on the giveaway picker. - Agents should discover endpoints from
GET /v1,/v1/openapi.json, or llms-full.txt without scraping a marketing site.
Buy something else when
- Your volume is low. Under the break-even numbers above, metered credits cost less. That is arithmetic, not opinion.
- You need Ads, DMs, or a partner contract. That is the official API's job and nothing here replaces it.
- You need to write. Posting, liking, retweeting, and following are not on this surface at any price.
- You need a realtime firehose or filtered stream. Probe is request/response only. Point streaming workloads at a firehose vendor.
- You need a deep historical archive. We read what X will serve now, not a warehouse of everything ever posted.
Sources
- Official X API — https://docs.x.com/x-api/getting-started/pricing
- Pay-per-usage credits, priced per resource returned: $0.005 a post read, $0.010 a user read, $0.001 a like read.
- Standard access is capped at 3 million post reads per billing cycle before an Enterprise contract is required.
- The only option for Ads, DMs, posting, and partner products.
- TwitterAPI.io — https://twitterapi.io/
- Pay-as-you-go with no monthly floor, so a quiet month costs nearly nothing.
- Broad read coverage plus some write actions.
Prices verified 15 September 2026, and they change without warning. Confirm on the vendor's own page before you buy anything, ours included. Probe Uranus live quotas are on /pricing; the HTTP surface is on /docs.