X is testing a pay-as-you-go pricing model for its API

Two years after revamping its developer programs and pricing, X is expanding the closed beta of a pay-as-you-go plan for its API to more developers.

The social network is accepting applications from developers who want to be part of the program, the company’s developer account wrote in an article on X.

“We are extending a closed beta to new and experienced users who want to bring amazing apps to X,” the post reads.

X’s new API page shows costs for different types of queries, such as reading, creating posts, DMs, trending, and fetching bookmarks. The page also has a calculator that allows developers to estimate how much a set of API usages might cost. This differs from X’s old system, where all queries cost the same.

A section on the new API page compares the new pricing with the old tier-based system. It is not yet clear whether X ultimately wants to get rid of the old plan-based system. We’ve asked X to clarify and will update this story if we receive a response.

The closed beta comes two years after X overhauled its API pricing. In early 2023, the company began blocking third-party clients of the app, and in February 2023, the company announced that it was ending free access to its API, leading to the shutdown of various apps.

Then, in March 2023, the social network introduced a base tier of $100 per month (which now costs $200 per month) as well as an enterprise tier of $42,000 per month. A few months later, it launched a $5,000 per month Pro plan that gave developers the ability to scrape 1 million tweets per month and publish 300,000 tweets per month, and gave them access to the full archive search endpoint.

However, the plans proved insufficient or simply unaffordable for many developers. To alleviate this problem, the company launched top-up packs last year for apps that were reaching the limits of their API tier.

With this new usage-based plan, X could win back developers who wanted to integrate their application with the social network, or were considering creating applications that work with it.