Twitter API access could cost $42,000 per month at minimum, says report

Access to the once free API could cost $42,000 per month at minimum, said Wired, based on documents shared with it by Twitter users

File photo of the Twitter splash page | Photo Credit: AP

Access to Twitter’s once free Application Programming Interface (API) could cost users tens of thousands of dollars per month based on the enterprise package that they choose, reported tech outlet Wired on Friday.

According to documents shared with Wired, a Small Package will let Twitter subscribers access 50 million tweets for $42,000 a month. A higher priced package will let them access 100 million tweets at $125,000 per month or 200 million tweets at $210,000 per month.

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Before the takeover by CEO Elon Musk, the free API reportedly allowed users to access one percent of tweets for research-based use cases. The API enabled Twitter users to set up bots for posting automatic content, and also helped them collect data about the website and its accounts.

Mr. Musk announced in early February that access to the free API would end soon, but the changes are yet to be completely rolled out - or officially announced in detail. Twitter has since experienced outages and downtime as a vastly smaller team of employees attempt to keep the social media company running after mass layoffs and resignations.