---
title: "Pricing & Billing Guide"
description: "TwexAPI pricing model: pay-per-request from $0.00005, $0 monthly fee, zero-cost failed requests, and comprehensive cost comparison against official X API credit consumption."
---

TwexAPI is built on a simple, developer-friendly principle: **pay only for the requests you actually use, with $0 monthly minimums and no subscription locks**.

While the official X (Twitter) API has transitioned to a credit consumption model (developer.x.com/#pricing), it charges **per resource fetched** ($0.005 per tweet, $0.010 per follower) and imposes a **$0.20 surcharge per tweet with a link**. In contrast, TwexAPI provides transparent, fractional-cent **per-request metering** from $0.000050.

## Core Pricing Structure

| Category | Endpoint Type | Base Price | Billing Unit | Cookie Required? |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **Search & Extraction** | Advanced Twitter Search, Tweets, Profiles, Quotes | **$0.000050** | Per successful request | **No** (API Key only) |
| **Social Graph** | Followers, Following, User About, Media Timeline | **$0.000050** | Per page/cursor batch | **No** (API Key only) |
| **Deep Content** | Thread by ID, X Article Markdown extraction | **$0.000050** | Per article / thread | **No** (API Key only) |
| **Realtime Trends** | Global & Country Trending Topics | **$0.000050** | Per trending snapshot | **No** (API Key only) |
| **Account Actions (Write)** | Create Tweet, Reply, Like, Retweet, DM, Follow | **$0.000100** | Per confirmed action (Zero URL penalty) | Yes (BYOC: Your own Cookie/Token) |

:::tip Zero-Risk Reading & BYOC Writing
- **Public Reads ($0.000050)**: 100% cookie-free. Scraping public posts, search results, and profiles requires zero Twitter accounts or session cookies.
- **Account Writes ($0.000100)**: Operates under a **Bring Your Own Cookie (BYOC)** model. You provide your own account's `auth_token` for stateless execution, ensuring you maintain complete ownership, copyright control, and zero cross-account contamination. Credentials are never persisted.
:::

---

## The TwexAPI Fair Billing Guarantee

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="$0 Monthly Base Fee" icon="dollar-sign">
    Never pay for idle infrastructure. If your project makes 0 requests this month, your bill is exactly $0.00.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Failed Requests Are Free" icon="shield-check">
    If an upstream request fails (e.g. rate-limited by Twitter or target post deleted), TwexAPI returns an error code and **deducts $0.00** from your balance.
  </Card>
  <Card title="No URL Penalty" icon="link">
    Posting updates with website links or blog URLs is charged at the standard $0.000100 rate, bypassing Official X's $0.200 per-link fee.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Instant Balance Top-Up" icon="wallet">
    Deposit funds via credit card, crypto, or enterprise invoices. Funds never expire.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

---

## TCO Comparison: TwexAPI vs Official X API

Understanding the total cost of ownership (TCO) across different usage volumes:

| Monthly Usage Scenario | Official X API (Credit Pay-As-You-Go) | TwexAPI (Per-Request Pay-As-You-Go) | Your Cost Savings |
| :--- | :--- | :---: | :---: |
| **5,000 requests (~50,000 tweets read)** | **$250.00** ($0.005 / resource) | **$0.25** ($0.000050 / req) | **99.90% saved** |
| **25,000 requests (~250,000 tweets read)** | **$1,250.00** ($0.005 / resource) | **$1.25** ($0.000050 / req) | **99.90% saved** |
| **100,000 requests (~1,000,000 tweets read)** | **$5,000.00** ($0.005 / resource) | **$5.00** ($0.000050 / req) | **99.90% saved** |
| **Exporting 20,000 Followers** | **$200.00** ($0.010 / resource) | **$0.01** (Cursor pagination) | **99.99% saved** |
| **Posting 1,000 Tweets with URLs** | **$200.00** ($0.200 / URL request) | **$0.10** ($0.000100 / req) | **99.95% saved** |
| **2,000,000 requests (Enterprise scale)** | *Exceeds 2M read cap* ❌ ($10,000+ Enterprise) | **$100.00** | **Massive savings** |

For an in-depth breakdown of endpoint restrictions, OAuth requirements, and hidden per-resource multipliers, see our [TwexAPI vs Official X API Comparison](/comparison/official-x-api).

---

## Checking Your Account Balance

You can monitor your remaining account balance programmatically via our balance API or within your user dashboard:

```bash
curl -X GET "https://api.twexapi.io/api/balance" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
```

Example response:

```json
{
  "code": 200,
  "msg": "success",
  "data": {
    "balance": 48.7525,
    "currency": "USD",
    "tier": "standard",
    "rate_limit_per_minute": 6000
  }
}
```

---

## Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

<Accordion>
  <AccordionItem title="How does pay-per-request billing work?">
    Each time you make a successful HTTP request with your `Authorization: Bearer <KEY>`, our gateway atomically deducts the endpoint's micro-rate (e.g. $0.000050) from your prepaid balance. Responses returning 4xx or 5xx status codes are never deducted.
  </AccordionItem>

  <AccordionItem title="Why is Official X Pay-As-You-Go more expensive than TwexAPI?">
    Official X bills **per individual resource returned** ($0.005 per post, $0.010 per follower) and adds a **$0.20 fee for posts with links**. A single search request returning 50 tweets costs $0.25 on Official X, but costs only $0.000050 on TwexAPI (where you pay for the single HTTP call, not per item in the list).
  </AccordionItem>

  <AccordionItem title="Is there any monthly subscription or expiration on credits?">
    No. Your deposited balance never expires. You can top up once and use the API over weeks, months, or years without recurring subscription charges.
  </AccordionItem>

  <AccordionItem title="Can I set up automated balance alerts or auto-recharge?">
    Yes. Through the dashboard or webhook integrations, you can configure email notifications when your balance dips below a custom threshold (e.g. $10) to avoid any interruption to your live production bots.
  </AccordionItem>

  <AccordionItem title="How does TwexAPI compare to building an in-house Puppeteer scraper?">
    A self-hosted scraping setup costs an average of $350–$800/month for residential proxies, anti-bot CAPTCHA solvers, and headless browser servers, plus dozens of engineering hours maintaining broken DOM selectors. TwexAPI handles all proxies and browser fingerprinting internally for a fraction of the cost. Read the [Self-Hosted Scraper vs TwexAPI Analysis](/comparison/scraper-vs-api) for full cost modeling.
  </AccordionItem>
</Accordion>