Scrape Twitter (X) with Python: Tweets, Followers and CSV Export

Python tutorial: scrape public X (Twitter) tweets and followers with the TwexAPI REST API, page through results and save them to CSV. No browser, proxies or X account.

This guide scrapes public X (Twitter) data from Python with plain HTTP requests. You search tweets with advanced search operators, page through the results, export a follower list and save everything to CSV. You don’t need a headless browser, proxies or an X account, only a TwexAPI API key.

Before you start

1. Create an account on twexapi.io to get 20,000 free Credits, about 4,000 reads.
2. Copy your API key from the dashboard and export it:

export TWEXAPI_KEY="twexapi_xxx"
pip install requests

Search tweets

The advanced search endpoint takes a list of searchTerms, a sortBy of Latest or Top, and a next_cursor for paging. Each page returns up to 20 tweets.

import os
import time

import requests

API = "https://api.twexapi.io"
HEADERS = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['TWEXAPI_KEY']}"}


def paginate(path, body, max_items):
    """POST a cursor endpoint until max_items rows or the last page."""
    items, cursor = [], ""
    while len(items) < max_items:
        res = requests.post(f"{API}{path}", headers=HEADERS, json={**body, "next_cursor": cursor}, timeout=30)
        res.raise_for_status()
        page = res.json()
        items += [row for row in page.get("data", []) if row]
        cursor = page.get("next_cursor")
        if not page.get("has_next_page") or not cursor:
            break
        time.sleep(5)  # free Starter plan: 1 request per 5 seconds; paid plans allow 5+ per second
    return items[:max_items]


tweets = paginate(
    "/twitter/advanced_search/page",
    {"searchTerms": ["openai", "lang:en", "min_faves:100", "since:2026-10-01"], "sortBy": "Latest"},
    max_items=200,
)
print(len(tweets), "tweets")

searchTerms accepts the same operators as the X search box:

Save tweets to CSV

import csv

with open("tweets.csv", "w", newline="", encoding="utf-8-sig") as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)
    writer.writerow(["tweet_id", "created_at", "user", "likes", "retweets", "text"])
    for t in tweets:
        writer.writerow([
            t.get("tweet_id"),
            t.get("created_at"),
            (t.get("user") or {}).get("screen_name"),
            t.get("favorite_count"),
            t.get("retweet_count"),
            (t.get("text") or "").replace("\n", " "),
        ])

utf-8-sig keeps emoji and non-Latin text readable when the file is opened in Excel.

Scrape followers

The followers endpoint uses the same cursor paging, so the paginate helper works unchanged.

followers = paginate("/twitter/followers/page", {"screen_name": "nasa"}, max_items=1000)

with open("followers.csv", "w", newline="", encoding="utf-8-sig") as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)
    writer.writerow(["username", "name", "followers", "location", "bio"])
    for u in followers:
        writer.writerow([u.get("username"), u.get("name"), u.get("followersCount"), u.get("location"), u.get("description")])

Cost

Typical reads cost 5 Credits each, about $0.05 per 1,000 tweets or followers. The 200 tweets and 1,000 followers above cost about $0.06 together. See pricing for exact rates.

Why not Selenium, Playwright or twscrape?

Since X shut down guest access in early 2024, browser-based and open-source scrapers need logged-in X accounts and rotating proxies, and they break when X changes its site. An API moves that maintenance off your machine. For a fuller comparison, see Self-Hosted Twitter Scraper vs TwexAPI.

Next steps

• Twitter Scraper API overview: what you can scrape and how it compares with Apify and the official API.
• Error handling: retry and back off on 429 and 5xx responses.
• Collect only public data, and follow privacy law and X’s terms for your use case.