X Doubles API Price and Adds Subscription Discounts

X is hiking its API pricing while introducing discounted annual subscription rates.

The Elon Musk-owned social media platform has increased the cost of its basic API tier from $100 to $200 and announced Wednesday (Oct. 30) that it would roll out higher limits and new endpoints for this subscription plan.

The announcement by the X Development account said the company will also launch an experimental read API for the free tier.

However, a report by TechCrunch notes that the company didn’t share that the free tier’s post limits are now reduced from 1,500 to just 500, and the read API only offers 100 requests.

In addition, X has unveiled annual plans for Basic and Pro API tiers that are cheaper than what developers paying a monthly fee pay. The Basic annual plan will set users back $2,100, while the professional plan costs $54,000.

As TechCrunch notes, these changes follow an earlier rollout of top-ups, which offer an additional limit on read and post requests with a cap of 10 top-ups for the basic tier and five top-ups for the pro tier. Now, X is limiting developers to just two top-ups per month for both tiers.

X, formerly Twitter, has been trying to find ways to boost revenues and cut costs since Musk purchased the platform.

Meanwhile, the company has been trying to turn itself into a payments platform/super app, with limited success so far.

August brought the news that X was developing a payments button, following reports from June that the platform was planning a digital dashboard on its website and mobile app that will function as a hub for all payments activity, allowing users to send and receive money, store funds and view past transactions.

A report by Bloomberg Businessweek — citing a business plan submitted by X to Massachusetts regulators last year — says the company will charge a small fee for some transactions, viewing payments as a way to bolster its business through “increased participation and engagement” on its platform.

Musk had said during a call last year that he expected X to become a payments super app by the end of 2024.

“If it involves money, it’ll be on our platform,” he said. “Money or securities or whatever. So, it’s not just like sending $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account.”

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