PostWharf, the tool we make, publishes to X without you needing an X developer app of your own, and it adds no surcharge for X: it is priced per brand, like every other network.
X API prices for posting at a glance
Every figure in this table is from X's pricing page at docs.x.com, read on 10 November 2026. X charges writes per request and reads per item returned. Its pricing page calls the model pay-per-usage, and its changelog and developer site call it Pay-Per-Use.
| What you do | X's name for it | Price | Charged per |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create a post | Post: Create | $0.015 | Request |
| Create a post that contains a URL | Post: Create (with URL) | $0.20 | Request |
| Reply to an author who mentioned or quoted you | Post: Create (summoned) | $0.01 | Request |
| Make a media metadata request | Media Metadata | $0.005 | Request |
| Read a post | Posts: Read | $0.005 | Post returned |
| Read your own posts with your own app | Owned Reads | $0.001 | Post returned |
The price list on developer.x.com showed the same three posting prices that day. The write table on the pricing page has no row for uploading the image or video itself. X adds that prices can change, and names the Developer Console and developer.x.com as the places that always show the current rate.
What one post costs, and why a link changes the bill
A post without a link is $0.015, so $1 of credit covers 66 of them.
The price has moved since the model was announced. X's changelog lists $0.01 for creating content in the pilot of October 2025. Its entry of 16 April 2026 raised post creation to $0.015 and set posts containing a URL at $0.20, both from 20 April, while summoned replies stayed at $0.01. A guide that still quotes $0.01 a post is quoting the earlier rate.
The URL rate is the one to plan around. At $0.20, a post with a link costs more than 13 times a post without one. X's pages say only that the rate applies to a post containing a URL. They do not say which kinds of link count, so send a few link posts on a small credit balance and read what was deducted before you schedule a month of them.
Three things follow from charging per request:
- Each account is its own charge. The same announcement sent from five X accounts is five requests.
- Each post in a thread is its own request. X stops a post at 280 characters, as our table of character limits on every network shows, so longer copy goes out as a thread. A five-post thread is five requests. X's pricing page has no thread rate and does not say how a reply to your own post is billed, so budget each post in a thread as a post.
- A refused post is not billed. X's Usage and Billing page says failed requests do not count: only successful responses that return data are charged. By that rule a retry costs nothing until one succeeds, though some refusals fail the same way every time. Our guide to publishing retry rules covers which are worth sending again.
Monthly cost at common posting volumes
The arithmetic is ours, at the rates above: the number of posts multiplied by $0.015, or by $0.20 when every post carries a URL.
| Posts a month | No URLs | A URL in every post |
|---|---|---|
| 30 (one a day) | $0.45 | $6.00 |
| 100 | $1.50 | $20.00 |
| 500 | $7.50 | $100.00 |
| 1,000 | $15.00 | $200.00 |
| 3,000 (100 a day) | $45.00 | $600.00 |
| 10,000 | $150.00 | $2,000.00 |
A mixed month falls between the columns. Take 100 posts of which 20 link to something: 80 at $0.015 is $1.20, 20 at $0.20 is $4.00, and the month costs $5.20. The links are a fifth of the posts and 77% of the bill.
Count posts, not accounts. Ten X accounts that each post once a day make 300 requests in a 30-day month: $4.50 without links, $60.00 if every post has one.
Reading posts back is billed separately. When your app reads the posts of the account that owns the app, X's Owned Reads rate applies, $0.001 a post, so 1,000 posts cost $1. At the standard rate of $0.005 the same 1,000 posts cost $5. Owned Reads needs the signed-in user to be the owner of the developer app, so on that wording a tool that reads its customers' posts pays the standard rate. X does not charge twice for the same post within one UTC day, which it describes as a soft guarantee.
The post cap is a cap on reads
Search results still list an X page called Post cap. The page at that address is now titled Usage and Billing, and the cap it describes is on reading: pay-per-use accounts are capped at 3 million Post reads in a monthly billing cycle, and anything above that needs an Enterprise plan. The pricing page gives the same figure. X's developer home page says the new model has no monthly caps. The two do not agree, and the documentation is the one that gives a number.
For posts you create, none of those pages states a monthly cap. What bounds publishing is the rate limit. X's rate limits page gives the create-post endpoint 100 requests per 15 minutes for each user and 10,000 per 24 hours for each app. X's Manage Posts integration guide gives different figures for the same endpoint: 200 requests per 15 minutes for each user, and 300 per 3 hours counting posts and reposts together. The two pages do not agree. A day at the app ceiling of 10,000 posts would cost $150 in posts without URLs. The rate limits page says rate limits and billing are separate: you can be inside the limit and still pay, or reach it at no extra cost. Throttling does not always arrive as a refusal, which is the subject of our piece on rate limits that look like success.
What happened to the Free, Basic and Pro tiers
X launched pay-per-use on 6 February 2026, after a closed pilot it announced on 20 October 2025. This is what its own pages say about the older plans, in date order:
- 6 February 2026. The launch note in X's changelog said Basic and Pro plans remained available and that existing subscribers could opt in to pay-per-use. It called the free plan the Legacy Free tier, gave its recently active users a one-time $10 voucher, and kept free access for what X calls Public Utility Apps.
- 27 April 2026. The X Developer Agreement, last updated on that date, describes pay-per-use access as the self-serve option and sends anything larger to an Enterprise plan. The separate pay-per-use agreement still names Basic and Pro beside it.
- 21 May 2026. X announced on its developer forum that its legacy Basic plans, monthly and annual, were being deprecated. After 1 June 2026 each Basic subscription ends at the close of its billing cycle and the account moves to pay-per-use automatically.
- 14 August 2026. A second announcement did the same for legacy Pro plans, with the move coming at the close of the billing cycle after 1 September 2026 and an opening credit of $5,000 for monthly subscribers.
- 10 November 2026. The pricing page says there are no subscriptions. The developer home page compares pay-per-use with what it calls the old model: fixed monthly fees of $200 or $5,000, rate limits that depended on the tier, and monthly caps.
Basic subscriptions end at the first billing-cycle close after 1 June 2026 and Pro subscriptions at the first after 1 September 2026, and the pricing page offers no way to buy either. For scale, $200 buys 13,333 posts without a URL at today's rate, or 1,000 posts with one.
Enterprise sits above pay-per-use. X's pages describe custom pricing, volume discounts and custom rate limits for it, and publish no price.
Credits, spending limits and free credits
You buy credits in X's Developer Console before you post, and each request deducts from the balance as it is made. There is no contract and no minimum spend. The pay-per-use agreement adds that credits do not expire unless X says otherwise, that they are not refundable except where the law requires it, that a verified phone number is needed to buy them, and that fees exclude taxes.
Three settings decide whether a scheduled post goes out:
- The balance. It can dip slightly below zero, and X then blocks requests until you add credits. A post due in that gap is refused.
- Auto-recharge. It adds an amount you choose when the balance falls below a threshold you choose. It fires at most once in five minutes and does not run while the balance is zero or negative.
- The spending limit. An optional maximum for each billing cycle. Once you reach it, X blocks requests until the next cycle begins.
New paying accounts can earn free credits, an incentive X says is still rolling out: $20 after the first credit purchase on the account's first eligible card, and a match of the first auto-recharge up to $50. Since 13 October 2026, adding a card without buying credits no longer earns the $20. Free credits are spent before purchased ones and expire three months after they are granted. The full $70 covers 4,666 posts without a URL, or 350 with one.
X also gives back part of what you spend as credits for xAI's API, not for X's. The rate is nothing until you have bought $200 of credits in a billing cycle, then 10% from $200, 15% from $500 and 20% from $1,000.
What pay-per-use will not let you post
The price list is not the whole of what a self-serve account can do. X's documentation and changelog set these limits on pay-per-use accounts:
- Replies only when summoned. Since 23 February 2026 a reply through the API is accepted only if the author of the original post mentioned your account or quoted one of its posts. Otherwise X rejects the request. X's pages do not say whether a reply to your own post, which is how a thread is built, is exempt, so send one short thread on a small balance before you schedule any.
- One cashtag a post. A request with more than one is rejected.
- No follows, likes or quote posts. The changelog entry of 16 April 2026 says these were removed from all self-serve tiers.
X says the reply rule and the cashtag limit do not apply to Enterprise customers.
Posting to X without a developer app of your own
Everything above is what X charges the holder of a developer app. PostWharf publishes to X without you having one: you connect the X account, then queue posts in the dashboard or send them to the X scheduling API.
- No surcharge for X. It is priced like every other network, per workspace, and a workspace takes as many X accounts as you connect.
- A failed delivery retries on its own. Each post keeps a delivery receipt that shows what went out, what did not, and why.
- X's own rules still apply. A post is 280 characters, with up to four images or one video.
Plans carry a monthly post allowance, which is shown on the pricing page.
Sources consulted: X Developer Platform (docs.x.com): Pricing, last modified 16 October 2026 · X Developer Platform (docs.x.com): Usage and Billing, the page at X's post-cap address, last modified 13 August 2026 · X Developer Platform (docs.x.com): Free credits, last modified 16 October 2026 · X Developer Platform (docs.x.com): Changelog, entries of 20 October 2025 and of 6 February, 23 February, 16 April and 2 October 2026 · X Developer Platform (docs.x.com): Rate limits, last modified 25 July 2026 · X Developer Platform (docs.x.com): Manage Posts integration guide, last modified 2 September 2026 · X Developer Platform (docs.x.com): X Developer Agreement, last updated 27 April 2026 · X Developer Platform (docs.x.com): X Developer PPU Agreement, last modified 20 May 2026 · X Developer Platform (developer.x.com): pricing section of the home page, no date shown · X Developers forum (devcommunity.x.com): Legacy X API Basic plans are moving to pay-per-use, posted 21 May 2026 · X Developers forum (devcommunity.x.com): Legacy X API Pro plans are moving to pay-per-use, posted 14 August 2026 · X Developers forum (devcommunity.x.com): X API v2 update: addressing LLM-generated spam, posted 23 February 2026 · All twelve were read on 10 November 2026. The Developer Agreement prints its own update date, the forum posts carry the date they were posted, and the other dates are each page's last-modified date from its metadata, where the page gives one. X says its prices are subject to change, so read the rate in your Developer Console before you rely on any figure here.
Common questions
Is the X API free?
No: creating a post costs $0.015, and X's pricing page lists no free plan. What X offers new paying accounts is one-time free credit, $20 after a first credit purchase and up to $50 matching a first auto-recharge, which expires after three months. The launch note of 6 February 2026 says Public Utility Apps keep free access.
Does X still sell the $200 Basic plan?
No: X announced on 21 May 2026 that its legacy Basic plans were deprecated, and each Basic subscription ends at the close of its billing cycle after 1 June 2026, when the account moves to pay-per-use. Pro, the $5,000 plan, followed in an announcement of 14 August 2026, with the move after 1 September 2026. X's pricing page now says there are no subscriptions, and its developer site lists the $200 and $5,000 fees under the old model.
What is the X API post cap?
3 million Post reads in a monthly billing cycle, on pay-per-use accounts. It limits reading, not publishing, and going past it needs an Enterprise plan. Posts you create are held by rate limits instead: X's rate limits page gives 100 requests per 15 minutes for each user and 10,000 per 24 hours for each app.
PostWharf is priced per workspace rather than per connected channel, and every plan carries unlimited channels. See per-brand pricing.