ScrapeField vs the X API
X’s own API bills every read: half a cent a post and a cent an account, up to 3 million post reads a month. It is the one to use for posting and for acting as an account. For reading public posts, accounts and followers, a page of them costs less here.
| ScrapeField | X API | |
|---|---|---|
| How it bills | Credits per call, from $39 once; they never expire | Prepaid credits per item read: $0.005 a post, $0.010 an account |
| An account’s posts, per 1,000 | About $0.51 → $0.29, about 20 a call | $5.00 |
| Followers, per 1,000 | About $0.14 → $0.08, about 70 a call | $10.00 |
| Search results, per 1,000 | About $0.51 → $0.29, about 20 a call | $5.00 |
| One post by its id, per 1,000 | $2.34 → $1.32 | $5.00 |
| An account, per 1,000 | $2.34 → $1.32 | $10.00 |
| A monthly ceiling | None: buy more credits | 3 million post reads, then an Enterprise plan |
| The same post again the same day | Charged again | Free within a UTC day |
| Posting, replies, messages | No: public data, read only | Yes |
Checked 9 October 2026 against each vendor’s own pricing page. Rechecked quarterly — tell us if something here is out of date and we will fix it.
Your month, on both
X’s prices are from its pricing page, read on 9 October 2026; it does not charge a post again within a UTC day. Ours assume about 20 posts and 70 followers a call. Credits come in packs, from $39, and never expire.
An account’s latest posts
# first, the account's numeric id
curl "https://api.x.com/2/users/by/username/Ferrari" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $X_BEARER_TOKEN"
# then its posts, with their authors
curl "https://api.x.com/2/users/$USER_ID/tweets?max_results=20&tweet.fields=created_at,public_metrics&expansions=author_id" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $X_BEARER_TOKEN"curl "https://api.scrapefield.com/v1/x/posts?username=Ferrari" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SCRAPEFIELD_KEY"A post has the fields X’s API v2 gives it, by the same names: id, text, created_at, lang, conversation_id, referenced_tweets and public_metrics with views. Code that reads those reads ours.
Three differences. We take the username, so there is no id to look up first. Each post carries its author inside it, where v2 sends author_id and the accounts in includes.users. And a page has about 20 posts, with meta.next_cursor for the next. Every field is in the schema.
Questions
Is the X API free?
Not to read. Its pricing page lists only pay-per-use rates and an Enterprise plan; a new developer gets $20 of credits for adding a card. Reading your own account’s data costs $0.001 an item.
Do I need an X developer account to use this?
No. A key from us is all, and a call without one answers from the demo with real data, in the same shape.
Which is cheaper for one post?
Ours, at $2.34 → $1.32 per 1,000 against $5.00, unless you read the same post more than once a day: X charges that once.
Try it before you decide
Every endpoint has a playground that runs against the live API with no key and no account — real routing, real validation, real errors. If the response shape does not fit your code, you will know in about a minute.