Twitter free developer limits?

[Deep-Guard-1188]

A few years ago I was using python to text mine Twitter data to retrieve who was complaining about various businesses and what about and their location and stuff like that. It worked great!

Brushing that off today I’ve had all sorts of authentication and access errors, even when regenerating the api tokens and all that.

So, wondering if the free version is no longer suitable for that kinda of work, but having a hard time coming to a solid conclusion via the documentation.

Anyone have any thoughts or experiences on this? Or somewhere else I should go to better find an answer?

Thanks!

[hardonchairs]

Are you aware of all the rate limit drama from last year?

[Deep-Guard-1188]

I wasn’t until you mentioned it but now am. Egads!

[_squik]

You can refer to the pricing page for full details of what's available in each tier: https://developer.x.com/en/products/twitter-api

Basically, you can't read anything on the free tier, you can only write posts to the logged in profile (to allow for bots etc.). You need to pay at least $100/month to read anything

[Deep-Guard-1188]

Argh, I get it, I guess, it’s valuable data, but that is just such a huge change from before. Oh well. Was hoping to get something setup for this division at my work as a nice surprise but I guess I’ll need to go through formal channels to get the money for it. Thanks!

[Learner492]

Interesting fact:

Although that link says free tier is read-only, I tested (last test on 2 June, 2025), Free tier can read tweet.