Twitter announces new API pricing, which poses a challenge for small developers

Twitter officially announced its revamped API levels a month and a half after new CEO Elon Musk promised a major overhaul of the system. In a thread that the company’s official developer account listed three tiers – free, basic, and enterprise – and provided some details on their prices and read and write limits. It also linked Registration pagesproviding links to get started with the first two stages and to express interest in the third stage.

The company says older tiers will be depreciated “in the next 30 days.” Here’s a quick synopsis of the three replacements (which can also be Found on Twitter’s website):

In response to Twitter’s announcement, some developers said they would have to end their projects or pass on the fees to users. Account analytics developer Luca Hammer said he had to shut down his tool designed to help journalists and academics analyze Twitter accounts. Daniel Nguyenwhose Ktool software sends Twitter threads to be read on the Kindle, said the changes mean it must either stop supporting Twitter or raise prices.

Another developer, who asked to remain anonymous, called the free tier “terrible” because of the limited post cap and apparent inability to read simple information like tweets, likes, and follows from the platform.

But other developers, such as Team behind Typefully tweet scheduling service said they can afford the new prices and will therefore continue to support the platform. “But that would have totally killed us a year ago or when we started,” says Typefully co-founder Francesco Di Lorenzo tweeted.