The X API has increased the price of "Self-serve Data Read" to $1 per thousand requests, in a reverse pricing update.

According to Watchful Beating monitoring, X recently announced a new round of API pricing adjustments, with the new rates effective as of April 20. The most significant change is in "Owned Reads," priced at $0.001 per read, equivalent to 1000 reads per $1. This tier covers 12 GET endpoints for developers to read posts, mentions, likes, bookmarks, followers, following list, block and mute lists, pinned tweets, owned lists, join lists, and list memberships from their own accounts.

On the writing side, prices have increased. The main POST /2/tweets endpoint rate has been raised from $0.01 to $0.015 per tweet. Posts with URLs are now priced at $0.20 per tweet, with only "summoned replies" retaining the old price of $0.01. Additionally, three types of writing actions have been removed from self-serve tier accounts: follow/unfollow, like/unlike, and quote retweet, with all corresponding endpoints disabled.

The significant price reduction for Owned Reads allows developers to access all their account's public data at nearly no cost, enabling smart agent frameworks to build lightweight applications around a user's X list, followers, and bookmarks without incurring substantial fees for each request. The high pricing for posts with URLs targets automated content promotion, while automated actions like follow, like, and quote retweet have been completely removed from the self-serve level, tightening growth actions to a higher-paying tier.

On April 19, Tesla and xAI CEO Musk responded to X by stating that developers can access the X API through the open-source smart agent gateway OpenClaw, and added, "We want to keep costs low, but we can't give away the store."