Byline; Olivia Nnorom
Twitter has yet again announced a new API (Application programming interface) tier, Twitter API Pro for startups at $5,000 per month, which gives developers the ability to fetch 1 million tweets per month, post 300,000 tweets per month, and access the full archive search end-point.
Addressing startups looking to scale their businesses on Thursday, 25th, May, 2023, Twitter dev tweeted, “Experiment, build, and scale your business with 1M Tweets per month, including our powerful real-time Filtered/Stream and Full Archive Search endpoints. We look forward to seeing what you build next.”
This came weeks after the company announced that it would be shutting down access to its free API tier. However, it somewhat backtracked on that decision by providing free access to 1,500 tweets per month for content provider bots.
In terms of the new API, startups would pay between the $100 per month Basic tier and the $42,000 per month Enterprise tier.
Although many users consider this a welcome development, they registered their dissatisfaction at the cost, which they explained as highly expensive for most startups who the program was aimed to serve.
When Twitter announced the new pricing, many developers and founders argued that the company should introduce a middle tier between Basic and Enterprise for startups that can’t afford the roughly half a million dollars a year.
The new Pro API tier will cater to some of those people, but won’t be a solution for businesses that run on a tight budget as they still have to pay $60,000 per year. For example, this new posting limit on the Pro tier may be sufficient for some bots, but it will be harder for developers to raise funds through subscriptions or donations to keep the service going long-term.
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