Twitter API alternative for developers after Nitter, ranked by job

A Twitter API alternative makes sense when the official X API costs more than the job is worth, or when the job is narrower than full data access. For the most common developer need, reacting when certain accounts or searches post, AyeWatch's signed webhooks take the least code; for bulk reads, an unofficial API or a scraper is cheaper per post. This list ranks five options as of November 2026, now that Nitter, the free workaround many hobby scripts relied on, has an archived repository and takedown letters from X Corp.

Start from the job, not the endpoint

Most X integrations do one of three things: react to new posts from known accounts or queries, pull large volumes of posts for analysis, or stay inside X's terms for a product that has to. Each option below is strong at one of those and weak at the others, so pick by job before you compare per-post prices.

1. AyeWatch: new posts pushed to you

You set up an X monitor for a profile, a search with operators like from: and lang:, or an X Community. When something new appears, AyeWatch POSTs a topic.update event with an AI summary to your endpoint, signed with HMAC-SHA256 so you can verify it came from AyeWatch. The AyeWatch API docs cover webhook setup, signature checks and the topics API for managing monitors from code. There is no X developer account and no X key to rotate, and an optional plain-English filter means your handler only sees posts that matter. The API, webhooks and an MCP server come with every paid plan, from $9 a month.

The trade-off: it reads public posts on a schedule. It is not a firehose, and it will not return likes, follower counts or history in bulk.

2. twitterapi.io: per-result pricing

twitterapi.io serves public X data, including tweets, profiles and followers, over plain REST. It bills per result, with a minimum of $0.00015 per request even when a search comes back empty. New accounts get up to $1 in credit with no card. It is an independent service that states it is not affiliated with or endorsed by X Corp.

3. Apify: a scraper you schedule

On Apify you run Actors, which are hosted scrapers. Tweet Scraper V2 by API Dojo accepts X advanced search queries and lists a price from $0.40 per 1,000 tweets. Apify's free plan includes $5 of usage, and Starter costs $19 a month plus usage. Expect to fix things when X changes its pages.

4. RSSHub: feeds from your own server

RSSHub is an AGPL-3.0 feed generator with X routes such as /twitter/user/ followed by a handle. Its docs say those routes need either auth_token cookies from a logged-in X web session or keys for X's pay-per-use developer API, so it is not credential-free.

5. X's official API as the baseline

X sells reads by the resource: $0.005 per post and $0.010 per user, from credits bought in the Developer Console, with a cap of 3 million post reads per monthly cycle before Enterprise. Repeat reads of the same post within one UTC day are not billed again.

When to stay with the official API

If your product must follow X's developer terms, or you need write actions, pay X directly. The cheaper routes read public data, and none of them is run by X. If you only need to know when a few accounts post, start with AyeWatch and skip the key management.