Twitter announced on late Wednesday evening it will be cutting off free access to its Twitter API next week, and instead launch a paid basic tier instead.
“Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead,” said the Twitter Dev account.
The news comes after third party Twitter clients suddenly saw access banned weeks ago.
Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead 🧵
— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) February 2, 2023
“Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion Tweets, with billions more every week,” added Twitter. “Twitter data are among the world’s most powerful data sets. We’re committed to enabling fast & comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us,” it continued.
“We’ll be back with more details on what you can expect next week,” concluded the Twitter Dev team.
As expected, the five days notice of the Twitter API shutdown did not bode well, with many stunned replies saying helpful Twitter bots that rely on the API will soon disappear. The move will also kill any spam bots on the site too, one of the major new pushes of the new Twitter.
The move appears to transition the Twitter API to a paid product to add revenue to the social network’s bottom line. ‘Chief Twit’ Elon Musk acquired the company for $44 billion and one of the first major changes was to push Twitter Blue subscriptions to the masses, offering anyone the ability to gain a blue verification checkmark for $8 USD per month.
As it stands, Twitter API pricing for its Premium package starts at $149 USD per month, for up to 500 total requests, all the way up to $2,499 USD per month, for up to 10,000 total requests.
Update: Musk replied to discussion on the ending of the Twitter API, to say: “yeah, free API is being abused badly right now by bot scammers & opinion manipulators. There’s no verification process or cost, so easy to spin up 100k bots to do bad things.”
“Just ~$100/month for API access with ID verification will clean things up greatly,” said Musk.
Yeah, free API is being abused badly right now by bot scammers & opinion manipulators. There’s no verification process or cost, so easy to spin up 100k bots to do bad things.
Just ~$100/month for API access with ID verification will clean things up greatly.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2023
