User reads bill at $0.010 per resource, double the post-read rate. A search pipeline that returns 500 tweets and hydrates 500 author profiles does not cost $2.50. It costs $7.50 before any follower or DM lookups. This page isolates user-read billing, owned-account discounts, and the follower endpoints that share the same meter.
Post reads get most of the attention at $0.005 each. User reads sit at $0.010, and follower endpoints share that meter. Any pipeline that enriches tweets with author profiles, follower counts, or verification status pays both rates on every unique resource.
For the full endpoint table including writes and trends, see X API pay-per-use endpoint costs. For tier history and legacy Basic math, see the X API pricing comparison.
X deducts credits per user resource returned in the response body. The rate applies to lookups by ID, username, or batch ID lists. It also applies to following and followers endpoints, which return user objects rather than posts.
| Resource type | Unit cost | Billed per |
|---|---|---|
| User: Read | $0.010 | user resource returned |
| Following/Followers: Read | $0.010 | user resource returned |
| DM Event: Read | $0.010 | DM event returned |
| Owned Reads (authenticated account) | $0.001 | resource returned |
Rates come from the official X Developer documentation and the April 2026 pricing update. Verify current figures in the Developer Console before budgeting a production pipeline.
A common pattern fetches recent posts, then looks up each author for display name, follower count, and profile image URL. The post fetch and the user fetch bill separately.
| Step | Resources | Rate | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search 200 recent posts | 200 post reads | $0.005 | $1.00 |
| Hydrate 200 unique authors | 200 user reads | $0.010 | $2.00 |
| Combined | 400 resources | mixed | $3.00 |
If 50 of those 200 posts share the same author, deduplication on user lookups still requires tracking which IDs were already fetched. Post reads have daily deduplication within a billing period per X documentation. User reads follow the same per-resource model.
A pipeline that runs this job hourly across 24 hours without caching author profiles could bill 4,800 user reads per day from hydration alone, or $48.00 daily on user reads before counting the post reads underneath.
The authenticated developer account's own data qualifies for a reduced rate. Owned reads cover the account's own posts, bookmarks, followers, likes, and lists at $0.001 per resource instead of standard post or user rates.
A scheduling bot that reads its own posted content to check delivery status pays one-tenth of what a monitoring tool pays to read a competitor's timeline. Third-party profile lookups, search results, and public timeline reads do not qualify.
Teams building bots should separate "read my own account" paths from "read the public web" paths in cost models. The discount only applies when OAuth scopes and endpoint paths target the authenticated user.
Endpoints that return follower or following lists bill each user object at $0.010. Pagination works like search: max_results and pagination_token determine how many user resources arrive per call.
| Followers fetched | User read cost |
|---|---|
| 100 | $1.00 |
| 1,000 | $10.00 |
| 10,000 | $100.00 |
| 100,000 | $1,000.00 |
Influence scoring workflows that pull full follower graphs for multiple accounts can exceed post-read caps on user reads alone. The 2,000,000 monthly cap published for pay-per-use applies specifically to post reads, not user reads. User read volume still consumes prepaid credits at the published rate without a published separate cap on pay-per-use tiers.
Ranked trending topic names do not require user lookups. The trends endpoint returns topic strings and tweet volume metadata without author profiles. For teams that only need what is trending on X right now, polling trends at $0.010 per fetch beats hydrating thousands of post authors.
Trends MCP returns live X trending data via get_top_trends at one request per poll with no X developer account. The official path costs $0.010 per trends read on pay-per-use accounts. See the X trends overview for feed parameters and the X API reference for credential setup when full post and user data is required.
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