X changes its API to retire legacy tiers and endpoints

Aug 21, 2023

Social network X, formerly Twitter, made changes to its API pricing in March, making it expensive for developers to make applications with the platform’s data. Now, the company is announcing new changes that would retire some of the legacy API endpoints — a move that could again bump up costs for developers, especially enterprise clients.

The company said in a post this week that it’s discontinuing some of the endpoints while migrating others to the new v2 API.

“As part of our ongoing effort to modernize and transform our API platform, we are deprecating some of our v1.1 endpoints and asking you to migrate to the v2 equivalents. These deprecations will allow us to continue building support for the latest X features with our v2 API,” the company said.

X also said that it is retiring the legacy Essential and Elevated tiers, and customers using them will need to move to any of the new tiers.

“In addition, we will retire legacy v2 access tiers including Essential and Elevated (for those who still have them) within the next 30 days. To maintain access to our v2 API, please log into your developer account and enroll in Free, Basic, Pro, or Enterprise. Please reach out to our developer support as needed,” it noted.

Developers TechCrunch talked to said that certain calls with v1.1 API endpoints didn’t count toward the monthly quota for enterprise customers. But with X’s latest update, these calls — such as retrieving tweets — will count toward the monthly limit. The social network’s enterprise plans cost $42,000, $125,000 and $210,000 per month with 50 million, 100 million and 200 million tweet limits respectively. Additionally, the company is sunsetting features like user search.

This year, X has already ostracized developers by blocking third-party apps and changing its API structure drastically. The new changes are aimed at driving high-value customers to pay more for higher tiers of access.

The company, which is going through rebranding across the board, also announced this week that it will change the way news links show up and the platform by hiding headlines and summary text from the post.