Twitter Announces Three New API Access Levels After Elon Musk Announces Major Changes

Twitter has officially announced changes to the API tier. (photo: Twitter @TwitterSupport)

JAKARTA - Twitter has officially announced changes to its API tier a month and a half after its new CEO, Elon Musk, promised to shake up the system. Via its official developer account, Twitter announced three tiers - free, basic, and enterprise - and provided some details about pricing and read-write limits.

The company also linked a registration page offering links to get started with the first two tiers and express interest in the third tier.

The company says the old tier will be phased out "within the next 30 days". Here is a summary of the three replacement tiers (which can also be found on the Twitter website):

• Free - Write-only access with the ability to send 1,500 tweets per month at no cost.
• Basic - $100 per month subscription for hobbyists with the option of sending 3,000 tweets per month at the user level or 50,000 tweets per month at the app level. The read limit is 10,000 tweets.
• Enterprise - Promises "commercial level access that meets your and your customers' needs" and "managed service from a dedicated account team." No specific price was listed, but Platformer previously reported that the "low-cost enterprise plan" could go up to US$42,000 per month.

In response to Twitter's announcement, several developers said that they should discontinue their projects or pass the cost on to users.

Accountanalysis developer Luca Hammer says he should shut down a tool designed to help journalists and academics analyze Twitter accounts.

Daniel Nguyen, whose Ktool software sends a series of Twitter tweets to be read on the Kindle, said the change meant he had to either stop supporting Twitter or increase prices.

However, other developers like the team behind the tweet schedule service Typefully say they can afford the new price and will continue to support the platform. "But this would have literally killed us a year ago or when we started," tweeted Typefully co-founder Francesco Di Lorenzo, quoted by The Verge.

The official details of the new tier were announced a month and a half after Twitter first announced it would be making major changes to its Twitter API starting February 9th.

However, the company quickly missed this deadline and rolled back its most controversial change - cutting free access to the API - in what has become a routine occurrence for the social media network under Musk's ownership. Initial details about the new tier were released last month.