Twitter to end API free access

Twitter to end free access to its API in Elon Musk’s latest monetization push:

Twitter will stop offering free access to its API from February 9; 2023 and will launch a paid version as part of Elon Musk's latest monetization campaign. Dave Winer said the move would mark the end of the Twitter API; while AllTop aggregates information about the change.{1}{2}

Impact of Twitter API changes on developers

Twitter announced that starting February 9; it was cutting off free access to its API{4}. This will have a significant impact on developers; as the API is the entry point for many applications and services that rely on Twitter data. The move is part of Twitter's efforts to make the platform more user-friendly and to encourage developers to use its second-generation API.

Twitter will launch a paid version of its API; which will offer more features than the free version{2}. This could potentially increase costs for developers who rely on Twitter data. Additionally; prior to this change; any developer could use the API by simply authenticating using their regular Twitter account; but now they may have to pay to access it.

Overall; these changes are likely to have a major impact on developers relying on Twitter data. They may need to pay for access or find other data sources.{3}{4}.

Twitter API changes timeline

Twitter has made several changes to its API over the years. In 2021; Twitter released API v2 which introduced three timeline endpoints: reverse chronological home timeline; user tweets timeline and user mentions timeline. This update also allowed developers to request updates to the home timeline 15 times every 15 minutes with a limit of up to 800 tweets for each user.

In 2013; Twitter released API v1.1 which allowed developers to request the home timeline 15 times in a 15 minute window and could return up to 800 tweets. This release also featured stricter branding guidelines for the display of Twitter on websites.

In 2021; Twitter extended its API functionality for developers following the public timeline by allowing them to request up to 100 tweets per request. The user's tweet timeline endpoint is limited to the most recent 3200 tweets{5}.