Estimate the X API cost of an inactive-following scan

Rates used by the calculator

The estimate uses X’s published July 2026 rates: $0.01 for a general user or following resource, $0.001 for eligible owned reads, and $0.005 for a Post read. It adds one $0.01 lookup for the connected user.

X says owned-read pricing applies when the authenticated user is also the owner of the developer app. A normal public visitor should therefore be modeled with the general rate unless X confirms otherwise.

Why Follow Checker scans one page at a time

The private beta is capped at 25 followed accounts per request. Each additional page requires a deliberate click. This avoids an accidental multi-dollar request and makes a rate-limit or depleted-credit response easier to recover from.

Why approximate activity is materially cheaper

X documents that its Snowflake IDs encode creation time. When X supplies the most recent Post ID with a followed profile, Follow Checker can derive an approximate date without retrieving the Post text. Selecting “exact Post lookup” above shows the added cost of reading one Post per account.

What this means for monetization

Display-ad revenue from a single visit is unlikely to cover a large general-rate scan. A sustainable public version will need a small free sample, a paid complete report, strict daily limits, a different commercial API arrangement, or some combination of those options.

Rates can change. Verify them in the official X API pricing documentation before making purchasing or pricing decisions.