Twitter replaces its free API with a paid monthly plan

UPDATE (February 6, 2023): Twitter to offer free API to bots ‘providing good content’, Musk says

Elon Musk’s social networking platform Twitter announced that the company will no longer offer free access to its API starting February 9th.

Third party developers who offer services powered by the API will now be required to subscribe to Twitter’s upcoming basic tier, the Twitter Developer account said on Thursday.

While the company hasn’t disclosed how much the upcoming plan will cost, in response to a user who tweeted about the change, Musk said that it would cost around $100 per month and require an ID verification, bringing a solution to ‘’bot scammers & opinion manipulators’’ who abuse the free API.

The announcement comes weeks after Twitter officially banned all third party apps including Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Echofon, Twitpane, Feather, Talon and Fenix, without providing a clear reason. Following the ban, Tweetbot’s developer launched a Mastodon client named Ivory.

After acquiring Twitter for $44 billion in late October, Musk announced a series of significant changes to its business in an effort to boost its revenue, which is mainly hit by advertisers leaving the platform. He laid off nearly half of the company’s workforce, launched the controversial Twitter Blue subscription plan on iOS and Android for profile verification, and recently said that they’re exploring a higher-priced tier with zero ads. 

The company’s also offering various ad incentives to lure back those that pulled their ads from the platform, and extended its partnerships with ad-tech companies DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science to provide them with in-feed brand safety and suitability measurement.

Earlier this week, sources familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that Elon Musk also wants to turn Twitter into a payments platform.