Tweeting from its developers’ account, Twitter has now revealed that, as of next Tuesday, February 9th, it will no longer provide developers with free access to its API. Soon, a new, more affordable “basic” tier will be available at a price.
Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead
— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) February 2, 2023
This hopefully comes as no surprise to anyone that has been paying attention with what’s been happening with Twitter lately. Ever since Twitter updated its Developer Agreement making it impossible for third party apps to create what is considered a clone of the Twitter experience, the writing has been on the wall. Twitter loses money when users are not using its own apps.
This move is very likely Elon Musk’s next attempt at stopping the financial hurt and bleeding of money and resources at the company. Furthermore, this is another revenue stream that Musk can tap into, likely even more profitable than charging its users for the Twitter Blue service.
Starting on February 9, 2019, a monthly fee will be charged to developers and businesses using Twitter’s application programming interfaces (APIs) to access data. In the same thread where the announcement was made, the company reaffirmed its dedication to maintaining and strengthening its connection with those who utilize the website’s APIs, noting that Twitter possesses one of the largest and most powerful data collections.
More details will be shared by Twitter next week on how this new paid API access will work. In the meantime, I would assume third party Twitter apps such as Tweetbot and others who shut down their apps due to the previous API access block, will now need to evaluate if it makes sense business-wise to bring back their apps using this new API to be unveiled. We will definitely be keeping an eye out on what happens next in the Twitter API saga.
