You want to know the moment certain X accounts post, without polling. There are three ways to get that pushed to you: X's Activity API, X's filtered stream, or a monitoring plan from a third-party provider. They differ most in how they bill. X charges per event, a monitoring plan charges per account per month.
The three options
| X Activity API | X filtered stream | Monitoring plan (TwittrAPI) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery | Webhook | Open streaming connection | Webhook, or pull API |
| What you follow | Events of accounts | Rules: keywords, accounts, operators | Accounts |
| Billing | $0.005 per new-post webhook event (post.create)as of Oct 2026 | Pay-per-use, 1 connection and 1,000 rules on pay-per-useas of Oct 2026 | Flat monthly fee per plan |
| Account at X | Yes, console.x.com | Yes, console.x.com | No |
The X Activity API is X's webhook product. You subscribe to events such as new posts of an account and X sends them to your endpoint. The filtered stream is the older approach: you keep one HTTP connection open and X pushes every post that matches your rules. Both need a developer account and an app at console.x.com.
What it costs per month
X bills the Activity API per delivered event, so the price depends on how much the accounts post. A monitoring plan costs the same whether an account posts once a week or fifty times a day.
Example: 50 accounts, each posting 10 times a day, is about 15,000 new posts a month.
| Per month | |
|---|---|
| X Activity API at $0.005 per event | about $75 |
| TwittrAPI, 50 accounts, Standard (60 s) | $15 |
| TwittrAPI, 50 accounts, Fast (5 s) | $29 |
| TwittrAPI, 50 accounts, Real-time (1 s) | $59 |
If the same 50 accounts are news or trading accounts posting 50 times a day, the Activity API comes to about $375 a month, and the monitoring plan stays the same. For accounts that rarely post, per-event billing can be cheaper. Count the posts first: the accounts' profiles show how many posts they have and since when.
All monitoring plans:
| Accounts | Standard (60 s) | Fast (5 s) | Real-time (1 s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | $5 | $9 | $19 |
| 50 | $15 | $29 | $59 |
| 250 | $49 | $99 | $199 |
| 1,000 | $149 | $299 | $599 |
| 5,000 | $499 | $999 | $1,999 |
When X's own API is the better choice
- You follow keywords, not accounts. The filtered stream matches rules like
"product name" lang:en. Account monitoring only follows accounts. For keywords on TwittrAPI you poll search withsince_id, which is one billed call per poll. - You need events about your own account, such as new followers or direct messages. Those need the account owner's authorization and the official API.
- You need a contract with X, for compliance or because your use case requires it.
When a monitoring plan is the better choice
- The accounts post often. A flat fee does not grow with their activity.
- You do not want an app at console.x.com. You need an API key from us, nothing at X.
- You also read other public data. The same key works for timelines, search, profiles and followers, billed per call from $0.065 per 1,000 calls.
- Small accounts matter. There is no follower minimum: an account with 50 followers is checked as often as one with 5 million.
Other third-party providers
Several data providers sell account monitoring. Their published terms differ in what the price covers and how fast small accounts are:
| Provider | Monitoring plans | Speed as published |
|---|---|---|
| twitterapi.io | $29/month for 6 accounts, extra accounts $5/month eachas of Oct 2026; $999/month for 2,000 accountsas of Oct 2026 | 50% of tweets under 500 ms, 80% under 1 sas of Oct 2026; the low-latency path covers authors with 5,000+ followers (moving to 2,000+)as of Oct 2026 |
| GetXAPI | $19/month for 6 accounts up to $249/month for 150as of Oct 2026 | account monitoring with webhooks: about 15 s detection, about 2 s on the fast tier (Growth plan and above)as of Oct 2026 |
| TweetAPI | monitoring is a separate product (TweetNotify) with its own pricingas of Oct 2026 | |
| TwittrAPI | $5 for 10 accounts up to $1,999 for 5,000 | Every account checked at least every 60, 5 or 1 s |
Read each provider's terms for the size of accounts you care about. A median latency for large accounts says little about an account with a few hundred followers.
How the switch works
Moving from the Activity API or a polling script takes three calls: add the accounts, set the webhook, send a test event. The webhook guide walks through it in Python, including the signature check. Each event contains the full post in the simple format, so you do not need a second call to read it.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free way to get new posts from X by webhook?
No. X bills the Activity API and the filtered stream under pay-per-use, and third-party monitoring is a paid plan. Polling the timeline is also billed per call.
Does the Activity API need a developer account?
Yes. It is part of the official X API, so you need an app at console.x.com.
Can a monitoring plan follow keywords?
No. It follows accounts. For keywords, cashtags or hashtags, poll search with since_id so each call returns only new posts.
How fast is account monitoring?
Each account is checked at least every 60 s, 5 s or 1 s, depending on the plan. X's own delay before a post appears comes on top. Each event shows when the post was created and when it was detected.
Sources
- X API pricing and Activity API (docs.x.com)
- Account monitoring docs
- Twitter Streaming API alternative
TwittrAPI is not affiliated with X Corp. It reads only public data.
