Twitter/X Data Extraction in 2026: What Still Works After API Changes

Twitter/X killed free API access in 2023. Here's what options remain. Current API Pricing (2026) Tier Price Tweets/month Free $0 1,500 reads Basic $100/mo 10,000 reads Pro $5,000/mo 1M reads Enterprise Custom Unlimited For most scraping needs, these prices are prohibitive. Alternatives That Work 1. Nitter (Third-Party Frontend) Nitter instances serve Twitter data without API: https://nitter.net/elonmusk https://nitter.net/search?q=web+scraping Warning: Nitter instances frequently go down. Not reliable for production. 2. Google Cache site:twitter.com "web scraping" inurl:status Google indexes tweets — you can search them through Google. 3. Switch to Bluesky Bluesky's AT Protocol is fully open with no rate limits: // Free, no auth, structured JSON const res = await fetch('https://public.api.bsky.app/xrpc/app.bsky.feed.searchPosts?q=web+scraping'); const data = await res.json(); Many users have migrated from Twitter to Bluesky (41M users, 302% growth). 4. Use Other Social Platforms Instea