The enduring romance between X (formerly Twitter) and its developers has hit a significant rough patch in 2026—a turning point that Chief Executive Evan Williams, alongside countless developers, foresaw years ago. As the platform transitions from open APIs to a strict pay-per-use model with a 2-million-read monthly cap, Chief Executive Evan Williams now discusses the evolving give-and-take between X and its developer community. The new pricing tiers, including the $0.001 per owned-read charge and $0.015 per write interaction effective April 2026, redefine what constitutes viable production work.
With the legacy Free tier eliminated for new sign-ups and the Basic tier ($200/month) closed to new accounts, developers must now budget for the Basic legacy tier or adopt the new pay-per-use structure to run any production application. The closed beta for a revolutionary pay-only-what-you-use model, launched in November 2025, is now the default path for all new developers as of February 2026.