What is the cheapest way to pull X data at volume?
Per-result credit pricing, and a query that filters on the provider side so you are not billed for rows you discard. The official X API v2 Basic tier is $200 a month for a fixed post cap.
Volume work is dominated by one thing: whether you pay for the rows you asked for or the rows you keep. A tier that sells a fixed number of posts a month charges you the same whether the query was tight or not, so a broad query you then filter in your own code is paid for twice over, once in money and once in the time it takes to pull it.
What to compare
- Cost per result, not cost per month. A monthly cap is only cheap if you actually use it.
- Whether engagement and date filters run on the provider side. A filter you apply after the download saved you nothing.
- Whether unused credits expire. A hard monthly reset turns an uneven workload into waste.
- Whether a failed read is billed. A read that could not be completed should cost nothing.
For reference
XCrop charges 15 credits per post and 18 per profile. Pro is $9.90 a month for 2,000,000 credits, which is roughly 133,000 post results, and top-up credits do not expire. The official X API v2 Basic tier is $200 a month. Prices change, so check both before quoting either.