Twitter blocks access to its API, even for those willing to pay

Twitter seems to have officially cut off free access to its API. Over the past few days, several developers have reported that their third-party Twitter clients have stopped working. This ban also affects many researchers, journalists, academic institutions, bot makers, nonprofits, and other developers that use Twitter’s API for various purposes. The company has already announced multiple paid tiers of its APIs.

Twitter has been working on this change since early this year. In mid-January, it abruptly blocked third-party clients without any warning or notice. The company later announced that it would not allow free access to its APIs to anyone. Developers would require to pay to use its APIs. The paid API was supposed to be available in early February but was delayed indefinitely as Twitter needed more time to complete the redesign.

Finally, Twitter announced its new paid API tiers in late March. It did keep a “Free” tier, but with little access. The company said it’s designed for “write-only use cases and testing the Twitter API”. The new free version of Twitter API offered too little for many developers to continue their work without paying the social media giant anything. Unsurprisingly, they decided to shut down their projects.

For those willing to pay, Twitter launched a $100 per month “Basic” tier that is ideal for “hobbyists or prototypes”. The “Enterprise” tier, on the other hand, is for “businesses and scaled commercial projects”. It will have varying monthly subscription plans, likely based on individual use cases. Reports say the Enterprise tier could start at a staggering $42,000 per month.

Twitter has now blocked access to the old free version of its API

A week after this announcement, Twitter has now shut down the existing free version of its API. Everyone, including those willing to pay the exorbitant cost of the Enterprise tier, has lost access. Developers say they have already signed up for the paid version. But instead of making necessary changes to their API access, Twitter has cut off access entirely without notice.

“When Twitter announced these new tiers last week, we immediately sought to sign up for the Enterprise tier,” Echobox said in a recent . “We still have had no response from Twitter’s enterprise sales team and our access to the API was cut off without notice yesterday”. Likewise, Twitter has many suspended third-party clients that signed up for the Enterprise tier. These include Tweet Deleter, Tweet Hunter, Tweet Archivist, Tweet Shelf, and more. As of this writing, Twitter hasn’t said a word on the matter. We will let you know as soon as we have more information.