Monitor X/Twitter Without the $200/mo API Bill

Source: Dev.to

The Problem: X API Pricing

If you’ve tried to build anything that monitors Twitter/X lately, you’ve hit the wall: $200 /month minimum for API access that actually works.

• Want to track mentions of your brand? $200/mo.
• For hobbyists, indie hackers, and small teams, that’s a non‑starter.

A Cheaper Alternative: Grok (xAI)

Grok, xAI’s model, has native access to real‑time X data. Its API pricing is $0.20 per million input tokens.

Cost comparison

That’s a 20‑40× cost reduction.

Introducing X Feed Monitor (Apify Actor)

An Apify actor that:

• Takes a list of X usernames or search terms
• Uses the Grok API to fetch recent posts
• Returns structured JSON with tweets, engagement metrics, timestamps
• Runs on a schedule (hourly, daily, or custom)

Input Example

{
  "targets": ["elonmusk", "apaborhes"],
  "grokApiKey": "your-key-here",
  "postsPerTarget": 10
}

Output Example

{
  "username": "elonmusk",
  "posts": [
    {
      "text": "...",
      "timestamp": "2024-12-15T10:30:00Z",
      "likes": 45000,
      "retweets": 8200,
      "replies": 3100
    }
  ]
}

Use Cases

• Brand Monitoring – Track mentions without enterprise pricing.
• Competitor Analysis – See what competitors are posting and how it performs.
• Research – Collect data for analysis without scraping concerns.
• Alerts – Pipe output to Slack/Discord when keywords appear.

Limitations

• Not an official API – Data is obtained through Grok’s knowledge, not Twitter’s firehose.
• Rate limits – Grok imposes its own limits, though they are generous for most use cases.
• Freshness – Near real‑time, but not guaranteed instant.
• No write access – Read‑only monitoring; you can’t post or interact.

Getting Started

• The actor is live on Apify: X Feed Monitor.
• A free tier is available.
• Bring your own Grok API key (obtain one at ).

Contact

Questions? Find me on X @CrawlingTheWeb or explore my other actors on Apify.