constantquadruped

Posted on Dec 15

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

#twitter #api #automation #webdev

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.
Monitor a competitor's feed? $200/mo.
Build a simple alert system? $200/mo.

For hobbyists, indie hackers, and small teams, that's a non-starter.

The Workaround: Grok API

Here's what I discovered: Grok (xAI's model) has native access to real-time X data. And Grok API pricing? $0.20 per million input tokens.

Do the math:

X API Basic: $200/month flat
Grok API monitoring 100 feeds daily: ~$5-10/month

That's a 20-40x cost reduction.

What I Built

I created X Feed Monitor - an Apify actor that:

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

Basic Usage

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

Output

{
  "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, how it performs
Research: Collect data for analysis without scraping concerns
Alerts: Pipe output to Slack/Discord when keywords appear

Limitations (Being Honest)

Not official API: You're getting data through Grok's knowledge, not Twitter's firehose
Rate limits: Grok has its own limits, though generous for most use cases
Freshness: Near real-time, not guaranteed instant
No write access: Read-only monitoring, can't post or interact

Try It

The actor is live on Apify: X Feed Monitor

Free tier available. Bring your own Grok API key (get one at x.ai).

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

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