According to monitoring by 1M AI News, Chris Park, head of X’s developer platform, announced that the X API will continue to be freely available to public-interest applications that provide emergency alerts, public service updates, and other public-benefit use cases, and that it will launch a new API program for public-interest developers, offering clear onboarding guidelines, expanded access permissions, and additional resource support.
On February 6 this year, X fully shifted its API pricing to pay-as-you-go, removing the free tier for new developers; posting costs $0.01 per post and reading costs $0.005 per post. Previously, free eligibility for public-interest applications used a case-by-case approval approach, with no publicly available standard process. This announcement formally upgrades that exemption into a structured developer program, which—while long overdue—provides a clear safeguard for public-interest applications that rely on X data distribution of critical information such as emergency alerts and weather warnings.