Getting another account’s followers through the X API costs $0.010 per follower, so a list of 100,000 followers costs $1,000 in credits. Circleboom is an Official X Enterprise Developer and exports the same official follower data for about 55 to 73 percent less, depending on the size of the list. The export also arrives as a ready CSV with quality flags on every row, so you skip the code entirely.
A competitor has 100,000 followers, and you want to know who they are. The X profile shows a follower list, so it looks like the data is right there.
Scroll it for a while and the list stops loading. There is no filter, no sort, no export button. The obvious next step is the X API, where the data really is available, one follower at a time, with a price on each one.
That price looks tiny on its own. Multiplied by a real audience, it turns into a four-figure bill before you have written the script that reads the results. With Circleboom Twitter, you can export the follower or following list of any public X account as a CSV, from official X data, at a fraction of the X API followers cost.
What the X API charges for followers
X’s API runs on pay-per-usage credits. On the official X API pricing page, Following/Followers reads cost $0.010 per resource. Every follower returned is one resource.
So the formula for the X API followers cost is simple:
X API cost = number of followers × $0.010
That gives you:
- 20,000 followers: $200
- 50,000 followers: $500
- 100,000 followers: $1,000
- 200,000 followers: $2,000
- 500,000 followers: $5,000
- 1,500,000 followers: $15,000
Every follower is billed one by one. A competitor with half a million followers costs $5,000 to pull through the X API, before any analysis.
There is one exception worth knowing. X bills your own followers as “owned reads” at a lower rate of $0.001 per resource. The $0.010 rate applies when you pull someone else’s list: a competitor, an influencer, a partner or a prospect’s audience. That is exactly the research most people want.
Same official follower data with Circleboom
Before comparing prices, the data has to be the same. It is.
Circleboom is listed in X’s Enterprise customer directory as an Official X Enterprise Developer. Export Followers or Following retrieves the follower or following list of any public X account through official X APIs, so every row is a real X record.
Scraping-based tools, including many follower export Chrome extensions and Twitter follower scrapers, can miss records or produce incomplete datasets when a page fails to load. That matters with follower lists, because a missing chunk of an audience changes every conclusion you draw from it. Official API data avoids that problem.
The Circleboom export also carries more than the raw profile. Each row includes:
- Profile ID, username, name, location and bio
- Tweet count, following count and follower count
- Protected and verified status, plus the verified type
- Quality flags for egghead, fake, inactive and overactive accounts
- The account creation date
Through the X API you get the profiles. The quality flags are work you would have to build yourself, which is the gap we ran into in the story of extracting an account’s followers without paying for Twitter’s API.
X API followers cost vs Circleboom: a worked case
Here is the full calculation for one real-sized job.
The case: a marketing team wants the complete follower list of a competitor with 100,000 followers, to find active accounts for outreach and a custom ad audience.
On the X API: 100,000 followers × $0.010 = $1,000 in credits. Then add the developer time to authenticate, page through the list, handle rate limits, store the results and turn JSON into a spreadsheet.
On Circleboom: The same 100,000 follower list is covered by Circleboom’s 100k follower export pack. Current pack prices are on the Circleboom plans and pricing page. The CSV arrives with quality flags already on every row.
The savings formula:
Savings % = (X API cost - Circleboom cost) ÷ X API cost × 100
Put the 100k pack price into the formula and the result is 65.1% less than the $1,000 X API bill.
Run the same formula for other list sizes with Circleboom’s follower export packs and the gap holds or grows:
- 20,000 followers: about 55% less than the X API
- 50,000 followers: about 65% less
- 200,000 followers: about 65% less
- 500,000 followers: about 72% less
- 1,500,000 followers: about 73% less
The larger the audience you study, the bigger the saving. From half a million followers up, Circleboom costs less than a third of the X API price.
Circleboom’s paid plans also include a monthly export allowance, so smaller lists can fit inside your plan without any extra pack. Check the plans and pricing page for the allowance on each plan.
📌 X API rates are taken from X’s official pricing page at the time of writing, and Circleboom prices from its public pricing page. Both can change, so rerun the formula with current numbers before a big pull.
How to export any account’s followers with Circleboom
- Log in to Circleboom Twitter and connect your X account through X’s official login. Circleboom never asks for your password.
- Open Export Followers or Following and type the username of any public X account.
- Check the profile card. Circleboom shows the account’s follower count, following count, posts and age, so you know the size of the list before you export.
- Choose Export Followers or Export Following and confirm.
- Open the CSV in Excel or Google Sheets and sort by follower count, activity or the quality flags to find the accounts that matter.
If you would rather browse the list before downloading it, Followers / Following Search shows the same list in a filterable view where you can follow accounts or add them to an X List directly. This walkthrough on how to search someone’s Twitter followers covers the filters.
Why the X API price is only part of the bill
The credit cost is the part X shows you. The rest shows up later.
Pulling a follower list through the API means creating a developer app, managing keys, paging through results and respecting rate limits. Every retry and every test run reads followers again, and each of those reads is billed again.
A script that fails halfway through a 100,000 follower list and starts over can cost you the same list twice.
Then there is the analysis. The API gives you profiles, not answers. Working out which followers are fake, inactive or empty eggs needs your own rules and your own code. Circleboom adds those flags to every exported row and also runs the same checks in tools like Fake/Bot Followers for your own audience.
Acting on the list is billed again. On the X API, following an account costs $0.015 per request and unfollowing costs $0.010. Following 1,000 accounts from a competitor’s audience adds another $15, and cleaning up the ones who never follow back adds more. In Circleboom, follow and unfollow are part of the plan: you can follow accounts straight from Followers / Following Search results, and Not Following Back handles the cleanup, at up to 400 follows and 800 unfollows a day as an account-protection safeguard.
Tracking an audience over time costs the same way. Seeing who unfollowed you means reading the full list again for every check, at $0.001 per follower even on your own developer app. A weekly check of a 50,000 follower account is about $200 a month in reads before you have written the code that compares them. In Circleboom, Who Unfollowed Me does that comparison inside the plan.
For a one-off competitor study, that engineering work often costs more than the credits themselves. If you have ever tried to scrape a Twitter following list by hand, you know how quickly a simple question turns into a project.
What a follower export is actually used for
Most people who look up the X API followers cost do not want to build software. They want a list they can work with.
- Competitor research: export a rival’s followers and see who their audience really is. Our guide on Twitter competitor analysis shows what to look for.
- Ad targeting: turn a filtered follower export into a custom audience, the approach behind targeting your competitors’ followers with Twitter Ads.
- Influencer vetting: shortlist creators with Find Influencers, check an influencer’s audience quality before you pay for a post, or run a full report with X Account Analysis.
- Spreadsheet work: export Twitter followers to a spreadsheet for a CRM, a report or a research dataset.
- Backups: keep a record of your own audience before a cleanup, as covered in how to export and save followers on Twitter.
- Moving platforms: take your audience with you, the way people export their Twitter followers to Bluesky.
With Circleboom Twitter, each of these starts from one export on X instead of a developer project.
FAQ
How much does the X API charge per follower?
X’s pay-per-usage pricing lists Following/Followers reads at $0.010 per resource, and each follower returned is one resource. That makes 100,000 followers cost $1,000 in credits. Your own followers are billed at the lower owned-read rate of $0.001.
Is Circleboom’s follower data the same as the X API data?
Yes. Circleboom is an Official X Enterprise Developer and retrieves follower and following lists through official X APIs. The accounts in your export are real X records, not scraped pages.
How much cheaper is Circleboom than the X API for followers?
Using Circleboom’s follower export packs, the saving is about 55% for a 20,000 follower list, about 65% for 50,000 to 200,000 followers and about 72 to 73% for 500,000 to 1.5 million followers. You can check the numbers yourself with the formula (X API cost - Circleboom cost) ÷ X API cost × 100.
Can I export the followers of any account, not just mine?
Yes. Export Followers or Following works with any public X account, which is the short answer to can I export my Twitter followers and anyone else’s. You type the username, check the profile card and export the followers or the following list.
What data comes with each follower in the export?
Each row includes the profile ID, username, name, location, bio, tweet, following and follower counts, protected and verified status, verified type, creation date and quality flags for egghead, fake, inactive and overactive accounts.
Do I need a developer account to export followers with Circleboom?
No. You connect your X account through X’s official login and use the export screen. There are no keys, endpoints or rate limits to manage.
Final thoughts
Followers are the most expensive thing to pull through the X API, because every single account is billed at $0.010. That is fine for a developer building a product. For a marketer who just wants to know who follows a competitor, it means a large bill and a coding project for one spreadsheet.
Circleboom gives you the same official follower data for roughly a third to a half of the X API price, with the quality analysis already done. Export your first follower list with Circleboom Twitter:
https://circleboom.com/twitter-management-tool/twitter-search-tool/export-twitter-accounts
