Searching for Twitter accounts with the X API costs $0.010 for every profile it returns, so a single search that brings back 5,000 accounts costs $50. Circleboom is an Official X Enterprise Developer and finds the same official X accounts with searches that are included in its plans. When every included search returns a full list, that works out 90 to 99 percent cheaper than the X API, with filters, quality labels and follow buttons already built in.
You need a list of people who work in your niche. Founders in fintech, podcasters who talk about marketing, developers who write about Rust.
X’s own search gives you a People tab with no filters and no way to save what you find, and even searching Twitter without an account only gets you so far. So the next idea is the X API, where profile data really is available in bulk.
Then the price shows up. Every profile is billed. A broad keyword brings back thousands of accounts, half of them inactive or empty, and you pay for every one before you can filter out a single bot. With Circleboom Twitter, you can search X accounts by keyword in bios and tweets, filter them by quality and activity, and follow, list or export them, all inside your plan.
What the X API charges to find accounts
X’s API runs on pay-per-usage credits. According to the official X API pricing page, Users: Read costs $0.010 per profile returned. It does not matter how you found the account. Every profile that comes back is a billed resource.
That gives one simple formula for the X API user search cost:
X API cost = profiles returned × $0.010
So on the X API:
- 500 profiles cost $5
- 5,000 profiles cost $50
- 50,000 profiles cost $500
- 750,000 profiles cost $7,500
On the X API, you pay for every account before you know whether it is relevant. The bots, the empty eggs and the inactive accounts are billed at the same rate as your best prospect.
Other discovery lines add up the same way. Communities: Read is $0.005 per community, and Following/Followers: Read is $0.010 per account when you want to look inside someone’s audience.
Same official X accounts with Circleboom
Circleboom is listed in X’s Enterprise customer directory as an Official X Enterprise Developer. Its account search tools match keywords against public bios and tweets through the official X Enterprise API, so every account in your results is a real X profile.
There are two main ways to search:
- Live X Account Search finds accounts that are active around a keyword right now, for launches, trends and live conversations
- Deep X Account Search scans a much larger historical dataset of bios and tweets and returns up to 5,000 accounts per query
Two more tools cover special cases. Find Influencers focuses on high-reach accounts in a niche, and X Community Search finds the communities where your audience gathers.
Each result row shows the name, tweet count, join date, following, followers, follow ratio and an Active or Inactive label. On the X API, that activity label is something you would have to calculate yourself.
X API user search cost vs Circleboom: the math
Circleboom’s paid plans include a monthly number of account searches. That changes the comparison from “price per profile” to “price per month”.
The case: a growth team runs keyword searches every month to build outreach lists, and each Deep X Account Search returns its full 5,000 accounts.
On the X API, per month:
- 10 searches × 5,000 profiles × $0.010 = $500
- 30 searches × 5,000 profiles × $0.010 = $1,500
- 150 searches × 5,000 profiles × $0.010 = $7,500
On Circleboom: The Pro plan includes 10 searches a month, Plus includes 30 and Premium includes 150. You can check each plan on the Circleboom plans and pricing page.
The savings formula:
Savings % = (X API cost - Circleboom cost) ÷ X API cost × 100
Put each plan’s monthly price into the formula and, even when you count the whole plan price against search alone:
- Pro, 10 searches: about 90% less than the X API
- Plus, 30 searches: about 96% less
- Premium, 150 searches: about 99% less
At full use, the searches in a Circleboom plan would cost hundreds or thousands of dollars on the X API. And the plan also includes follower analytics, scheduling and everything else.
Searches do not always return the full 5,000 accounts. A narrow keyword can return fewer, and Live X Account Search returns a smaller, more current set by design. Run the formula with your real result counts; the X API side always scales with every profile.
📌 X API rates come from X’s official pricing page and Circleboom plan details from its public pricing page at the time of writing. Both can change, so rerun the formula with current numbers.
How to search X accounts with Circleboom
- Log in to Circleboom Twitter and connect your X account through X’s official login. Circleboom never asks for your password.
- Open Advanced X Search and pick a search type. Choose Live X Account Search for people active on a topic now, or Deep X Account Search for the largest list.
- Type one keyword that describes the people you want. A word people use about themselves, such as “recruiter” or “podcaster”, works better than a broad topic.
- Filter the results. Open Filter Options to require the keyword in the bio, set follower ranges, pick a location or join date, and hide Fake/Bot and Inactive accounts.
- Act on the list. Select accounts and follow them, add them to an X List or export them. Bulk follows run at up to 400 a day as an account-protection safeguard, and queued actions continue automatically the next day.
Our guides on the best way to search Twitter bios and profiles and on a more targeted X account search go deeper into keywords and filters.
Why the X API price is only part of the bill
The per-profile price is what X charges. The rest of the cost sits around it.
Finding accounts through the API means building the query, paging through results, respecting rate limits and storing the profiles somewhere. Every test search and every retry returns profiles again, and each one is billed again. X deduplicates the same resource only within a 24-hour UTC window, and calls even that a soft guarantee.
A keyword you try three times on three different days is a profile bill you pay three times.
Then comes the part you actually wanted: deciding who is worth contacting. The API gives you raw profiles. Activity labels, fake and bot detection and follow ratios are Circleboom classifications built on top of the official data, so on the API they are code you write and maintain. With AI-made fake profiles on the rise, that filtering matters more every month.
Acting on the list is billed separately, too. Following an account through the X API is a User Interaction: Create request at $0.015 each, so following 400 accounts from a search adds $6 a day. In Circleboom, follow, unfollow and Add to List are part of the plan.
What account search is actually used for
Most people who look up the X API user search cost are not building a product. They need a list:
- Influencer discovery: shortlisting creators for a campaign or the must-follow influencers in your industry, the way we describe in finding Twitter influencers for your brand and finding influencers for free.
- Lead generation: building prospect lists from bios and tweets, as covered in how to generate Twitter leads and B2B lead generation campaigns.
- Audience mapping: finding the accounts that shape a niche before you enter it, and searching accounts by join date to separate new voices from established ones.
- Hidden voices in your own audience: finding the hidden influencer among your X followers.
- Network overlap: finding common followers between Twitter accounts without coding.
- Competitor audiences: looking inside a rival’s followers with Followers / Following Search, which on the X API is $0.010 per follower.
With Circleboom Twitter, each of these starts from one search on X instead of a developer project and a per-profile bill.
FAQ
How much does the X API charge per user profile?
X’s pay-per-usage pricing lists Users: Read at $0.010 per profile returned. A search that returns 5,000 accounts costs $50, and 50,000 profiles cost $500.
Is Circleboom’s account data the same as the X API data?
Yes. Circleboom is an Official X Enterprise Developer and searches public bios and tweets through the official X Enterprise API. Every account in your results is a real X profile.
How much cheaper is Circleboom than the X API for account search?
Circleboom plans include a monthly number of searches: 10 on Pro, 30 on Plus and 150 on Premium. When each search returns its full 5,000 accounts, the same volume would cost $500, $1,500 or $7,500 on the X API, which makes Circleboom about 90%, 96% or 99% cheaper.
What is the difference between Live and Deep X Account Search?
Live X Account Search finds accounts active around a keyword right now and returns a smaller, current list. Deep X Account Search scans a larger historical dataset of bios and tweets and returns up to 5,000 accounts per query.
Can I filter out bots and inactive accounts before following?
Yes. Filter Options lets you hide Fake/Bot, Inactive, Egghead and Overactive accounts, require a keyword in the bio and set follower ranges. These labels are Circleboom classifications built on official X data, not official X verdicts.
Do I need a developer account to search X accounts with Circleboom?
No. You connect your X account through X’s official login and use the search screen. There are no keys, endpoints or rate limits to manage.
Final thoughts
On the X API, every account you find is a line on the bill, including the ones you would never contact. That makes sense for a developer building a product. For a marketer who needs a clean list of people in a niche, it means paying for noise and writing code to remove it.
Circleboom searches the same official X data with searches included in your plan, and hands back a filtered list you can follow, organize or export straight away. Run your first account search with Circleboom Twitter:
https://circleboom.com/twitter-management-tool/twitter-search-tool
