The Twitter Streaming API Is Dead, Real-Time Options in 2026

What happened

The free v1 Streaming API was shut down in the post-2023 API overhaul. The current X API documents Filtered Stream as near-real-time and uses credit-based pay-per-use pricing: $0.005 per Post read with a 2 million monthly Post-read cap. That is materially different from both the retired free stream and the stale Free/Basic/Pro tables still repeated in older articles.

The result: an ecosystem of third-party services rebuilt real-time tweet delivery outside the official API, and for the specific job of "watch these N accounts, push me their posts instantly," they are now both faster to integrate and cheaper to run.

Your four real options

Sources reviewed 2026-07-28. Provider latency figures are not a controlled benchmark. Full source-linked breakdown: Twitter API alternatives compared.

Polling vs push, the part that actually matters

Every option above is either polling or push. Polling means your worst-case latency IS your poll interval: poll every 10 seconds, and a tweet posted right after your last poll reaches you 10 seconds late. For alerting that's annoying; for trading it's disqualifying. Push means a connection stays open and the provider's detection layer fires the instant a tracked account posts, latency becomes the provider's detection speed, not your loop.

A minimal Node.js consumer against a push feed:

import WebSocket from "ws";

const ws = new WebSocket("wss://1322.io/your-ws-path", {
  headers: { "X-Api-Key": process.env.API_1322_KEY },
});

ws.on("message", (raw) => {
  const event = JSON.parse(raw.toString());
  if (event.platform === "x" && event.eventType?.startsWith("tweet")) {
    console.log(`[${event.timestamp}] @${event.handle}: ${event.content}`);
    // match tickers / contract addresses / keywords -> act
  }
});

ws.on("close", () => setTimeout(connect, 1000)); // reconnect with backoff

Events arrive progressively (mini → update → expanded → full), so the earliest signal lands first and the enriched payload, media, metrics, reply/quote chains, follows within moments. Details: Twitter WebSocket API.

Why 1322 replaces the old monitored-account workflow

• Flat tracked-account capacity instead of modeling every read.
• A typical 150-250ms X operating range for time-sensitive alerting.
• Normalized source contracts when the strategy expands beyond X.
• Managed delivery routes for Discord, Telegram and signed webhooks. Start with crypto KOL tracking or prediction markets.

FAQ