Previewing changes to the User and Mentions Timeline API endpoints

Today we are previewing changes to two of the most commonly used Twitter standard API endpoints – user and mentions timeline. Specifically, we will begin limiting total GET requests to the v1.1 /statuses/mentions_timeline and /statuses/user_timeline endpoints to 100,000 requests per day as of June 19, 2019.

We’re making these changes so we can better review how developers are using these endpoints, and so that access to our APIs is fair and consistent for developers who have built solutions to serve other businesses. Adjusting these rate limits also contributes to our goal of helping people feel safe and protecting their privacy while maintaining open access to our developer platform.

Twitter firmly believes in open data access to study, analyze and contribute to the public conversation, which is why we continue to maintain a broad public API. In the past year, we have made changes to how we manage access to our developer products so that we can continue to ensure our developer platform remains open and broadly accessible, while having more visibility and control over how developers use both our platform and public data. We’ve also continued to proactively monitor for potential abuse of our developer platform and APIs, resulting in over 162,000 app suspensions in the second half of 2018.

The changes to these rate limits help us to make sure that all developers using our APIs to serve businesses are doing so in a fair and consistent manner. After extensively reviewing how these endpoints are used, we believe this change is critical to building a level playing field for our existing customers, as well as ensuring the appropriate protections and processes are in place when companies are using our platform to build products that serve other businesses. The changes we’re making to the user and mentions timeline endpoints are further steps in establishing consistent commercial terms for businesses making extensive use of Twitter APIs.

We are previewing this change now to give developers time to adapt, as we know that sudden changes to our products, rate limits and processes can be disruptive. By taking a phased approach to deploying these rate limit changes, we hope to help minimize impact to most developers. Lastly, we’re providing clear and transparent instructions on what these changes mean to developers, based on the types of applications they’ve built.

More details on the change:
On June 19, 2019, we will begin limiting access to the /statuses/mentions_timeline and /statuses/user_timeline standard endpoints to 100,000 requests per day as a default. This is a total request limit that applies across both user-auth and app-auth requests. These limits will be on a per-application and per-endpoint basis, meaning that a single developer app can make up to 100,000 calls to each of the two endpoints during any single 24-hour period. The existing default user-auth and app-auth rate limits will not change.

Why 100,000 requests? Because this limit allows us to make concrete progress to combat inappropriate use of our developer platform, while isolating the impact to the developers using these endpoints the most. And, to further reduce the burden on developers, we have already taken steps to elevate rate limits for many impacted applications, including several third-party Twitter clients.

This change will require developers who need to access these endpoints above the 100,000 daily request threshold to go through our review process to ensure their use cases are compliant with our policies. We will remove this new default restriction for any developers that have a policy-compliant need for increased access and don’t serve other businesses at scale. This will return their access to the same level allowed today, for free. Companies building products for other businesses may need to enter into a commercial agreement to continue accessing data at elevated levels.

Before we make any further changes to data access levels beyond what we’re announcing today, we want to make sure we’re hearing from all developers who could be impacted. We will use the combination of developer feedback on this change and our policy reviews mentioned above to inform any future plans.

How will I know if I am impacted?
Please reference the “Am I impacted?” section found in the forum post available here.

Where can I find an FAQ about these changes?
A detailed FAQ can be found here.

Where can I find technical documentation about the timeline endpoints?
Technical documentation can be found here.