'Twitter rate limit exceeded'? How many tweets you can read per day now - and why (2024)

'Twitter rate limit exceeded'? How many tweets you can read per day now - and why (1)

Twitter users who read too many tweets may find their supply cut off at a certain point. And you can thank Elon Musk for that.

On Saturday, the Twitter owner tweeted that rate limits would be temporarily imposed for users, meaning a restriction on the number of tweets you can read per day. To justify the new scheme, Musk blamed data scraping and system manipulation in which bots and external services grab huge amounts of Twitter data for their own purposes.

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But confusion quickly arose as Musk kept changing the limits. In his first tweet on Saturday, he said that verified accounts would be limited to reading 6,000 posts per day, unverified accounts 600 a day, and new unverified accounts 300 per day. A verified account is one that shells out the $8 a month or $84 a year for a Twitter Blue subscription, while unverified accounts are ones that use Twitter for free.

But later that same day, Musk amended the numbers by tweeting that verified accounts would be able to read 8,000 tweets per day, unverified accounts 800 per day, and new unverified accounts 400 per day. But wait, there's still more. In a third tweet that same day, the Twitter CEO said the limits would be 10,000 per day for verified users, 1,000 per day for unverified users, and 500 per day for new unverified users.

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Many Twitter users also started asking questions, such as how does the company determine if a tweet is read, how do we keep track of how many tweets we read, what qualifies as a new unverified account, and how long will these temporary limits be in effect?

"Elon, if I close my eyes and skip past some, will they still count towards my 6,000?" asked one user. "Can we have a Ticker that shows how many we have viewed?" asked another.

Amid the temporary new limits, many Twitter users started grumbling that they couldn't use the service to read tweets, posting screenshots that said: "Rate limit exceeded." The downtime led to complaints of a Twitter outage on Saturday from a host of people, as reported by sites like DownDetector.

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Prior to the announcement of the new limits, Musk had already signaled his concern about data scraping. In a Friday tweet, he said that several hundred or more organizations had been aggressively scraping Twitter data to the point that it was affecting the user experience. Asking what Twitter should do to stop that, he said that he was open to ideas.

Musk's latest gripes about data scraping have focused on AI companies like OpenAI that capture a huge volume of data from sites like Twitter to use to train their chatbots. "Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data," Musk said in another Friday tweet. "It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some AI startup's outrageous valuation."

On Tuesday, new Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino backed the new rate limits, saying that a company on a mission like Twitter needs to make big moves to strengthen its platform. Yaccarino also pointed to a new blog post from Twitter that attempted to better explain the restrictions.

"To ensure the authenticity of our user base we must take extreme measures to remove spam and bots from our platform," the post said. "That's why we temporarily limited usage so we could detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors that are harming the platform. Any advance notice on these actions would have allowed bad actors to alter their behavior to evade detection."

The goal is to prevent external accounts from scraping public Twitter data to build AI models and to manipulate people and conversation on the platform, the post said, adding that the restrictions "affect a small percentage of people using the platform."

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But the rate limits may be triggering other problems beyond disgruntled users. On Saturday, a developer named Sheldon Chang posted a message on Mastodon claiming that Twitter was DDOSing itself, meaning sending its own website Distributed Denial of Service signals that can stall a site's performance, preventing it from responding to legitimate traffic. And Chang blamed the DDOS on the new limitations.

"Twitter is firing off about 10 requests a second to itself to try and fetch content that never arrives because Elon's latest genius innovation is to block people from being able to read Twitter without logging in," Chang said. "This likely created some hellish conditions that the engineers never envisioned and so we get this comedy of errors resulting in the most epic of self-owns, the self-DDOS."

We sent an email to Twitter's press contact address asking for commentary about the rate limits and the DDOS issue. In response, Twitter sent us an automated reply with nothing but a poop emoji, Musk's way of answering questions from the press following the firing of the company's public relations group.

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'Twitter rate limit exceeded'? How many tweets you can read per day now - and why (2024)

FAQs

How do I fix the rate limit exceeded on Twitter? ›

Bypass the Twitter Rate Limit Using Opera GX Browser

Install Opera GX on your desktop computer (Free), Android (Free), or iOS (Free) smartphone. 2. Now, launch the Opera GX browser and open twitter.com (visit). Now, you will not face errors like “Rate limit exceeded” or “Cannot retrieve Tweets at this time”.

How many tweets can I read per day? ›

6,000 tweets daily for verified accounts. 600 posts per day for unverified accounts. 300 tweets daily for new unverified accounts.

How long does it take for the rate limit to reset on Twitter? ›

Rate limits are divided into 15 minute intervals. All endpoints require authentication, so there is no concept of unauthenticated calls and rate limits. There are two initial buckets available for GET requests: 15 calls every 15 minutes, and 180 calls every 15 minutes.

What is the Twitter Tweet limit per day? ›

You can post up to 2,400 tweets per day (this is spread throughout the day- there are limits per half hour, so you can't just post 2,400 all at once!)

How long does the follow limit last on Twitter? ›

The limit is 400 follows for unverified users, and 1000 if you're verified. To prevent spammy follow behaviors, X imposes a limit on how many accounts you can follow in one day. Fortunately, that limit only lasts 24 hours. Once a day has passed, feel free to start adding more followers again.

Why is Twitter limiting how many tweets I can see? ›

He says it's an attempt to crack down on companies that scrape Twitter for data. The idea is that if there's a cap on how many tweets users can read, companies won't be able to do mass data scraping. He originally said unverified accounts can read 600 tweets, and verified accounts can read 6,000.

How long does a rate limit last? ›

The rate limit is defined as the maximum number of requests per API endpoint permitted within a window of time, often 15 minutes. So, if an endpoint has a rate limit of 900 requests per 15 minutes, it means that you are allowed to make up to 900 requests within any 15-minute interval.

Who reads 10,000 tweets a day? ›

On Saturday Twitter began to restrict how many tweets its users could read. Elon Musk tweeted that unverified users could read 1,000 tweets, and verified users 10,000 per day. People began to share screengrabs of messages that they'd "exceeded" their daily allowance of tweets.

How long does Twitter exceeded number of attempts last? ›

You might need to wait 24 hours or so to be able to try again. Sometimes Twitter and other sites will do nothing more than put you in line to wait if you exceed a number of failed attempts in a given period, whether 24 or more hours.

What happens when Twitter limits your account? ›

You will not be able to tweet, retweet, or like, and only your followers will be able to view your past tweets. To lift the restriction, you will be asked to verify your email address, add a mobile phone number to your account, and delete tweets that violate Twitter rules.

How many tweets can I view per day? ›

Logged-in Twitter users can now read between 500 – 10,000 tweets per day, depending on their account status.

Is the Twitter rate limit temporary? ›

July 3 (Reuters) - Elon Musk's Twitter has put a temporary limit on the number of tweets that users can see each day, a move that has sparked some backlash and could undermine the social network's efforts to attract advertisers.

Why is Twitter saying I reached my follow limit? ›

This message appears when you reach the daily follow and account limits. You can also see this message after following multiple accounts per time in a day. However, that does not always mean you have exceeded your daily limit. It sometimes warns about indiscriminate following within a day.

How do I overcome the word limit on Twitter? ›

End each tweet with a counter like "1/3" "2/3" etc. so your readers know that all of the tweets belong together. Type out the tweet in your notes or word processing app. Then, take a screenshot, crop the image, and post your thoughts as a picture.

Why does Twitter keep limiting my account? ›

Twitter may lock or temporarily restrict certain features of your account if it suspects that it has been compromised or if it detects violations of the Twitter rules. This is indicated by a message stating that your account is locked or some features are restricted when you log in or open the app.

How do I increase my Twitter message limit? ›

One of the premium features is the ability to write longer tweets containing up to 25,000 characters. By getting a premium account, you increase your tweet character limit from 280 to 25,000 characters! So, if you're a Twitter author, the privileged ability to write longer tweets is enough reason to go premium.

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