Twitter API Question posted in
The official Twitter API documentation can be found here.

Twitter API rate limiting – GET users/show

I am interested in to get the number of followers of a user using the twitter API in my Android application.

I am reading with great interest the official twitter API documentation, however there is something that is not clear to me.

As I have understood, if I am only interested in the number of followers, just the number, I must use GET users/show in the API.
This call to the server has a rate of 900 profile/15 minutes.

However, I read that this limitation is for each user TOKEN I have.

My question is:

If my application is installed on, for example, 1,000 mobiles, my app will be able to make only 900 queries to the server for 15 minutes from the 1,000 mobiles? or each mobile, which each has a different user, will be able to make 900 queries for 15 minutes.

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Answers


  1. 0

    Here in Twitter API v2 rate limits section: User lookup has limit 300 per app and 900 per user. These requests are for per 15-minute window as stated in that section too. You mean 1,000 mobiles which I understand as 1,000 Twitter users logged into your application via Twitter login, if not change 900 with 300 for rest. However there is a note when you scroll down within a twitter blue box which has ‘Please note’ title. These note says Users' rate limits are shared across all Apps that they have authorized.

    Besides at the very beginning it says:

    The maximum number of requests that are allowed is based on a time interval, some specified period or window of time. The most common request limit interval is fifteen minutes. If an endpoint has a rate limit of 900 requests/15-minutes, then up to 900 requests over any 15-minute interval is allowed.

    To sum up you can use at most 900 requests per 15-minute. It will depend on user’s activity with other Twitter Apps.

    I suggest you to check parts at that page called HTTP headers and response codes, Recovering from a rate limit, and Tips to avoid being rate limited.

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  2. 0

    First, /1.1/users/show has been replaced with /2/users, so use the latter going forward. If the 300-bearer/900-user-contexts rate limits are too cumbersome, there are three possibilities:

    1. look into upgrading to premium or enterprise,
    2. consider using a non-User v2 endpoint which has a suitably high rate limit and exposes the expansions parameter, which can be used to return in the response these data you are looking for,
    3. consider caching these data if permitted.

    The API documentation for v2 is quite helpful for understanding how the expansions parameter works, but as a gross summary, it allows requests for, e.g., a Tweet object to contain additional properties of, e.g., the corresponding User, such as follower count.

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