As you scroll through your feed, you suddenly see the Twitter rate limit exceeded error message. You try refreshing the page, closing and opening the app, and signing out and into your account multiple times. However, nothing works, and after searching for a fix online, you end up here.
Today’s article explains why you’re facing this issue and six ways to resolve it quickly. Head over to the next section to learn more about this notification you keep coming across on Twitter.
Table of Contents
What Does Rate Limit Exceeded Mean on Twitter? Explaining This Error Message
What does rate limit exceeded mean on Twitter, aka X? It indicates you have hit Twitter’s cap on how often you can perform a specific action during a defined period.
Why does the platform have this type of limitation? To understand the reasoning for these thresholds, you need to zoom out a bit.
According to Statista, X has 611 million monthly active users. These people post hundreds of millions of tweets every single day. On top of that, multiple third-party apps use Twitter’s application protocol interface (API).
The API, essentially, allows external services to function with this social media platform.
As you can imagine, this social network’s infrastructure regularly has to deal with a significant load. At the same time, it also has to ensure the platform is stable for its users and third-party service providers.
With a limit, X’s systems can ensure everything is under control while providing an excellent experience for everyone. Without the cap, there will be significant downtime as the demand overwhelms the platform’s infrastructure. Also, you’ll keep coming across error messages.
Another reason for having these limits is to prevent bad actors from misusing X and its features. Otherwise, they can quickly overwhelm this social network and cause many issues.
The rate limits apply to all devices and services that rely on X.
Twitter Rate Limit Exceeded: What Are the Rate Limits on Twitter?
Below is a list of rate limits for various actions on this platform:
- You can only send 2,400 posts daily from your profile, including reposts, quote posts, and replies. The platform also limits how many posts you can publish every 30 minutes.
- The platform allows you to send up to 500 direct messages (DMs) to other users.
- You can change the registered email ID to your X account up to four times in an hour.
- The follow limit, i.e., how many people you can follow per day, is 400 accounts.
- After you follow 5,000 users on X, the platform places additional limits on your account.
Usually, the platform enforces these limits to ensure there is no impact on user experience. However, if there is a surge in traffic, the platform may reduce the cap to keep up with the demand.
Elon Musk Twitter Rate Limit: The Reasoning Behind X’s Sudden Restriction
Discussions about the platform’s cap exploded on July 1, 2023, after the Elon Musk Twitter rate limit tweet. In the post, he explained the platform was restricting how many posts users can read daily.
The social media giant noticed significant data scraping.
This is a practice where apps and services pull data from websites like X. According to Elon Musk, several organizations offering artificial intelligence (AI) tools were overwhelming X’s servers.
X had to get more servers to keep up with the extreme levels of demand. Additionally, several bad actors were active on this platform.
As a result, X decided to introduce temporary limits for new, unverified, and verified users. The initial cap was 300 posts every day for new and unverified users. For unverified accounts, the cap increases to 600 daily posts. Verified accounts can go through 6,000 posts every day.
A day after introducing these restrictions, the platform increased the limits. With a new and unverified account, the daily limit was 400 posts. If your account wasn’t new but unverified, it was 800 posts per day. With a verified profile, the platform bumped the daily limit to 8,000 posts.
Within a few hours, there was a final increase to these thresholds — 500, 1000, and 10,000.
Rate Limit Exceeded Twitter Fix: 3 Solutions That Work
Is there a rate limit exceeded Twitter fix that will work? You can try the following three solutions to see if they resolve your issue.
1. Ensure There Are Zero Problems From X’s End
The first rule of troubleshooting is to ensure the service you’re using, i.e., Twitter, doesn’t have any issues.
This isn’t the first time users saw this error on X. In April 2020, the platform’s official support account (@Support) tweeted about the rate limit exceeded on Twitter issue. X was able to resolve this problem in a few hours.
The easiest way to check if everything is okay on Twitter is to use a service like DownDetector. It relies on user reports and monitoring tools to ensure X is working properly. If there is an issue with this social media giant, this is the first place to check.
If the issue is from X’s end, you must wait until the platform resolves this issue.
2. Wait for the Cooldown Period To End
As everything is okay with X’s infrastructure, the second solution is simply waiting. As highlighted earlier, the rate limits are active for a specified period. For instance, you can only post 2,400 tweets every day. It also checks how many posts you publish every 30 minutes. In this case, the rate limit for every 30 minutes is 50 tweets.
If you try to cross this cap, you’ll see the Twitter rate limit exceeded tweets message. Similarly, X only allows you to follow up to 400 users daily.
How long you have to wait depends on the action. If it is for following or sending DMs to others, the cooldown period is 24 hours. Sometimes, the error appears when you follow many users quickly. In this instance, you must wait at least an hour to follow more users.
What about changing the email address connected to your account? In this situation, you must wait an hour for the limit to become inactive.
You must wait at least half an hour if you publish 50 posts within 30 minutes.
3. Unfollow Some Users or Get More People To Follow You
The final reason you see the rate limit error is your follower-to-following ratio. X starts checking this ratio when you follow 5,000 users with your profile.
The platform wants you to maintain a healthy ratio. However, it doesn’t explain what you need to target to improve this figure. Also, this number varies depending on the account.
There are two ways to resolve this issue quickly. The first solution is to unfollow some users, bringing you under the 5,000 mark. You should be able to follow new people with this technique. However, you’ll run into the rate limit issue again once you try to go over 5,000.
The second option is to increase your follower count. Although this is harder, it is a worthwhile pursuit. For starters, you don’t have to worry too much about the ratio as you get more people to follow you. It increases your reach, as your content will appear in more users’ feeds.
You’ll see an uptick in your engagement metrics, provided your audience likes your content. Also, it adds to your credibility, as people often look at follower counts as a measure of a user’s trustworthiness.
Twitter Rate Limit Bypass: 3 Fixes You Must Try Right Now
Below are three Twitter rate limit bypass fixes you should try to resolve your issues quickly.
1. Subscribe to X Premium
As highlighted earlier, if you verify yourself, the platform increases your rate limit by a factor of 10. This is the easiest way to bypass the platform’s cap on how many posts you can read daily. Earlier, Twitter had a different verification program to ensure you’re notable, authentic, and active.
The platform overhauled this legacy verification program with the new ownership. You need Twitter Blue, now X Premium, to start the verification process. Once the team ensures you meet all their requirements, you’ll get the iconic blue tick. This indicates you passed the platform’s verification check.
2. Install Old Twitter Layout on Your Desktop Browser
If subscribing to X Premium doesn’t sound appealing, the second option is to use a browser extension.
One solution recommended by several Twitter users is the Old Twitter Layout. It is available on Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome. You can also install it on Mozilla Firefox.
Here’s how to install this extension on Google Chrome:
Note: You should use a desktop browser to add this plugin. The steps are similar for browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge.
- Go to the Chrome Web Store and type “Old Twitter Layout” in the search box.
- Click the first search suggestion, which is the extension you need to install. You can confirm this is the plugin by checking if dimden.dev is the developer.
- Left-click Add to Chrome to install this extension to your desktop browser.
- Open the Extensions toolbar by left-clicking the button with a puzzle piece as an icon.
- Select the pin next to the Old Twitter Layout to make the extension visible on your browser.
- Visit X, and the user interface (UI) will no longer be the same. Instead of the newer elements, you’ll see the platform’s old design and logo.
You don’t have to do anything to bypass the limit. This tool should work out of the box.
3. Use OperaGX as Your Browser of Choice for X
The last workaround is to switch your browser to OperaGX. This gaming-focused browser provides additional features to its users. For instance, you can control how much of your network, RAM, and CPU it uses.
When users went to X to vent their frustrations about the rate limit, Opera GX focused on finding a solution. They found a fix and patched it into the browser to bypass the cap. They were also able to roll the update to the mobile version.
You can use OperaGX only for X if you don’t want to switch to a new browser.
Ensure Your Posts Don’t Come off as Spam With TweetDelete
Next time you see the rate limit message on your device, you know how to fix this issue. Always check if everything is okay with X before trying the other solutions.
If you get anywhere close to the platform’s tweets cap, it can work against your favor. People don’t want to see hundreds of posts from the same account all over their feeds. Users won’t like going through your content, even if there is invaluable information in them. Similarly, people can mark your posts as spam or, worse — mute or block your account.
People tend to come close to X’s limit, mainly when they use AI tweet generators. However, with TweetDelete, you can ensure your posts don’t overwhelm users’ feeds.
With the bulk-delete tweets utility, you can remove thousands of posts in one go. The auto-delete task is also handy for periodically removing specific posts in the background.
Due to its custom filter, you can locate any post on your profile page.
Even if you’re close to the Twitter rate limit exceeded message, you can still delete hundreds of posts. This way, people won’t see too many tweets from your account in a single day.
Use TweetDelete today to manage your Twitter account’s posts and likes like a professional!
