Twitter MCP server for Claude without an X API key

Ask Claude what @NASA posted this week and it comes back empty. x.com answers its web fetch with “HTTP 402 Payment Required”, and a web search finds NASA’s news pages but none of the posts. To read X, Claude needs a tool for it, and that’s what a Twitter MCP server is.

LurkAPI’s is one URL. Add https://api.lurkapi.com/mcp?platforms=twitter as a connector and Claude can read any public account’s tweets with their likes and views, and its profile with exact follower counts. You don’t need an X developer app or an X login: you sign in to LurkAPI, and each call is 1 credit.

Add it with one URL, no X developer app

In claude.ai or Claude Desktop:

1. Open Connectors in your settings and choose Add custom connector.
2. Name it LurkAPI, paste the URL and click Add.
3. Click Connect and sign in on lurkapi.com with Google or an email code. A new account starts with 100 free credits, and a lower balance tops back up to 25 every day.
4. In a chat, switch LurkAPI on from the tools menu and ask away.

In Claude Code, add it from a terminal, then run /mcp to sign in. Keep the quotes: zsh reads a bare ? as a file pattern.

claude mcp add --transport http lurkapi "https://api.lurkapi.com/mcp?platforms=twitter"

Cursor takes the same URL in ~/.cursor/mcp.json, with a key from your dashboard:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "lurkapi": {
      "url": "https://api.lurkapi.com/mcp?platforms=twitter",
      "headers": { "x-api-key": "${env:LURK_KEY}" }
    }
  }
}

ChatGPT adds it as a custom app in developer mode (Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu): give it the URL, choose OAuth and sign in the same way. Whichever app you use, ?platforms=twitter keeps the list to the three X tools and a free balance check. Leave it off and you get a tool for every endpoint on all 16 platforms we cover (connection guide).

Claude skips the repost a script would rank first

Claude read NASA’s timeline with twitter_user_tweets, passed the cursor back for a second page, and ranked the week from 40 tweets.

It also left one post out. NASA had retweeted the White House that week, and a retweet comes back carrying the original post’s counts: 49,940 likes, more than six times NASA’s best. Claude set it aside as “the White House’s post, not NASA’s”. Sort that timeline by likes in a script and the retweet comes first. If you rank posts yourself, drop the ones that have a retweeted_tweet.

Every tool is also a REST endpoint, so a script gets the same data:

curl -G "https://api.lurkapi.com/v1/twitter/tweet" \
  --data-urlencode "url=https://x.com/NASA/status/2108285056170996122" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LURK_KEY"

Agents fan out, and X bills every post

Asked for other posts about the Crew-12 splashdown, Claude didn’t stop at NASA. It picked the six accounts at the center of the story (SpaceX, the space station, ESA and three of the crew) and read all six timelines at once, without asking first. SpaceX’s “Splashdown of Dragon confirmed!” came out on top at 18,686 likes, about three times NASA’s own post.

X bills each post returned; LurkAPI bills each call. X’s API, and the MCP server it hosts, cost $0.005 each, so a page of 20 tweets is $0.10, the NASA week $0.20 and that one follow-up $0.605. A LurkAPI call returns about 20 tweets: 2 credits for the week and 6 credits for the follow-up, which is $0.0027 to $0.0054 at our pack prices. A free account’s daily top-up of 25 credits covers 25 pages, about 500 tweets a day.

Before a long run, Claude can check your balance with account_credit_balance, which is free.

Posting or searching all of X takes your own X keys

Posting and full-archive search need your own X app:

Servers that log in as you skip the X bill, and their own READMEs warn that your account can be restricted or banned. For one account’s tweets without Claude, the free Twitter viewer shows them with likes, reposts and views, 5 lookups a day without an account, and exports a CSV.