How do I get a Twitter account's follower count without the official API?

You have a spreadsheet of 300 X handles, creators you might sponsor, and you want them sorted by followers before Monday's meeting. X account profile takes a handle, with or without the @, and returns the numbers on the profile page as clean fields. Old Stack Overflow answers suggest no-token tricks such as reading the profile page or a widget URL. Most of them stopped working once X locked down logged-out access, so expect them to fail.

Fields you get

Field	Meaning
followers	follower count
following	accounts it follows
posts	total posts, replies and reposts included
likes	posts it has liked, when available
verified	blue or legacy verification
bio, name, avatar_url, url	profile basics

With view=full you also get ext.created_at, ext.location, ext.media_count and ext.verified_type.

From a CSV of handles to a ranked list

import csv, os, requests

API = "https://api.okdata.online/v1"
H = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['OKDATA_API_KEY']}"}

rows = []
for handle in [r[0] for r in csv.reader(open("handles.csv")) if r]:
    body = requests.get(f"{API}/x/users/get", headers=H,
                        params={"username": handle, "view": "full"}, timeout=60).json()
    if body["code"] != "ok":
        rows.append([handle, body["code"]])  # not_found: renamed, suspended or never existed
        continue
    u = body["data"]["item"]
    rows.append([u["username"], u["followers"], u["following"], u["posts"], u["verified"], u["ext"]["created_at"]])

found = sorted((r for r in rows if len(r) > 2), key=lambda r: r[1] or 0, reverse=True)
with open("ranked.csv", "w", newline="", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    csv.writer(f).writerows(found + [r for r in rows if len(r) == 2])

Cost

Job	Calls	Cost
One account	1	$0.001
300 accounts	300	$0.30
300 accounts weekly for 13 weeks	3,900	$3.90

A handle that does not exist returns not_found and is not charged.

Things to know

• The count is a snapshot. To show growth, store each run with its date; X does not offer follower history.
• Handles change. If a creator renames, the old handle returns not_found, so keep the account id from the first lookup as your stable key.
• Follower lists (who follows whom) are not in the catalog, only the totals.
• Suspended accounts return not_found too, which is itself a useful flag when you vet creators.

Other ways

X's official API returns the same counts in a user's public metrics, at $0.010 per user read under pay-per-use. Pick it if you already have a developer account or need follower lists. For a handful of accounts, opening the profiles by hand is free. For creator shortlists across platforms, see the creator discovery guide.