Terms of Use

This a brief summary highlighting the themes of our Developer Policy and Agreement. This is just a highlight brief, and is not intended to be a substitute for reading the terms of service in its entirety. A developer is still responsible for understanding and abiding by the Developer Policy and Agreement, but we’re hoping that this supplemental document will help make those rules easier to digest. This document will be updated as the platform continues to evolve.

• If you’re rendering Tweets, be sure you’re following our Display Requirements. Don’t add or remove functionality from Tweets, change Tweet actions to other verbs, etc.
• If you’re going to need more than 1 million tokens, come and talk with us.
• Apps replicating Twitter’s core user experience (what we’ve called “traditional Twitter clients”) are discouraged and have a ceiling of 100,000 users, among other restrictions. Be sure to read the applicable TOS clauses carefully if you’re considering building such an app.
• Never surprise users. If your app Tweets for a user, or performs actions like unfollow, a user should initiate this - not be ambushed by it.
• Don’t resyndicate data. If your service consumes Twitter data, don’t take that data and expose it via an API, post it to other cloud services, and so on.
• Avoid spammy automation. If you really feel that this is a compelling, non-spammy function of your app then be sure to thoroughly read our Automation Rules.
• Respect a user’s privacy and sharing settings. Don’t facilitate or encourage the publishing of private or confidential information.
• Don’t try to circumvent rate limits. Rules are rules, please follow them accordingly.
• If you display ads, make sure there is a clear separation and distinction between the advertisement and Twitter content.
• Register one API key for your application. Don’t use a single API key for multiple use cases, and don’t register multiple keys for the same use case.