Get Twitter API Keys and Tokens

A short and sweet guide to getting data from Twitter.

Kim Te
2 min readJan 15, 2021

First of all, you can start with the Twitter API documentation which is quite robust. This article is meant to provide an easy step-by-step guide to quickly get Twitter API Consumer Keys and Authentication Tokens.

Create a Twitter Account

If you don’t already have a Twitter account, create one here. This part should be self-explanatory.

Apply for Twitter API Access

After logging in, navigate to the Twitter Developer Portal and apply for access

You’ll be asked a series of questions regarding your intended use. Below is an example of my access request.

Create a Twitter Developer App

After your application is approved, create a Twitter Developer App. This app will provide access to the Twitter APIs and will enable you to generate keys and tokens so you can make requests to the Twitter API. You should see the screen below to name your App.

Pick a name, any name!

Get your API Keys and Auth Tokens

Navigate to the App that you just create and you will see a button to “View Keys”. Clicking on the “View Keys” button should show your API Key and Secret. Store that in a secure place because they are eventually permanently hidden by Twitter, as you can see in the notification in the screenshot below.

If you are following my Twitter to Snowflake project, you will need the below information:

  • API Key
  • API Secret
  • Access Token
  • Access Token Secret

That means that the API Key and API Secret are insufficient on their own so be sure to generate and securely store the Authentication Tokens.

That’s it for now! If you want to continue with loading data from the Twitter API to a sample data model, feel free to take a look at my Twitter to Snowflake project.

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Kim Te

I am a big data lover by day and a serial hobbyist by night.