X has rolled out a rebuilt Livestream API that lets authorized third-party applications and services create and manage live video broadcasts on the platform, covering everything from stream ingestion to chat moderation, according to X’s developer documentation.

The API gives third-party developers control over the full broadcast lifecycle. It manages persistent RTMP/RTMPS stream sources, which function as reusable ingest points tied to an encoder. From there, developers can create, publish, monitor, and end broadcasts. A companion Livestream Scheduling API allows one-time or recurring scheduled broadcasts, which can either publish automatically at a set start time or wait for an explicit go-live request triggered through the API.

The update also extends to live chat. Third-party tools can read chat activity through X’s Activity API, send messages into a live broadcast’s chat, and moderate that chat by removing messages and muting users.

Access is restricted to approved third-party tools. Developers must submit X’s Livestream API Access Form for review before building against the endpoints, and authentication runs through user-context methods, with read and write permissions scoped separately.

Built for Production Workflows, Not Solo Creators

The API’s design points toward broadcast software vendors, production teams, and media operators rather than individual creators managing their own streams. A scheduled broadcast requires an existing livestream source, and updates to a scheduled broadcast are full replacements: developers must resend every field they want to keep, since omitted optional settings can be cleared, according to the documentation.

Social Media Today, which first reported the update, described the API as having been “rebuilt from the ground up,” with expanded scheduling and moderation functionality that lets creators go live using various streaming providers and manage chat without leaving that third-party tool.

The release follows X’s July rollout of Live Studio, a livestreaming command center built into Creator Studio. That launch came with a $1 million fund X said it would use to reward creators who go live during the following cycle. Live Studio let creators schedule broadcasts, restrict viewership to specific audience segments, and see concurrent viewer counts and viewer countries once live. Access to livestreaming on X has remained tied to X Premium subscriptions.

Where Live Studio addressed the creator-facing side of running a broadcast, the rebuilt Livestream API addresses the developer-facing side, giving external platforms the infrastructure to plug X into broadcast operations that may already span multiple destinations.

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