Create Stream Source

Deprecated. POST /2/users/:user_id/sources creates a new persistent RTMPS ingest point. Use POST /2/sources instead; this route will be removed on January 1, 2027.

This route is deprecated and will be removed on January 1, 2027, after which it returns 404. Use Create a Source (POST /2/sources) instead. See the migration guide.

Creates a new RTMPS ingest point.

Endpoint: POST /2/users/:user_id/sources

Path parameters

Name	Type	Required	Description
user_id	string	Yes	Numeric X user ID of the broadcaster. Must match the authenticated token.

Request body

{
  "name": "My Primary Encoder",
  "region": "us-east-1"
}

Field	Type	Required	Description
name	string	Yes	Human-readable label for this source (for your own organization). Does not affect functionality.
region	string	No	Where to ingest. Use the value from /2/region. AWS-style region codes are accepted and mapped to the nearest X ingest location: us-west-1 and us-west-2 to the US West location; us-east-1, us-east-2, ca-central-1, sa-east-1, eu-west-1, eu-west-2, eu-west-3, eu-central-1, eu-north-1, ap-south-1, ap-northeast-1, ap-northeast-2, ap-southeast-1 and ap-southeast-2 to the US East location. If omitted, the source ingests in US West. Any other value returns 400.

Example request

curl -X POST "https://api.x.com/2/users/172483972/sources" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $USER_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"My Primary Encoder","region":"us-east-1"}'

Success response (200)

{
  "source": {
    "id": "YOUR_STREAM_KEY",
    "owner_id": 172483972,
    "name": "My Primary Encoder",
    "is360": false,
    "creation_time": 1772029802844,
    "rtmp_region": "us-east-1",
    "rtmp_url": "rtmps://a.live.x.com/x",
    "rtmps_url": "rtmps://a.live.x.com:443/x",
    "rtmp_stream_key": "YOUR_STREAM_KEY",
    "is_stream_active": false
  }
}

Notes

• On this route, id is the source’s stream key (rtmp_stream_key == id). Treat it as a secret: anyone with the key can stream to your source. The /2/sources routes identify the same source by a separate, non-secret source id instead; look it up with Get Sources.
• Both rtmp_url and rtmps_url are RTMPS (TLS) URLs. Configure your encoder with rtmps_url and rtmp_stream_key.
• rtmp_region is the region of the X ingest location serving the source (us-east-1 or us-west-2), which can differ from the region you requested (for example, eu-central-1 is served from us-east-1).
• is_stream_active is true while the source is receiving video from your encoder.
• owner_id is a JSON number, not a string — for real (19-digit) X user IDs it exceeds the safe-integer range of many languages (e.g. JavaScript) and loses precision when parsed normally. Do not rely on owner_id; use your authenticated numeric user id (or a broadcast’s twitter_user_id, which is a string).
• Sources don’t currently include recommended encoder settings (recommended_configuration), detected stream settings (stream_attributes) or compatibility_info.
• Sources created before October 31, 2026 can also include the classification fields video_service and creation_origin ({ value, name, original_name } objects) and their original ingest hostnames. You can safely ignore the classification fields.