Nothing new. It has been prohibitively expensive and cumbersome to get Twitter data for years, even for research as an Institution.
I've literally got the email right here: "As I mentioned on the phone, we structure them as a monthly subscription based on an annual agreement. Variables that affect pricing are the APIs you use to get data and the amount of data you consume each month. Our smallest packages fall between $5,000-$8,000 per month."
The price they quoted me, over the phone, was 6k. Doesn't mean we took it (we didn't) but that was what they were asking for. I know others that were paying 5k/mo.
And I know others who still had free accounts from way back in the day. Everyone is being swept up now.
Of course if you paid the full firehose, it would be much more expensive