How to get the list of most followed twitter users

Question

I will like to know if its possible to retrieve a list of the most followed users (say top 20 users) on twitter through twitter's api. I cant see how to achieve that through any of the endpoints. How do web apps like this https://socialblade.com/twitter/ get that kind of data?

Any insights on this will be helpful.

Answer 1

There is no API for this. You would need to take an opinionated view of the high-volume celebrity accounts, and then watch the accounts by polling the user endpoints regularly. You could also use the commercial streaming APIs to watch the most Tweeted accounts and check the user objects on a regular basis.

(note that this is the same answer you were provided on the Twitter developer forums)