 <p>Can it be simply because call to rate_limit_status.json also counts? What if you do </p> <pre><code>client.search("baeza") client.search("baeza") client.search("baeza") puts Twitter::REST::Request.new(client, :get, 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/application/rate_limit_status.json', resources: "search").perform </code></pre> <p>Will it return 176? </p> <p><em>Update</em> - call to rate_limit_status should <em>not</em> affect limits, but would be interesting to see the outcome of the suggested calls anyway.</p> <p><em>Update 2</em></p> <p>Gem fetches only first page by default, no matter of results count. Getting next page(s) is under your control. See <a href="https://github.com/sferik/twitter/blob/77238b540edfbc76aa2f25bc4398c3dad8f55edb/lib/twitter/search_results.rb#L50" rel="nofollow">here</a> - fetch_next_page is private method, called by "each" method of enumerator <a href="https://github.com/sferik/twitter/blob/77238b540edfbc76aa2f25bc4398c3dad8f55edb/lib/twitter/enumerable.rb#L13" rel="nofollow">here</a> - so if you start iterating over search results and pass through all first page results. When you just made a request (called search) - it only fetches first page (one query).</p> <p>Also, gem sets count parameter for API search request to 100 (max allowed) if not specified by default - <a href="https://github.com/sferik/twitter/blob/77238b540edfbc76aa2f25bc4398c3dad8f55edb/lib/twitter/rest/search.rb#L7" rel="nofollow">here</a> for constant and <a href="https://github.com/sferik/twitter/blob/77238b540edfbc76aa2f25bc4398c3dad8f55edb/lib/twitter/rest/search.rb#L31" rel="nofollow">here</a> for setting it </p>