Of the nine social platforms compared here, X is the one whose economics changed most quietly. Free reach on X, the number of people who see a post from an unpaid account, has collapsed to almost nothing. A post on X loses half its engagement in about 43 minutes. Posts on X that contain links also got far less engagement than plain text posts. Paying for an X subscription lifts a post's reach roughly tenfold, but from a very low base. The full comparison table puts all nine platforms side by side.
X is now pay-to-reach and a free account hits a wall
- About half of what people see on X comes from accounts they do not follow, so X does still show posts to people who do not follow the account.
- A free X account gets under 100 median impressions per post, a Premium account about 600 and Premium+ over 1,550. Buffer, a social media scheduling company, measured 18.8 million X posts from 2024 to 2025.
- By March 2025 the median engagement rate for a free X account had fallen to 0%.
- A post on X loses half its engagement in about 43 minutes, against roughly 48 hours on TikTok and months on YouTube.
- Of all the visits that social media sends to outside websites, X now sends only about 1.2%, and that share keeps falling.
On X, how many people see a post now depends on whether its account pays for a subscription, not on whether the post is the best one.
X gives nearly all its reach to accounts that are already big and already paying
X still says the best post gets the most reach, but X's own ranking code says otherwise.
- X's own open-sourced ranking code confirms paid verified status as a positive ranking signal, so X actively ranks a free account lower rather than merely giving it no boost.
- X paid creators about $415 million in 2025, up from $260 million in 2024, and most of that creator money goes to the largest accounts.
- A 100-follower account can still reach a million views on TikTok, but on X it mostly cannot, because on X the way to more reach is paying for a subscription rather than writing a better post.
X Premium at about $8 a month is the only tier worth buying
Reach on X costs only a few dollars a month, but X's subscription tiers are not priced in line with the reach they buy.
| Tier | Price / month (web) | Boost X promises | Reach you actually get (median impressions per post) | Worth it for a small brand? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | None | Under 100 | No |
| X Basic | ~$3 | Slight reply boost | Barely above free in the data | No, buys features, not reach |
| X Premium | ~$8 | Larger reply boost, blue check | ~600, about 10x free | Yes, the minimum tier that moves reach |
| X Premium+ | ~$40 | Largest boost, ad-free, Grok | 1,550+, roughly 2x Premium | Only if you live on X |
| Premium Business | ~$200 (full tier ~$1,000) | No extra reach claim, gold check | No public data it out-reaches Premium+ | No, not for reach |
The X subscription prices above are web rates in USD in 2026. In-app and Australian prices for X subscriptions run higher, at roughly AUD $6, AUD $13 and AUD $35 or more a month. The reach figures above are median impressions per post from Buffer's study of 18.8 million X posts.
- Skip X Basic, which barely beats a free account on reach.
- X Premium at about $8 a month is the tier that works, at roughly ten times a free account's reach.
- X Premium+ at about $40 a month costs five times as much as X Premium for roughly double Premium's reach.
- X's business tiers, at $200 a month or more, promise no extra reach.
- Even at the top tier a Premium+ post reaches about 1,550 people, against 2,000 to 4,000 for one post in a 10,000-member Facebook Group.
Paying for X Premium cannot buy you the reach that a large account already has
Paying for an X subscription does not give a small account the reach of an account that many people already follow.
- An X subscription multiplies the reach you get from the followers you already have, but cannot give you new followers, so a typical Premium+ post on X stays near 1,550 impressions however good it is.
- The average post on X gets 2,711 impressions, measured by Metricool, a social media analytics company, across 1,123,528 posts, so a typical post from X's top paid tier, Premium+, gets fewer impressions than the average X post.
- Metricool's figure of 2,711 impressions is an average across all X accounts, pulled up by large accounts, while Buffer's 1,550 is the median for Premium+ accounts.
- Buffer's finding that X Premium accounts get about ten times a free account's reach compares two groups of accounts rather than one account before and after it subscribed. Buffer says X Premium accounts might have larger audiences, but that follower count alone does not explain the gap in reach.
- A free X account with a few thousand real followers already reaches 500 to 5,000 people per post, which overlaps the reach of a typical Premium+ post without paying anything.
Use Repeat Recorder to rehearse a video post X will not bury
Posts with links got far less engagement on X than plain posts, even from paying accounts, so what still works on X is content posted directly on X, which increasingly means talking to a camera. Repeat Recorder, one of my own apps, records you and plays the take straight back without you touching the phone.
- Repeat Recorder replays each take automatically and then starts recording again, so you can run the same opening sentence twenty times without picking the phone up.
- A post on X loses half its engagement in about 43 minutes, so a video posted on X has to be right the moment it is posted rather than fixed afterwards.
- In Repeat Recorder, takes worth keeping go into favourites and into folders you name yourself, dragged into whatever order you want.
Link posts get little engagement on X, so X is a weak bet for driving clicks
Posts on X that link to outside websites got far less engagement than plain posts. X's audience is also shrinking.
- A link post from a regular X account had fallen to 0% median engagement by March 2025, against about 0.25% for a plain text post. Even a Premium X account's link posts got only 0.28% median engagement, against 0.90% for its plain text posts.
- X's owner Elon Musk said on 29 July 2026 that X had not penalised posts with links "for over a year". PPC Land, an advertising news site, reported what Musk said.
- Put the link in the X post itself, because Nikita Bier, X's head of product, said on 28 July 2026 that links no longer need to go in a reply. In November 2024, Musk had told the investor Paul Graham to "just write a description in the main post and put the link in the reply".
- X's mobile daily active users fell about 13% in a year, to 128.8 million in October 2025.
- X is still worth using for brands selling to other businesses, and for tech, finance and news, where journalists, founders, investors and developers lead the discussion on X.
- A brand selling to the general public that wants clicks to its own website should skip X entirely.
Use Camera to Clipboard to post a photo instead of a link
Sharing your work in progress on X, known as "building in public", works best as a photo of what you made rather than a link to it. Camera to Clipboard, another of my own apps, moves a photo from your phone to your computer in one step.
- A photo you take inside Camera to Clipboard is ready to paste on your computer the moment you take it. Camera to Clipboard works over your own local network, with no cable and no upload.
- On X, a post with a photo is the version of a post that people actually see, because link posts from regular X accounts had fallen to roughly 0% median engagement by March 2025.
- Camera to Clipboard can send several photos at once from the phone's library, so a week of work-in-progress photos moves to your computer in one batch.
Conclusion: X is worth growing only if you pay for Premium
On X, how many people see a post depends on paying for a subscription, so the real question is whether to pay for one.
- How many people see a post on X follows the subscription you pay for rather than the quality of the post.
- Paying for X Premium cannot buy the reach a large X account already has, because a subscription multiplies the reach of your followers rather than giving you new ones.
- A free X account gets under 100 impressions on a typical post, and a typical X Premium post gets about ten times as many.
- Pay about $8 a month for X Premium or leave X alone, and skip both Basic and Premium+.
- Skip X if your goal is clicks to your own site, since link posts from regular X accounts had fallen to roughly 0% median engagement by March 2025.
- X is still worth paying for if you want founders, investors, journalists and developers to recognise your name.
- Put links in the X post itself, because X says it no longer cuts the reach of posts with links.