Like most of you, I use X (formerly Twitter) for free. But in an attempt to generate more money, platform owner Elon Musk dangles three paid subscription tiers that kick in more features. With a monthly or annual subscription, users of X Basic, X Premium, and X Premium+ can create longer posts, edit recent posts, format text, upload longer videos, bookmark folders, set custom app icons, and much more. But are any of these features worth the price?
I took the platform’s Premium tier for a test drive to show you how to sign up for a paid account. I’ll also break down what comes with each tier and what you can do with these additional features. Once you know what you’re getting, then you can decide if you want to pay up.
What Is X Basic?
X Basic is the entry-level paid tier. Priced at $3 per month or $32 per year, X Basic offers the following benefits over the free version:
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Edit a Post: You have one hour to modify a published post or quote (not replies of reposts). You can edit the text, tag someone, and reorder any attached media.
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Longer Posts: Free X users are limited to 280 characters, but that’s upped to 25,000 characters with X Basic.
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Format Your Posts: You can make the text in a post stand out by applying bold or italics formatting.
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Upload Longer Videos: On the X website and iOS app, you can upload videos as lengthy as three hours and as big as 8GB.
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Download Videos: You’re able to download videos that have been posted on X.
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Create a Community: You can create a community to connect with people who have similar interests.
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Higher Usage Limits on Grok: The AI is available to everyone, including free X users, but X Basic subscribers get higher usage limits.
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Bookmark Folders: You can bookmark and organize your favorite posts into folders, with no limit as to the number of folders and bookmarks.
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Custom App Icons: You can modify the look of the X app icon on your mobile device.
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Receive Reply Prioritization: Your replies to other posts are prioritized over those of non-subscribers.
What Is X Premium?
X Premium is the mid-level paid tier. At $8 per month or $84 per year, X Premium offers all the benefits included with a Basic account and adds the following:
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Get Paid to Post: You can get a cut of the ad revenue generated based on the number of replies to your posts.
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Set Up a Creator Subscription. You can set up monthly Creator subscriptions and receive a chunk of the revenue that X earns from your top followers.
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Access Media Studio. With Media Studio, you’re able to manage and measure the popularity of the content you post on X.
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X Pro Access. With access to the X Pro site, you can juggle multiple timelines and accounts from one single screen.
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Greater Access to Grok: X Premium increases Grok’s usage limits even higher.
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Fewer ads: You’re subjected to half the ads that non-subscribers and Basic subscribers will see.
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Premium gifting: You can give someone a gift of an X Premium or Premium+ subscription.
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Verification: Your account gets a checkmark next to your name. However, you can opt to hide the checkmark if you don’t want people knowing you pay for X.
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Receive Higher Reply Prioritization: Your replies to other posts are prioritized even higher than with a Basic subscription.
What Is X Premium+?
X Premium+ is the highest level of the paid tiers. Priced at $40 per month or $395 per year, Premium+ includes all the features in Basic and Premium, and kicks in the following:
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No Ads: No ads will pop up to annoy you.
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Write Articles: You can write and publish long, formatted articles directly on the X website.
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Even Greater Access to Grok: Even higher usage limits and access to special Grok features and tools.
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Access to Radar: With Radar, you can monitor keywords, track conversations, and stay on top of trends that interest you.
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Receive the Highest Reply Prioritization. Your replies to other posts are prioritized higher than with a Basic or Premium subscription.
For anyone interested in Grok, X also unveiled a SuperGrok subscription alongside the release of Grok 3. Priced at $30 a month or $300 a year, this plan offers higher limits for Grok and DeepSearch queries, image generation, and other tools.
How to Sign Up for a Paid X Account
To sign up for one of the paid tiers, I opened the X website on my desktop—because it’s more expensive on mobile—and clicked Subscribe under the Subscribe to Premium heading on the right. Since I’m signing up for a personal account, I chose I am an individual, but someone signing up for a verified organization would want to choose I am an organization.
I then clicked the Subscribe button to view my tier and payment choices. I noticed that X shows you to the Premium+ tier by default, hoping to get the most money out of you. But you can click the left and right arrow at the top to cycle through the three different paid subscriptions. You’ll also be able to choose between an annual and monthly plan. I chose the $84 Premium tier, billed annually, which amounts to a 12% saving if charged monthly.
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I clicked Subscribe & Pay, entered my credit card information, and hit Subscribe to officially sign up. I was told that it would take some time for my account to be reviewed before being granted the checkmark. You can periodically check the X Premium settings to see your status. However, I found that I could immediately take advantage of all the other benefits.
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Edit a Post
As a paid subscriber, I can now make a limited number of changes to my posts or quotes of another post (quote tweet) after sending it, but only for an hour. To do this, I’d need to select the three-dot icon on a tweet, then choose Edit post. X gives me the option to change the text, tag someone, or modify the attached media. Once I hit Update, the changes will go live.
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Undo a Post
X lets you go even further by unpublishing a post entirely. After I submit a post, a countdown appears. To stop the post in its tracks, I can hit the Undo button. I can then revise the text and choose Post to publish it again, or delete it completely.
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I also have the option to change some of the settings for this feature. Click Premium, open the gear icon, and select Undo Post, and I can enable or disable it for different kinds of posts. Under Post Undo period, I can change the interval to determine how long a post will be available to undo before it goes live.
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(Credit: PCMag / X)
Download a Video
As a subscriber, I can download any video on the platform, as long as downloading hasn’t been disabled by the account that posted it. To try this at the X website, I clicked the gear icon for a video I found and selected Download video. I right-clicked on the full screen of the video, hit Save Video As, then just chose a name and location to store the video as an MP4 file.
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Format a Post
This is an easy one: I can select the text in the post that I want to format, then choose the bold or italics icon to format it how I want.
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Organize Saved Posts Into Folders
To organize my favorite posts into folders, I can select the Bookmarks option on the left. I’ll need to make a new folder, so I clicked the New folder button, added a name for the folder—”PCMag Stories” in this case—and then hit Create.
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Now, when I find a post I want to save to a folder, all I have to do is click its Share icon, select Bookmark to Folder from the menu, and choose the folder. You’ll also be able to create a new folder from here.
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If I want to view all my bookmarked posts, I can click Bookmarks on the left and then select the appropriate folder. You’ll see that the posts will be shown in the format of a normal feed.
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Customize the X App
When you’re a subscriber, like I am now, you can customize the X app on your phone in a number of ways. I can do this by tapping my profile icon (or selecting the More icon on an iPad), then going to Premium > Preferences > Extras.
By picking Custom navigation, I can choose up to six icons (including the Home icon) to place on the navigation bar. I don’t plan to use Space or Grok, so I removed them in the navigation bar and will instead use Explore, Notifications, Messages, Bookmarks, and Profile.
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I can also change the overall color theme for the X app, under the Theme option. It lets me pick between six different color themes. Instead of the default blue, I chose red here.
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To change the icon the app uses on your phone’s Home screen, you’d select the App icons option, then choose the icon you wish to use going forward. I picked an icon that uses a blue and purple background.
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View Top Articles on X
As a Premium subscriber, I can see the most shared articles from the people I follow and the people that they follow. To see this, I’ll choose Premium > Top Articles from the Quick Access section. Here, I can switch between the people I follow and the people they follow. There’s also a toggle in the top-right corner to change the timeframe to the last hour, two hours, four hours, eight hours, or 24 hours.
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View Threads in Reader Mode
On X, a thread is typically multiple tweets tied together, since non-subscribers can’t squeeze their entire message into a single 280-character post. To read a thread more easily in the mobile app, Premium subscribers like me can tap the Reader icon at the top of a thread. The tweets then appear on a single screen, with all the distracting parts of the interface removed.
I found that I can modify the text size in Reader mode from the X settings menu. I need to select my profile icon (or tap the More icon on an iPad), then go to Premium > Preferences > A better news reading experience. Choose Reader and change the text size to small, medium, or large—I went with Large.
(Credit: PCMag / X)
About Lance Whitney
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