(Photo by Harun Ozalp/Anadolu Agency via Getty Image)
The option to view Twitter/X without ads is finally here, but it’ll cost you $16 per month.
The company rolled out two more subscription tiers on top of the existing Premium option, which costs $8 or $11 per month, depending on how you subscribe.
The new “Premium+” tier requires you to pay at least double, or $168 per year. But in return, it’ll entirely remove ads on the For You and Following timelines, according to a support page. (In contrast, the regular Premium tier reduces the ad load by about 50%.)
Subscribers on Premium+ also get a larger visibility “boost” for their replies on the platform. In addition, Elon Musk's company says the Premium+ tier will also offer access to the “full suite” of creator tools the company is working on.
The other tier Twitter/X is launching is called “Basic,” which will cost users $3 per month. The subscription plan offers most of the features already found in the $8-per-month Premium tier, including the ability to edit posts and publish longer tweets, along with a "small reply boost." But Basic subscribers won’t get a verified blue checkmark or fewer ads. Nor will they get access to any creator tools, including revenue-sharing with Twitter for posting viral tweets.
Twitter/X is first rolling out access to the Premium+ and Basic+ tiers to web users.
(Twitter)The new subscription tiers represent Musk’s latest effort to squeeze out more revenue from the social media platform, which has reportedly struggled to hold on to users and advertisers since his takeover a year ago. Earlier this month, the company said it would even begin charging new sign-ups in New Zealand and the Philippines $1 per year to tweet as part of an experimental effort to stop bots.
Premium+ is poised to appeal to users looking to expand their reach on the platform. However, critics have criticized Twitter for selling access to the verified blue checkmark. Last week, a report from NewsGuard found that a large portion of the most popular Israel-Hamas war misinformation on Twitter comes from verified accounts.
Nonetheless, CEO Linda Yaccarino published a blog post yesterday extolling the various accomplishments Twitter has made over the past year.
“Since mid-May, all major [ad] agencies have reversed their pause guidance against advertising on X,” she added. “Last quarter alone over 1,700 advertisers returned to X, from small businesses to major brands—including 90 of the top 100 ad spenders from a year ago.”