Explaining the Twitter Subscription Models 2024

The age-old rumor on Facebook is finally coming true, on X (formerly Twitter). I am sure most people reading this are familiar with the text meme that makes the rounds once a year or so on Facebook, it goes something like “starting on some date a few weeks away Facebook will begin charging to use the platform.” It goes on stating you can “opt out” by sharing the post and typing “I opt out” or some other arbitrary statement that clearly marks you as an unsavvy user. Well, Elon Musk apparently said, “Hold my beverage” and is doing it with X/Twitter. There are three tiers to the membership platform, each adding slightly more functionality to your experience, lots of it never offered on X/Twitter before.

Your Mileage May Vary with Subscription Packages
These are the three subscription packages currently available –

X Basic ($3 a month, $32 annually) will allow you to edit posts up to 30 minutes after sending it. You have a very small window to delete a post you wish to remove as well. Remember the 140-character limit of the old Twitter? I am not sure when they changed it to 280 characters but X Basic increases that to 25,000 characters. The days of quick reads on Twitter are gone apparently – wasn’t that one of the key selling points? No long-winded B.S. on the platform.

Videos can also be uploaded on the X.com website and via the iOS app as long as three hours and up to eight gigabytes in size. Interesting they are pushing longer videos here – advertisers love longer videos so that may be a driving force here.

Another interesting change – X Basic will allow users to simply download videos from the platform (their own and those posted by others). Most devices have a screen record option that is free.

Other perks of X Basic include Bookmark Folders, viewing top articles more easily, a Reader Mode, basic formatting of your text, and a few more.

One sticking point I see is “Reply Prioritization” which places your replies above those of non-subscribers of the platform. I can see this being a “complaint magnet”.

X Premium ($8 per month or $84 annually) is the mid-tier subscription. If you are a serious X/Twitter user and have a decent following, you may want to check this tier out. This is the first tier that will cut you in on the advertising revenue generated from your content. Slippery slope on this one but whatever.

Perks include Creator Subscriptions, Media Studio access (increased stats basically), X Pro Access (manage multiple accounts on one screen).

Stickler point on this one is a higher reply prioritization when commenting and *half* the ads X Basic or non-subscribers see. I can’t wait till someone challenges this for X/Twitter to prove that claim of *half* and how they will defend it.

Finally, we have X Premium+ ($16 per month or $168 annually) which gives you benefits from Basic and Premium coupled with more benefits.

Premium+ subscribers get Grok access (X’s AI chatbot), no ads, write full articles (don’t want people posting excerpts drawing users off the platform, do we?), and you get the highest reply prioritization available (until something like Premium+ Gold Leaf Edition or similar is announced).

I understand Musk and company are trying to recoup the massive investment in Twitter and turn a profit while at it but I think this may be a bad way to go.

Imagine if YouTube pulled something similar – only subscribers could edit videos, post videos over a certain length, post links in their descriptions, etc.

Honestly, the YouTube Premium model is nice, I have it because it does the one thing I desire most on the platform – getting rid of all the ads. That makes me want to use YouTube more than I would normally (i.e., if I had to sit through tons of ads). They are not locking basic things behind a paywall, nor are they locking monetization behind a subscription.

I am not sure how this is going to work out for Twitter, only time will tell. Let me know in the comments below, are you going to subscribe to Twitter? I only use it to promote my content. It used to be the platform to source news articles from, but those creators seem to have moved on.

Sign up for Twitter subscriptions just make sure to select the one you want as I believe it defaults to the most expensive plan.