Is X Premium worth it for a small account?
Only if you use the parts it actually changes. For a founder under 1,000 followers that means replying a lot, messaging people whose inboxes only accept verified accounts, or wanting the checkmark on your profile. It is not a reliable way to get your own posts seen. Here is how we would decide:
| Pay for it if | Skip it for now if |
|---|---|
| You reply to bigger accounts most days and want those replies placed higher | You post a few times a week and rarely reply |
| Buyers you want to reach only accept DMs from verified accounts | Your buyers aren't active on X |
| You will track impressions and profile visits for 30 days and cancel if nothing moves | You hope payouts will cover the cost |
| One customer from X would pay for a year of it | You haven't fixed your bio and pinned post yet |
The price, checked 24 October 2026: X's Premium help page lists Basic at $3 a month or $32 a year, Premium at $8 or $84, and Premium+ at $40 or $395 (US, web). Those tiers now apply to people who already subscribe: the help page says X Premium is part of The X Subscription and that its details still apply to existing subscribers. The pricing page for The X Subscription, updated 11 October 2026, says new self-serve customers choose from its plans: Plus at $8 a month or $80 a year, Premium at $30 a month. Its page for X Premium customers lists Plus's X benefits as a checkmark, creator tools and fewer ads, and doesn't say whether reply prioritisation is included. If you are subscribing for the first time, Plus is the $8 plan you would test.
What does X say Premium buys?
X promises better placement for replies, not more reach for posts. The Premium help page says people on X "will see a slight preference for replies from verified accounts over other replies", and that X is still testing how much it prioritises Premium subscribers in conversation rankings. Basic includes reply prioritisation, Premium larger reply prioritisation, Premium+ the largest. The page makes no promise about For You reach for original posts.
The features that matter for a founder doing outreach:
| Feature | Tier | Why a founder might care |
|---|---|---|
| Reply prioritisation | All tiers, larger on Premium and Premium+ | Your replies under bigger accounts sit higher |
| Blue checkmark | Premium and Premium+, after review | Lets you DM verified-only inboxes and reply to verified-only posts |
| Reply to verified-only posts | Premium and Premium+, once verified | Some posts limit replies to verified accounts |
| Edit posts, longer posts | All tiers | Fix a typo within an hour; write past 280 characters |
| Apply for Original Content Rewards | Premium and Premium+ | Payouts, once you meet the thresholds |
The DM point is easy to miss. X's Direct Messages help page says some accounts allow message requests only from verified users and people they follow, and you can message them only if your account is verified. If a list of buyers you want to reach has that setting on, the checkmark is the price of entry. Our guide to cold DMs on X, with limits and examples, covers what to send. If replies are your main tactic, our post on whether the reply-guy strategy still works covers what else decides how far they travel.
What did Buffer's 10x study actually measure?
It compared median posts from paying and non-paying accounts. It did not test what happens when the same account starts paying. Buffer's October 2025 analysis looked at 18.8 million posts from 71,000 X accounts between August 2024 and August 2025, about 27% of them on a Premium tier. Median reach per post:
| Account type | Median impressions per post (Buffer) |
|---|---|
| Free | Under 100 |
| Basic | A small lift above free |
| Premium | Close to 600 |
| Premium+ | Over 1,550 |
Four limits matter before you treat that as a promise. First, follower counts. Julian Winternheimer, the Buffer data scientist behind it, writes in a separate write-up that the gap "could partly be attributed to Premium accounts having larger follower bases". Buffer's article says follower size alone doesn't account for the difference, but neither page breaks the results down by follower count, so there is no figure for accounts under 1,000. Second, the sample. The query reads posts published through Buffer, so it covers posts people scheduled with Buffer, not everything those accounts posted. Third, the date. The data ends in August 2025, before the ranking changes X has published since, such as the July 2026 mutual-follow boost. Fourth, links: Buffer found link posts from free accounts had a median engagement rate of 0% from March 2025. Our post on whether X still penalises links checks newer data.
Some reviews still present the figure as something you buy. Neal Schaffer's X Premium review, for example, calls the 10x reach boost real. The study supports a narrower claim: paying accounts in Buffer's data got far more reach. It doesn't show how much of that gap the subscription caused.
What does X's open-source code say about the checkmark?
Less than the 10x headlines suggest. In the For You code X publishes, the ranking weights cover predicted actions only: replies, likes, reposts, follows, dwell time, mutes, reports and similar. None of them is a signal that the author is verified. The subscription tier field we found in the feed code describes the viewer, and is used for ads and logging.
We found two places outside the ranking weights where the code reads an author's checkmark. The first is user-cred-v2. The repository's README describes it as PageRank over the follow graph and engagement edges, turned into a per-account score, and lists it among the systems that produce labels for visibility filtering. Our reading of that file: the PageRank's restart weights blend a share spread evenly across verified accounts with a share based on engagement, half and half at the default setting. The second is the code that prepares each post for recommendation embeddings, which writes the author's checkmark and subscription tier into the text it encodes. Neither file says how much this changes reach.
This doesn't prove Premium has no effect on reach. The ranking model learns from engagement, X says reply rankings favour verified accounts, and the repository covers the For You feed, not every surface. It does mean you can't point to a line of code that multiplies a paying author's posts by ten.
What do small accounts report after paying?
Mixed results, and no consistent 10x. We read three r/Twitter threads where people asked this question, from May 2025, January 2026 and August 2026, with about 23, 22 and 25 comments when checked on 24 October 2026. Most comments argue about X's owner rather than share numbers. The ones with substance:
- In the January 2026 thread, which asked whether Premium brings a 10x jump, one commenter says that after subscribing with about 12 followers most posts got substantially more impressions. Another says there was no 10x jump, and a third says a recent upgrade was well worth it.
- In the August 2026 thread, the most specific reply says Premium boosts the visibility of replies, not original posts. That matches what X's help page promises.
- In the May 2025 thread, the poster had no payout after two months. One commenter pointed out the account didn't meet the verified-follower requirement.
Those are individual reports, not measurements. The payout disappointment has a clear cause, though. X's Original Content Rewards page requires 500 verified followers and 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users in 90 days, excluding impressions on replies. Most accounts under 1,000 followers are far from both. Our explainer on what X Original Content Rewards means for B2B founders covers the rules.
What does Premium cost per extra impression?
Under a dollar per 1,000 extra impressions in the best case, and more as the real lift shrinks. Our arithmetic below assumes one original post a day, so 30 posts a month, at the $8 monthly price. The best case gives you Buffer's whole median gap of about 500 impressions per post, which the study doesn't show Premium causes:
| If Premium adds this per post | Extra impressions a month | Cost per 1,000 extra |
|---|---|---|
| 500 (Buffer's whole median gap) | 15,000 | $0.53 |
| 100 (a fifth of the gap) | 3,000 | $2.67 |
| 0 (no lift for your account) | 0 | No return on reach |
If one customer is worth $50 a month to you, a year of Plus at $80 costs 1.6 months of that customer. Paying yearly saves $16 against twelve monthly payments of $8 on Plus, or $12 on the older Premium tier at $84 a year. If you plan to test first, pay monthly for the trial month.
How to test X Premium for 30 days
Record a baseline
Before paying, note 30 days of median impressions per post, impressions per reply, profile visits and new followers from X's analytics.
Keep your routine fixed
Post and reply at the same pace as the baseline month. If you double your output, you won't know what the checkmark did.
Use what you paid for
Reply daily to the accounts your buyers read, and message one or two buyers whose DMs accept only verified accounts.
Compare medians on day 30
Keep it if reply impressions or profile visits rose clearly, or if a verified-only DM started a real conversation. Cancel if not.
Note one limit while you test. X's limits page gives daily caps of 50 original posts and 200 replies for unverified accounts, and states no separate figure for verified ones. The page doesn't say what the cap is for verified accounts, so don't count on a higher one.
Paying for reach is one way to get in front of buyers on X; going to them directly is another. Siela's AI SDR for outreach on X and LinkedIn can find people on X by what their bio says, or by who posts about the keywords and competitors you track, and then write each DM from their profile and the signal that surfaced them.
Frequently asked questions
Does X Premium Basic increase reach?
Basic includes reply prioritisation, according to X's Premium help page, but not the checkmark. In Buffer's August 2024 to August 2025 data, Basic accounts saw only a small reach lift over free accounts, far below the Premium tier's median of about 600 impressions per post. If reach is the reason you are paying, Basic is the weakest test of it, and The X Subscription's docs say new customers start on its plans instead.
Is the blue check worth it just for DMs?
It can be. X's help page says some accounts accept message requests only from verified users and people they follow, and you can message them only if your account is verified. If several buyers you want to reach use that setting, the checkmark is the only way into their inbox short of getting them to follow you.
Can a small account earn money with X Premium?
Rarely. Original Content Rewards needs a qualifying subscription, at least 500 verified followers and 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users in the last 90 days, excluding impressions on replies. Payouts are based on qualified impressions from Premium users. Most accounts under 1,000 followers are far from both thresholds, so treat payouts as a later bonus, not a reason to subscribe.
Should I pay for X Premium monthly or yearly?
Monthly while you test. As of 24 October 2026, new subscribers get The X Subscription, where Plus costs $8 a month or $80 a year, so yearly saves $16 against twelve monthly payments. Existing X Premium subscribers pay $84 a year at the US web price, a $12 saving. Run a 30-day test with the same posting routine first, then switch to yearly only if the numbers moved.
What is The X Subscription, and does it replace X Premium?
It is a single plan covering X, Grok and Cursor. X's subscription docs, updated in October 2026, say new self-serve customers choose from its plans, while existing X Premium plans continue unless changed. Plus costs $8 a month and includes a checkmark, creator tools and fewer ads on X. Premium and higher plans include full X Premium+ benefits.
Sources
- X Help Center: About X Premium (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- The X Subscription docs: Pricing (updated 11 Oct 2026; checked 24 Oct 2026)
- The X Subscription docs: X Premium customers (updated 12 Oct 2026; checked 24 Oct 2026)
- The X Subscription docs: What is The X Subscription? (updated 12 Oct 2026; checked 24 Oct 2026)
- X Help Center: About Direct Messages (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- X Help Center: Original Content Rewards (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- X Help Center: About X limits (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Buffer: Does X Premium Really Boost Your Reach? An Analysis of 18M+ Posts (2 Oct 2025)
- Julian Winternheimer (Buffer data blog): Do X Premium Channels Get More Engagement? (21 Aug 2025)
- Neal Schaffer: X Premium Review (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- X algorithm repository: README (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- X algorithm repository: home-mixer/params/param.rs (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- X algorithm repository: user-cred-v2/UserCredV2App.scala (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- r/Twitter: Premium not worth it. (19 May 2025; about 23 comments when checked 24 Oct 2026)
- r/Twitter: Is Twitter (X) even worth it without Premium anymore? Looking for reach stats. (30 Jan 2026; about 22 comments when checked 24 Oct 2026)
- r/Twitter: Is twitter premium worth it? (21 Aug 2026; about 25 comments when checked 24 Oct 2026)
- X algorithm repository: grox/flows/mm_emb/renderer_v82.py (checked 24 Oct 2026)