Free X (Twitter) analytics in 2026: what you can still see without paying

What X shows you for free

As of October 2026, X's Help Center describes four things you can see without a subscription:

• View counts on every post. Anyone on X can see them, on your posts and everyone else's. Anyone logged in who sees a post counts as a view, wherever they see it and whether or not they follow you, including you. Views are not all unique, embedded posts don't add to the count, and Community posts, X Circle posts and older posts have none (View counts).
• Your followers. The followers link on your profile shows how many people follow you and who they are, and by default X emails you when someone new follows you (Following FAQs).
• Professional Home. Switching to a Professional Account is free, and its Professional Home includes account analytics over the past 28 days. X says it is available on desktop and still being tested, so not everyone has it yet (Professional Accounts).
• Your data archive. The archive you can request in Settings comes in HTML and JSON and includes your posts, a list of your followers and a list of the accounts you follow (How to download your X archive).

What moved behind Premium

On 13 June 2024 X's @premium account posted: “Today, we're rolling out a new and improved analytics page. Upgrade to Premium to get daily insights into how your posts are performing.” Social Media Today reported the same day that analytics.twitter.com had started showing a prompt to sign up for Premium.

When we checked on 8 October 2026, analytics.x.com sent us to X's sign-in, on the way to x.com/i/account_analytics. The Help Center pages we read don't say which Premium tier includes that page, and another one still calls the post activity dashboard “a free service available to all X users who have an ads account and/or register at analytics.x.com” ( Common analytics discrepancies). The quickest way to know what your account gets is to open the page while signed in.

If you do pay, Premium on the web starts at $3 a month for Basic, $8 for Premium and $40 for Premium+, before tax and local pricing (X Premium FAQ). Media Studio, which has its own video analytics, is not included in Basic (About X Premium).

Followers over time: what X keeps, and a free way to track it

X shows your follower count and who follows you now. None of the help pages above, nor the archive's description, mention a dated history of who followed or left. A falling count isn't always an unfollow, either: X removes locked accounts from follower counts, and accounts hidden for spam or deactivated drop out of your list too (Following FAQs, Help with common following issues).

A free routine for a small account, no app needed:

1. Write your follower count down once a day, at the same time, in a spreadsheet. A week of rows is your first follower graph.
2. Request your X archive at the start of each month and keep each followers list. Comparing two of them shows who arrived and who is gone; our guide on who unfollowed you on X walks through it.
3. For each post, note its view count 48 hours after posting, next to your follower count that day. X's For You code stops considering posts older than 48 hours (see how the X algorithm works in 2026), which makes it a fair point to compare posts.

Which numbers matter for a small account

When a paid tool is worth it

If X's free numbers answer your questions, you don't need anything else. xInsightss Analytics is for when you want the routine above done for you:

• Five numbers side by side for 7, 14 or 28 days, each compared with the period before: net followers (gained minus lost), impressions, engagement rate, posts and the replies you sent.
• Every post judged over its first 48 hours against your follower count, so breakouts stand out.
• A heat map of median views by weekday and three-hour window, compared only once a window has five finished posts on three different days.
• Followers gained and lost from the day the follower watch starts, with who followed and who left.

On your first visit the app reads your posts from the last 28 days, so the charts start full. There is no free plan: Creator costs $19 a month and includes all analytics, and the 7-day Pro trial needs a card. What is free is the account check on our home page: no sign-up, it reads any public account's profile and its posts from the last 14 days, one new check per visitor every 30 days.

Questions