X ranker and X Premium: what is confirmed¶
Everything here comes from X's own code or help pages, checked 2026-10-11. X changes both often; re-check before you quote a number publicly.
The For You ranker¶
Source: xai-org/x-algorithm (Apache-2.0).
How a feed is built (README, Overview and Scoring and Ranking):
- Candidates come from accounts the viewer follows (Thunder) and from accounts they don't (Phoenix retrieval,
SimClusters, a shared popular-posts list). Both are ranked by the same model.
- The model reads the viewer's recent engagement history and predicts a probability for each action.
Final Score = ฮฃ (weight ร P(action)).
- The README warns: weights multiply the predicted probability for that viewer, not raw counts. "1 report cancels
468 likes" is the wrong reading.
Default weights in home-mixer/params/param.rs (the README notes production may run different values via
experiments):
| Action | Weight |
|---|---|
| Share via copy link | 20.0 |
| Reply ยท quote ยท share via DM | 5.0 ยท 5.0 ยท 5.0 |
| Bidirectional-follow reply boost | 15.0 |
| Follow author | 4.0 |
| Share | 2.0 |
| Retweet | 1.0 |
| Favorite (like) | 0.5 |
| Click dwell time (continuous) | 0.4 |
| Click ยท open link | 0.3 ยท 0.2 |
| Video open ยท photo expand ยท dwell | 0.07 ยท 0.05 ยท 0.05 |
| Profile click ยท video quality view | 0.0 ยท 0.0 |
| Not dwelled | โ0.02 |
| Block author ยท not interested ยท mute author | โ31.2 ยท โ47.52 ยท โ58.8 |
| Report | โ234.0 |
Adjustments after scoring: author diversity (each extra post by the same author is multiplied by a decaying factor down to a floor); out-of-network discount (posts from accounts the viewer doesn't follow, and replies/reposts from accounts they do, get a factor below 1); new-author boost (authors under an impressions threshold are lifted toward a target position).
Filters that matter to a poster: posts older than 48 hours are removed (AgeFilter); already-seen posts are
removed; for new accounts, out-of-network posts below an engagement threshold are removed
(NewUserMinEngagementFilter); a visibility-filtering layer can drop posts using labels from spam/inauthenticity
models. The Under the Hood tool (README) shows aggregate labels on your account and posts that can limit reach.
What this does not tell you: the production values of every experiment, or anything about Premium boosting ranking in For You. Don't claim either.
X Premium¶
Source: About X Premium.
| Tier | US price (web) | Features that matter for growth |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $3/mo ยท $32/yr | Edit post (1 hour), longer posts (up to 25,000 characters), longer video, reply prioritization, text formatting, bookmark folders, create a Community |
| Premium | $8/mo ยท $84/yr | All Basic + blue checkmark (after review), larger reply prioritization, ~50% fewer ads, Media Studio, apply for Creator Subscriptions and Original Content Rewards, ID verification |
| Premium+ | $40/mo ยท $395/yr | All Premium + largest reply prioritization, no ads in most places, Radar Search, X Pro, SuperGrok |
Articles: listed under Premium+ on the help page when it was checked, but X opened them to all Premium tiers on 2026-01-07 (X Creators); check your own composer.
Notes from the same page: prices are local and change; changing your photo, display name or @handle removes the checkmark until it's reviewed again; Original Content Rewards pay on qualified impressions from Premium users; Creator Subscriptions have their own eligibility rules (see the Monetization tab in the app).
Third-party studies claim Premium accounts get much more reach. They are not X data and mix cause and effect (people who pay also post more); treat them as unproven.
How to use these facts day to day: docs/03-how-x-ranks-posts.md and the 30-day Premium plan.