Twitter/X has capped free accounts at 50 posts and 200 replies daily, pushing heavy users toward paid Premium subscriptions.

X is retiring Creator Revenue Sharing, which has paid people to post since 2023, and replacing it with the Original Content Rewards Program. @XCreators announced the change on 7 August 2026, with rules on the help pages for the new programme and the retiring one. Everyone re-applies, and approval is not automatic.

The dates

14 and 28 August: two ordinary payouts for current members.
7 September: Revenue Sharing ends.
On or around 11 September: a final payout for earnings to 7 September.
8 September: existing members can start applying, access rolled out gradually.
25 September: first payment for those who cross over.

X also lists 28 August as the new programme’s first payout, before existing members can apply. It appears already open to creators who were never in Revenue Sharing.

What gets paid

Earnings come from qualified impressions: unique views of your original post by an X Premium Basic, Premium, Premium+ or Premium Business subscriber, in the Home Timeline feed, with at least half the post visible. Repeat views from one account do not count twice, and paid, promoted, artificial and fraudulent impressions never count. Payouts stay fortnightly, $30 minimum.

X will not pay for content copied wholesale, altered only slightly with a filter or text overlay, compiled from other people’s work, or lifted off another platform. Commentary still counts: reacting to events, or adding context others lack, is original expression. Two exclusions are new in writing. A post carrying a helpful Community Note earns nothing, and content that only discusses monetisation or coaches payouts is ineligible.

The gate, and the numbers

Meeting the thresholds does not get you in. X returns an outcome within three business days, a rejection gets one appeal, and a failed appeal means a 90-day wait. Accounts already paused for violations cannot join, and political and government accounts are barred.

The thresholds: 18 or over, an active Premium, Premium+ or Premium Business subscription, 500 verified followers, and 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users in 90 days, replies excluded.

That last figure is causing confusion. The old scheme asked for 5 million organic impressions in three months, so 500,000 looks like a tenfold drop. The two count different things. Organic means everyone who saw the post. Verified Home Timeline impressions means Premium subscribers only, main feed only, no replies. X has not published how they convert, so nobody can say whether the bar moved.

Note the asymmetry too: a Basic subscriber’s view earns you money, but a Basic subscription does not let you earn.

Why now

Creator money has come from Premium subscription revenue rather than advertising since November 2024. SpaceX’s May 2026 IPO prospectus put X Premium and Premium+ at about 4.4 million subscribers against roughly 550 million monthly users, which Andrew Hutchinson at Social Media Today worked out as under 1% of users. The pool is small, so who shares it matters.

X spent two years patching the old system instead: replies stopped counting in January 2026, aggregator payouts fell to 60% in April, and nearly 4,000 accounts were removed in July for soliciting engagement. Then head of product Nikita Bier put paid accounts at 100 times the spam-flag rate when replying across borders. Bier stepped down on 5 August, two days before launch, with no successor named.

Allegra Jacchia of X’s Creators Product team wrote that Revenue Sharing’s incentives were misaligned, and that more rules were worse than a fresh start.

What to do next

X has published no figure for the reward pool, so nobody can work out what a qualified impression is worth, nor said what happens to creators still queued when payments stop on 7 September.

If you earn from X, open Creator Studio and check your eligibility now rather than in September. Confirm your Premium tier lets you earn and not merely be counted, and read the programme terms, because X can revoke participation at will. The number that decides everything is 500,000 verified Home Timeline impressions over 90 days, and replies no longer feed it.