Twitter/X May Introduce Three Different Subscription Tiers

X/Twitter is reportedly testing three different subscription tiers to attract more users who may not be ready to pay for the current X Premium subscription, which is priced at $7.99/month on the web. Bloomberg is reporting that X CEO Linda Yaccarino detailed the new three-tiered plan in a recent briefing to bankers.

“The premium plan, which currently costs $7.99 a month, would be split into Basic, Standard, and Plus variations as part of the effort, the company told debt holders during the briefing Thursday, according to a person who dialed into the call,” the Bloomberg report reads. “X also said that — while advertisers are returning to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — they’re bringing smaller budgets than before.”

Elon Musk previously suggested putting the entirety of the X platform behind a paywall to keep bots away, but it’s usually more cautious to take everything the X owner says with a grain of salt these days. However, the new three subscription tiers were recently spotted in the Twitter app’s code by X user @aaronp613.

X Premium will be broken up into 3 tiers:

Premium Basic – Full Ads
Premium Standard – Half Ads
Premium Plus – No Ads pic.twitter.com/I0CyaQf2ME

— Aaron (@aaronp613) October 5, 2023

According to that code, the Basic plan will display the usual amount of ads, but the standard plan will display 50% fewer ads, similar to the current X Premium experience. The Plus plan, however, will provide an ad-free experience to subscribers.

We don’t know yet what other benefits the new Basic, Standard, and Plus plans may provide. For $7.99/month por $84/year, the current X Premium subscription also provides a blue verified checkmark, prioritized rankings in conversations and search, the ability to to post up to 25,000 characters, access to X Pro (previously Tweetdeck), and other benefits.

Elon Musk previously said that he wanted subscriptions to represent up to 50% of Twitter’s revenue, but the platform has changed so much in a year that it will definitely struggle to convince more power users to subscribe. This week, Elon Musk’s latest idea for the platform was to hide headlines from linked news articles in posts, which is definitely a step backward in terms of usability.