X Pro (Formerly TweetDeck) is Now Locked Behind $40/month Paywall

X Pro, the power user Twitter dashboard formerly known as TweetDeck, has now been locked behind X’s $40/month Premium+ subscription. It was previously available with the cheaper $8/month X Premium, and it used to be completely free before August 2023.

According to Engadget, X Premium subscribers who were using X Pro didn’t get any information about the upcoming restriction of the social media dashboard to the more expensive Premium+ tier. The removal of X Pro makes the Premium tier valuable, though subscribers still get a verified checkmark, boosted replies, fewer ads, and access to advanced analytics (which also used to be a free feature).

X Pro allows users to manage multiple X accounts and view multiple timelines in a single dashboard. It’s a great tool for social media professionals, and it’s also really useful for news junkies interested in following news in real time.

If you’re interested in microblogging platforms, Meta’s Threads web app took a lot of inspiration from X Pro/TweetDeck, and it also lets users create custom feeds that can be shared with other users. However, while Threads initially showed a lot of promise as a Twitter/X alternative, the platform is now plagued by the same bot problem that Twitter had for years. Ads also started rolling out to all Threads users earlier this year.

Unfortunately, there’s still no perfect alternative to what Twitter used to be, and platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon are much smaller in scale. The latter is also more complex to use due to its decentralized nature, though Mastodon profiles are being redesigned to make the platform a bit more intuitive.