Methodology

As of October 2026, this site models X creator payouts at approximately $1 to $20 per 1 million total impressions, with most active accounts landing between $4 and $12 and US audiences in Premium-dense niches reaching $20 to $32. X, formerly Twitter, publishes no rate card and no public formula, so every figure on this site is a modelled estimate anchored on X's own marketed rates and on publicly reported creator payouts. Nothing here is an official X number.

Which program this models

X's creator payout program is Original Content Rewards. X announced it on 7 August 2026, ended Creator Revenue Sharing on 7 September 2026 and opened Original Content Rewards applications on 8 September 2026. The payout basis is the same in kind as it had been since October 2024 - impressions from Premium users - with two changes that matter here: only original posts earn, and the eligibility gates are now set in verified-only figures. X has published no rate for the new program, so the bands below carry forward from creator payouts reported under Creator Revenue Sharing and will be recalibrated as Original Content Rewards reports come in through the submission form. The program explainer covers the rules in full.

This model errs high, on purpose

Every estimator in this category has to choose whether to describe the median account or the account that is actually earning. This one describes the latter. The bands treat X's marketed $8 to $12 per million verified impressions as the mid rate for a US audience, as if the whole audience were verified, and the reach model assumes an active account whose posts and replies get full algorithmic distribution. That is the same generous stance Socialblade takes when it applies a full CPM to every YouTube view, and it is why small creators who post heavily land in the hundreds of dollars a month here rather than in single digits.

The consequence is that the low end of every range is the figure to trust for a typical account, and the high end is what the same reach is worth when audience geography, Premium density and the algorithm are all working in the creator's favour. A dormant account with a general-interest, mostly non-US audience will earn less than the low end. Nothing on this site is reported income.

The formula

monthly_payout = (monthly_impressions / 1,000,000)
                 × rpm_band(audience_geography)
                 × premium_density_multiplier(niche)
                 × volume_premium(monthly_impressions)

The entire model lives in one file, lib/estimator.ts, as pure functions with unit tests. There is exactly one place where any number can change, which is what makes recalibration honest rather than retroactive.

Why X pays on Premium viewers, not raw impressions

X's Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program launched in July 2023 paying a share of advertising revenue from ads served in the replies to a creator's posts. In October 2024 that basis was replaced by engagement from verified Premium subscribers. Original Content Rewards, in force since September 2026, keeps that principle and tightens it: payouts are based on "qualified impressions", meaning unique Home Timeline views from Premium users, with at least half the post on screen, on the creator's original posts only.

The practical consequence is that impressions are the denominator, not the numerator. X has marketed figures in the range of $8 to $12 per million verified impressions. Because Premium users are commonly only 5% to 20% of a normal audience, the effective rate against total impressions can land well below that for a general-interest, global audience, and well above it for a US politics, crypto, finance or tech audience where a large share of viewers already pay for a blue check. The bands below span that spread, with the US mid band sitting on X's own marketed figure.

Rate bands

USD per 1,000,000 total impressions, selected by where the audience is concentrated. Payouts track advertiser value, which differs sharply by market.

Premium density multiplier

Because the payout is driven by engagement from paying subscribers, the niche matters independently of geography. Crypto, finance, AI, software and US political commentary audiences contain far more Premium subscribers than general-interest ones.

Multiplier and band together set the effective rate. The full reachable envelope runs from about $0.45 per million, for a general-interest audience in low-CPM regions, to $32.00 per million for a US audience in a Premium-dense niche. Most active accounts land between $4 and $12.

Volume premium

Accounts with the most impressions and interactions are paid more per impression, not just more in total. Because the payout is driven by Premium-subscriber engagement, and that engagement concentrates under the biggest posts — verified replies are ranked to the top of large threads, quote-posts and reply chains pile up where the audience already is — the effective rate rises with monthly volume. The few top-creator payouts that have been made public imply rates well above the per-million bands, which is what this term reproduces.

Above 10M impressions a month the band is multiplied by (impressions / 10M) ^ 0.25, capped at 4×. Below the threshold it is 1×, so nothing changes for small and mid-size creators.

Estimating impressions when they are not known

Creators can read their real impressions from X Analytics, and that is always the better input. For the 186 accounts tracked on this site, impressions are not observable, so they are modelled:

monthly_impressions = followers
                    × posts_per_month
                    × reach_per_follower(engagement_tier)
                    × scale_damping(followers)

The reach table is generous by design. X's For You feed serves most impressions to people who do not follow the author, and a reply under a large account inherits that account's reach, so an active small account routinely sees several times its follower count in views per post. At 10,000 followers the tiers imply roughly 25,000, 100,000, 300,000 and 1 million views per post. A 10,000-follower account posting twice a day on the average tier models at about 6 million impressions a month, which at a typical Premium share clears the 500,000 verified impressions per 90 days that Original Content Rewards requires; a 1,000-follower account at the same cadence does not.

Scale damping corrects for the fact that reach per follower falls as accounts grow — a 1,000-follower account reaches a far higher share of its audience than a 50-million-follower one. Above 10,000 followers the multiplier decays as a power law, (10,000 / followers) ^ 0.6, calibrated so that the generous small-account multipliers do not compound into nonsense at the top: on the average tier, roughly 250,000 views per post at 100,000 followers, 630,000 at 1 million, 1.6 million at 10 million, and about 4 million at 100 million followers.

Without this correction, follower-based estimates for very large accounts come out absurdly high — the main failure mode of calculators that multiply follower count by a flat rate, and the reason they report seven-figure monthly payouts for accounts that post twice a year.

Eligibility criteria

Every estimate is checked against the published Original Content Rewards requirements, in force since 2026-09-08: at least 500 verified followers, meaning followers who hold Premium; at least 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users in the trailing 90 days, with impressions on replies excluded; and an active X Premium, Premium+ or Premium Business subscription (Premium Basic does not qualify). All three must hold at the same time, the creator must be posting original content, and X reviews an application rather than switching payouts on.

Both numeric gates are set in figures that only the account owner can read in Creator Studio. What a creator knows, and what this site can model for third parties, are totals. The eligibility check therefore converts totals into verified figures using an assumed Premium share by niche, and every result says so:

The shares are the same 5% to 20% Premium density the rate bands already assume, made explicit. They are a modelling assumption, not an X figure. A creator who can see their verified counts in Creator Studio should trust those over anything this site derives.

What this model cannot know

• Whether an account is enrolled at all. X does not disclose participants, and since September 2026 enrolment is by application. Figures for tracked accounts show what their reach would be worth in the program, not confirmed income.
• How much of an account's output X classes as original. Only original posts earn under Original Content Rewards. The model applies the bands to all modelled impressions, which overstates the figure for accounts that mostly repost or aggregate.
• Actual Premium density of a specific audience. It is inferred from niche, not measured.
• Exact impressions for third-party accounts. Only the account owner can see them.
• Undisclosed weighting changes. X has adjusted the payout calculation without announcement between its headline changes.
• Non-revenue-share income. Subscriptions, tips and direct sponsorships are outside this model and are frequently much larger than the revenue share itself.

Data sources

• Follower counts: approximate public figures, rounded to signal imprecision, reviewed manually rather than pulled from the X API.
• Rate bands: publicly posted creator payout screenshots and reporting on the program.
• Community payout reports: submitted through this form and used to recalibrate the bands. This is the only source that can make the model measurably better over time.

Community payout reports

No verified reports have been published yet. The bands above come from publicly reported payouts rather than submissions to this site. If you have real numbers, submitting them is what turns this section into actual data.

How recalibration works

When submitted payout reports accumulate for a geography or niche, the corresponding band is adjusted and the model version is incremented. Pages carry the model version they were generated under, so a figure can always be traced to the assumptions that produced it.

Corrections

If a follower count is wrong, a niche is misclassified, or an account should not be listed, tell us and it will be corrected. Every account page links to the live profile on X so any figure here can be checked against the source.