Elon Musk–owned social network X, formerly Twitter, has made X Pro — which was previously known as TweetDeck — a subscriber-only product.
Several users noted on the platform that while trying to access TweetDeck, they were shown a pop-up prompting them to buy a Blue subscription.
https://twitter.com/russbengtson/status/1691570716167090256?s=20
X has finally killed free access to tweetdeck
It’s now officially a Premium subscriber-only tool
a sales page for X Premium now pops up when trying to lead Tweetdeck.
bad news for social media managers, journalists, and power users
Techcrunch eventJoin 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025
Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.
Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025
Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.
San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) August 15, 2023
The move isn’t entirely surprising, as on July 3, the company said that within 30 days TweetDeck would be accessible to only verified users. Like a lot of Musk promised timelines, the social network got delayed in implementing the new rule by a few days.
Plenty of newsrooms, individual journalists, researchers and social media consultants used TweetDeck — which was acquired by Twitter in a $40 million deal in 2011 — to track multiple lists and trends on Twitter/X. They will now have to pay up to keep using the tool.
For the past few years, TweetDeck felt like an ignored product. The previous management of the social network started testing a new version of the tool in 2021, but it wasn’t rolled out to a wider audience. In June 2022, the company shut down TweetDeck’s Mac client.
Under Musk, X has tried to make its subscription attractive with many offerings. Apart from the verification mark, which you can hide now, it rolled out the ability to post longer texts and videos, had fewer ads, offered access to encryption in DMs and had ad revenue sharing.
