Data Shows That X Premium Take-up Is Growing

While it still seems like X’s push to make people pay to use the app is never actually going evolve into a significant revenue stream for the company, there are some signs that its X Premium push is slowly driving more subscriptions.

Well, at the least, one of its initiatives has had some success.

In the lead-up to Christmas, coinciding with Black Friday, X launched a 40% discount offer for X Premium, which included full-screen, unavoidable promotions in the app.

Which was annoying, but according to data from app analytics provider AppFigures, it did lead to a significant uptick in X Premium subscriptions.

As per AppFigures:

“We've checked in on X's revenue every month since Twitter Blue came out but this check in is by far the biggest leap. Appfigures estimates put X's net revenue in November at $16.5M. That's what Elon gets to keep after giving Apple and Google their share. That's the biggest month of revenue for the platform and 27% higher than October, which was its biggest month prior.”

So major discounts, as well as the addition of an option to gift X Premium to others, saw X boost its subscriber count in November, while AppFigures further notes that it's remained higher than usual ever since.

Part of that jump also came in October, which could also be attributed to Elon’s higher profile in the lead-up to the U.S. election. And these gains are likely also tied to Trump’s election victory, and at $16.5 million in a single month, at an average price of $11 or so per subscription, that could indicate a notable shift in numbers for X’s paying user element.

For context, back in October, AppFigures reported that X was bringing in around $14.7 million per month via in-app purchases on mobile devices. Analysis conducted by TechCrunch suggests that this likely equates to around 1.4 million users paying for X Premium, which is less than 1% of X’s total user base.

An additional $1.8 million of Premium intake could equate to another 200k users signing up. Which would mean that while X’s paid user cohort is still relatively low, in terms of overall user percentage, it is rising, and the platform could now be up to around 2 million paying users, which would be a significant milestone for the app.

And X is definitely doing all it can to juice those numbers, with promotions for Grok appearing anywhere it can jam them in, along with updated icons for its AI chatbot.

Grok was originally only available to paying users, but is now available to all X users in limited form, though X is still hoping that it’ll attract more Premium subscribers by enticing them with access to Grok’s full feature set.

Add to this the fact that X owner Elon Musk is now encouraging users to switch their post replies to “verified users only”, which he himself has now done, and it’s clear that X is still hoping to boost its revenue intake via its X Premium offering.

Though it still remains a fairly niche, fairly limited appeal offering, especially for the majority of X users.

From the start, Elon Musk’s plan to get more people paying to use the app has been flawed because of the value that X, and Musk himself, has placed on elements of the app.

The big lure of X Premium when Musk originally took over at the app, (when it was still known as “Twitter Blue”) was verification ticks, with Musk claiming that by selling the platform’s much-lauded checkmarks, that would eliminate the “lords and peasants system” that had been enacted by past Twitter management.

Which it didn’t, and immediately, Musk was shown the error in this approach, when users started buying checkmarks and impersonating professional and celebrity accounts.

That forced Musk and Co. to pull the option, before re-launching it a month or so later, with blue ticks still the biggest element of focus for the offering.

But checkmarks were only valuable because they were elusive, and the fact that anyone can now buy one undermines the very value you’re trying to pitch. Add to this the fact that many elements, like reply boost, only apply to people who post in the app, which is only a fraction of X users, and it was pretty clear that Elon and his team had misread the room on the potential value of X Premium, and that his plans to supplant the need for advertiser dollars via direct subscriptions was never going to work as he’d hoped.

In Elon’s original business plan for Twitter/X, following his takeover of the app, he noted that user subscriptions would quickly make up around 50% of the app’s overall revenue intake, and that by the end of this year (2025), some 69 million people would be paying for X Premium.

That’s still possible, I guess, but at 2 million subscribers now, they’ve got a fair bit of work to do, while X’s ad revenue intake is still estimated to exceed $2 billion for the full year, a far cry from the less than $200 million that it’s likely to make from monthly subscription payments.

So while X Premium take-up is growing, it’s still moving slowly, and I don’t see Grok being a major lure to get more people on board, at least not as much as X itself seems to think it is.

Yet, X does have some valuable offerings within its subscription suite.

Its improved analytics tools are definitely of value to social media managers, while access to its revised version of TweetDeck (now called “X Pro”) is also a worthy addition.

It’s just that X itself is no longer as valuable to brands and influencers as it once was, which means that offerings like this are also a lesser consideration overall.

Maybe, there’s some new Grok update that will make it a more valuable offering, or maybe X still has some tricks up its sleeve to drive Premium take-up. But it remains a minor consideration for the majority of the app’s users.

And unless X becomes more valuable overall, I don’t see how X Premium becomes a bigger thing.