Is TweetDeck still free? What it costs on X in 2026

#Quick answer

No, TweetDeck is not free anymore. It was renamed X Pro, and since March 26, 2026 you need an X Premium+ subscription to use it. Premium+ costs $40/month, or $395/year (about $33/month) if billed annually. The free TweetDeck people remember ended in 2023, when it first moved behind a paid plan.

Last updated: August 2026

#TL;DR

If you searched "is TweetDeck still free" and got conflicting answers, that is because the price has moved three times. TweetDeck (formerly Twitter's power-user dashboard, now X Pro) was free for years, then required the $8/month Premium plan from 2023, and as of March 26, 2026 it sits behind the $40/month Premium+ tier (MacRumors, 2026). You are no longer paying for a dashboard - you are paying for the whole Premium+ bundle and getting X Pro inside it. Below is the full history, the current cost, and how to get the same column view without the $40 bill.

#The short history of TweetDeck's price

| Era | What it cost | What you needed | |---|---|---| | Before 2023 | Free | Any account | | 2023 to Mar 2026 | Included with Premium | $8/month Premium | | Since Mar 26, 2026 | Included with Premium+ | $40/month Premium+ |

The catch that trips people up: none of these were ever a standalone "TweetDeck plan." It was always bundled into whatever subscription tier X decided, and that tier keeps getting more expensive.

#What happened to TweetDeck

TweetDeck launched as an independent app, Twitter bought it in 2011, and for over a decade it was the free go-to for anyone managing more than one feed at a time. It stayed free right up until 2023, when the platform (rebranded to X) put it behind the paid Premium subscription and renamed it X Pro.

Then on March 26, 2026, X quietly went further. It restricted X Pro to Premium+ subscribers only, effective immediately and with no notice to the people who were mid-subscription on the cheaper plan (MacRumors, 2026). Users who had been paying $8/month for Premium suddenly lost access to a tool they had been using that morning. Engadget summed up the reaction bluntly, describing it as X moving "the ashes of TweetDeck" behind a $40 subscription (Engadget, 2026).

For anyone who still thinks of TweetDeck as the free columns app, that mental model is now two price hikes out of date.

#What X Pro costs in 2026

Here is the current, verified pricing:

• X Premium+: $40/month, or $395/year (about $33/month) if you pay annually (MacRumors, 2026).
• There is no cheaper way in. The old $8/month Premium plan no longer unlocks X Pro.

That is a roughly 5x jump from the $8 plan that used to include it. And the important framing: you cannot buy X Pro on its own. The dashboard is one feature inside Premium+, so the honest question is not "is X Pro worth $40" but "is the entire Premium+ bundle worth $40 to me, and is the dashboard part of why." If you want the full breakdown of what that tier includes, see our guide to X Premium benefits, tiers and price.

#Is X Pro worth it now?

X Pro is still the best native, real-time dashboard for X. Because X builds it, it has the deepest live data and no third-party API limits. If you are a journalist, a trader, or a community manager who lives inside multiple columns of searches, lists, and mentions all day, and you also want the other Premium+ perks, it can pay for itself.

For most people, though, $40/month for a dashboard alone is a hard sell. The full pros-and-cons, with what the columns actually do, are in our TweetDeck review and our data-backed TweetDeck review from X-Autopilot testing. The short version: great tool, painful price if the dashboard is the only thing you need it for.

#Free and cheaper ways to get TweetDeck-style columns

You cannot get the official X Pro product for free anymore, but you can rebuild most of the workflow. The two jobs people used TweetDeck for were monitoring (multiple live columns of searches, mentions, and lists) and scheduling (queueing posts ahead of time). Both are covered by cheaper tools:

• Free monitoring and scheduling: several no-cost tools handle a basic column view and a posting queue. We rounded up the current ones in the best free X tools and the best free social media scheduling tools.
• Dedicated schedulers: if scheduling was your main use, a purpose-built scheduler often beats X Pro on ease of use for a fraction of $40. Compare the options in our best TweetDeck alternative guide.

What none of these free tools replicate is X Pro's native, sub-second real-time feed - that is the one thing you genuinely give up by not paying. For most creators and small teams, that trade is easy.

One thing to watch when you switch: third-party tools reach X through its API, and the API tiers changed hard in 2026, so features like real-time search columns can be thinner or rate-limited compared to what X Pro shows natively. Check that the free tool you pick actually surfaces the columns you care about before you rely on it for anything time-sensitive. For breaking news or live trading, that gap is real; for scheduling and normal monitoring, it rarely matters.

#Where a growth tool fits instead

Here is the honest split. If your goal is to watch X in real time, X Pro or a free monitoring tool is what you want. If your goal is to grow on X - post consistently and reply where it counts - a dashboard is not really the tool for that job, because staring at columns is not the same as showing up every day.

That growth job is what X-Autopilot is built for. It runs from real Chrome on your own Mac, drafts replies in your voice, and posts on a schedule you set, so the daily engagement happens even on the days you would skip it. It is not a real-time monitoring dashboard and it is not a sanctioned, risk-free path, since browser-route automation on X is a gray area rather than an approved one. What it removes is the consistency problem, at a plan starting well under the $40 Premium+ tier. If watching feeds is the goal, stick with the dashboard; if growing the account is the goal, that is a different tool.

#Bottom line

TweetDeck is not free in 2026. It is now X Pro, and it requires X Premium+ at $40/month (or $395/year). It was free until 2023, then needed the $8/month Premium plan, and since March 26, 2026 it needs the pricier Premium+ tier. If you truly need native real-time columns and want the rest of Premium+, it is a fair buy. If you only wanted the columns or a place to schedule posts, free and low-cost alternatives cover most of it, and the $40 tier is more than most people need.