Twitter: Elon Musk announces ad-free X Premium subscription alongside lower-cost option

Elon Musk has announced that X - formerly known as Twitter - will soon launch an ad-free edition of its X Premium subscription, enabling customers to pay to avoid seeing adverts.

Alongside the more costly ad-free version, the website will offer a “lower cost” version of Premium that has all the features of the subscription but “no reduction in ads,” according to the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. The billionaire did not specify when the two new subscription tiers will go live, or their cost.

Since last year taking over Twitter, as it was then known, Musk has seen revenue at the company plummet after advertisers fled over fears about the new owner’s approach to content moderation and free speech.

As a result of the advertising downturn, X has looked to subscriptions as an income stream. X Premium, which costs just over £9 a month, gives users a verification badge as well as the ability to edit posts after sending them and to post longer text and video content.

Last week, the European Union opened an investigation into the platform over its handling of the spread of disinformation and harmful content linked to the Israel-Hamas conflict. As a result of the advertising downturn, X has looked to subscriptions as an income stream.

Earlier this week, the company began a trial in New Zealand and the Philippines, where new users are asked to pay an annual fee of one US dollar (83p) just to post and reply to others.

Musk hinted at such a feature last month, suggesting that eventually all users could be asked to pay in order to keep using the platform.

He has previously suggested that asking users to pay to post is the best way to combat bot and spam accounts, arguing that forcing users to enter credit card details would dissuade many bad actors running bot networks from using the site.