The short version: X still gives you free analytics, it's just buried deeper than old Twitter Analytics ever was, and most of the "stats" people obsess over (impressions, in particular) tell you far less than they think. You can get everything useful through the app's own analytics tab plus a couple of free habits, no paid tool required.
Where X analytics lives now
The old analytics.twitter.com dashboard is gone. If you're still bookmarking that URL, stop, it won't take you anywhere useful anymore. Your free stats now live inside the app itself, and the path changed depending on whether you're on desktop or mobile.
- On desktop: click your profile picture, go to "More", then "Creator Studio" or look for "Analytics" in the left sidebar. On some accounts it's labelled "Your Analytics" instead.
- On mobile: tap your profile, then the three-dot menu, then "Analytics".
- Per-post stats: tap the little bar-chart icon underneath any individual tweet, this gives you that single post's impressions, engagements and profile visits without having to open the full dashboard.
If none of that works and you just get a blank page or an error, I've written a full separate breakdown of where Twitter analytics moved and how to read them because this is one of the most common support complaints on X right now, and the fix usually isn't what people expect (it's often account-tier related, not a bug).
What the free dashboard shows you
Once you're in, you get a 28-day summary by default, with options to switch to weekly or monthly views. The headline numbers are:
- Impressions - how many times your post appeared on someone's screen, scrolled past or not
- Engagements - likes, reposts, replies, link clicks, profile clicks, all added together
- Engagement rate - engagements divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage
- Profile visits - how many people clicked through to your profile from that post
- Follows - net new followers attributed to that time period
Here's where I'll say the uncomfortable bit nobody writing these guides wants to say out loud: impressions are the vainest metric on the entire dashboard and most people treat it as the headline number anyway. A post can rack up 40,000 impressions purely because the algorithm pushed it into a trending topic reply thread for ten minutes, and that number tells you nothing about whether a single one of those people remembers your name five minutes later. Engagement rate and profile visits are far more honest measures of whether your content landed. If you only look at one column on that dashboard, make it profile visits, because that's the number that correlates with people who were curious enough to want more of you.
A worked example
Say you run a small consultancy account posting three times a week about workplace productivity. Over a 28-day window your dashboard shows:
- 412,000 impressions total across 13 posts
- 6,100 engagements
- 1.48% average engagement rate
- 890 profile visits
- 34 new followers
At first glance 412,000 impressions looks brilliant. But divide it out: that's roughly 31,700 impressions per post, yet only 68 profile visits per post on average, which is a visit rate of about 0.21% of impressions. That's thin. Now compare it to a hypothetical second account posting twice a week with only 48,000 total impressions but 1,200 profile visits, a visit rate of 2.5%, more than ten times better. The second account is doing a worse job at reach and a far better job at making people want to know more. If you were choosing which content strategy to keep funding your time into, the second one wins every time, even though its raw numbers look smaller on a screenshot.
Step by step: pulling your own stats this week
- Open your analytics tab and switch the date range to 28 days so you've got enough volume to spot a pattern rather than a fluke.
- Export or write down impressions, engagement rate, profile visits and new follows for the period.
- Click into your top three posts by engagement rate (not impressions) and note what they had in common, format, topic, time of day, whether there was a question in the first line.
- Click into your three worst-performing posts by the same measure and note what they had in common too.
- Repeat the whole thing in four weeks and compare. One month tells you almost nothing. Two consecutive months tells you whether something you changed worked.
That's the entire free workflow. No spreadsheet software required beyond whatever you already use, no subscription, and it takes about twenty minutes a month.
Where the free dashboard falls short
It won't tell you who your audience is beyond the vaguest demographic slices, it won't benchmark you against competitors, and it won't track sentiment, which is why tools built for deeper audience profiling exist. For a detailed look at who's following you and why, the StatSocial review is worth reading if you're past the point where basic engagement numbers are telling you enough, and the roundup of social audience insights tools covers several other options at different price points, most with free tiers worth testing before you commit to anything paid.
One free setting worth checking while you're in there: your professional category. It sits in your profile settings rather than the analytics tab, but it quietly affects how you're surfaced in search and recommendations, and most business accounts never set it at all.
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If you want to manage this without living in the app
If you're posting across multiple accounts or just hate opening the native app every day, a column-based dashboard is a better daily habit than checking analytics itself. I've covered the realistic options in TweetDeck alternatives for columns, scheduling and analytics, most of which have free tiers that cover basic scheduling and a lighter analytics view, which for a lot of small business accounts is all you need.
And if you want every free tool I've tested across social platforms in one place rather than hunting post by post, the free tools page is the shortcut, no signup required for any of it.
A few honest limits to keep in mind
X's free analytics only goes back 28 days by default on most accounts, so if you want a full year's trend line you need to screenshot or log your numbers monthly yourself, there's no built-in archive. The platform also changes its analytics layout often enough that a screenshot from six months ago might already look nothing like what you see today, which is exactly why bookmarking the old analytics.twitter.com URL stopped working in the first place. Treat the dashboard as a snapshot tool, not a permanent record, and build your own simple log alongside it if trends over time matter to your work.
Frequently asked questions
Is X analytics still free?
Yes, the core analytics dashboard inside the X app, covering impressions, engagements, profile visits and follower changes, remains free for all accounts, you don't need a paid subscription to see your own stats.
Why can't I find Twitter Analytics anymore?
The old standalone analytics.twitter.com site was retired, and stats now live inside the app itself under your profile menu or beneath each individual post, which trips up a lot of long-time users still searching for the old URL.
What's a good engagement rate on X?
Anything above 1% is considered reasonable for most business accounts, above 2% is strong, but the number matters far less on its own than comparing it against your own historical average over several months.
Do I need a paid tool to track my X stats ?
No, the native free dashboard covers everything most small businesses and creators need; paid tools only add value once you want competitor benchmarking, deeper audience demographics or historical data beyond 28 days.
