X monetization eligibility checker

Original Content Rewards, the program that replaced Creator Revenue Sharing on 8 September 2026, has three gates. You need at least 500 verified followers, meaning followers who hold Premium themselves. You need 500K Home Timeline impressions from Premium users on your original posts across the previous 90 days, with impressions on replies excluded. And you need an active Premium, Premium+ or Premium Business subscription; Premium Basic does not qualify. All three at once, continuously.

Two further conditions are administrative rather than numeric: you must be 18 or over and based in a country where the program is available, which in practice means a country Stripe can pay out to, since payouts run through a connected Stripe account every two weeks. Enrolment is no longer a switch in Settings. You apply in Creator Studio and X reviews the application, which creators report takes about three business days, with one appeal if rejected and a 90-day wait after a failed appeal.

There is also a gate that is not expressed as a number: your account has to be in good standing under the Creator Monetization Standards and actively posting original content as X defines it. Copied posts, re-uploaded media, reposts without transformation and caption-only overlays on other people's video do not count as original, and engagement farming can block monetization regardless of your numbers.

Under the old program the impressions gate did essentially all the work, because 500 followers of any kind was easy. That is no longer true. Only a minority of any audience holds Premium, so 500 verified followers implies roughly 4,200 total followers at a 12% Premium share, about 8,300 for a general-interest audience and around 2,500 in a Premium-dense niche. The impressions gate, in the same terms, is roughly 4.2M total impressions per 90 days for a typical audience, 8.3M for general interest and 2.5M in a Premium-dense niche. Both gates bind, and which one binds for you depends on how your reach compares to your following.

X states both numeric gates in verified-only terms, and neither verified figure appears in the X Analytics totals a creator usually quotes. Both are shown in Creator Studio, to the account owner only. This checker takes the totals you do know, followers and monthly impressions, and converts them using a Premium share by niche: 6% for a general-interest audience, 12% for a typical mix, 20% for a Premium-dense one. The result is an estimate of whether you are likely to clear each gate, never a verdict, and Creator Studio is the only place to confirm it.

The impressions requirement is a rolling window, not a one-time achievement. It looks at the previous 90 days continuously, so a single viral month can carry you over the line and then drop you back under it three months later when that month rolls out of the window. Eligibility is a condition you either currently satisfy or do not, and the program requires it to be maintained after acceptance, not just at the point of application.

Only organic impressions on original posts count. Promoted reach is excluded from the gate and from payouts, and so are reply impressions, so an account whose reach comes mostly from replies under larger threads can have a large X Analytics total and a small verified figure in Creator Studio. If you have been running ads or living in the replies, the headline figure overstates where you stand.

Work out which gate you are failing, because the responses differ. Short on verified followers, the lever is audience composition as much as growth: a Premium-dense niche converts followers to verified followers at more than three times the rate of a general-interest one. Short on verified impressions, the answer is original posts that travel on the Home Timeline, posted at a steady cadence; reply volume no longer counts.

Do not subscribe to Premium in advance. It is required at the point you apply, not while you build toward the gates, and paying for months of subscription against an application you cannot yet file is a straightforward loss.

Then check whether the payout is worth the application once you do clear the gates. For an account that has only just crossed them, particularly with a non-US audience, the estimated payout can sit below the subscription cost, and it is better to know that before you apply rather than after. The earnings model's rate bands carry forward from Revenue Sharing-era creator reports, since X has published no Original Content Rewards rate, so treat that comparison as modelled too.