How to run a news aggregator account on X
2026 rules, speed and payouts

The line runs between pointing readers to a story and copying it. Based on X's automation rules and what X said about aggregators in April 2026.

Automated accounts must show the Automated label under the profile name and stay connected to a human-run account. Copyright rules for headlines differ by country; see can you post news headlines on X. More on the platform side in X automation rules. This is not legal advice.

Start with feeds. The news RSS feeds list collects feed URLs for the big outlets and Google News keyword feeds; check any feed first with the free RSS feed preview. Add each one as an RSS connector in AI mode:

Connectors  ->  New connector  ->  RSS

  Source:     https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml
  Writing:    AI
  Prompt:     Write one neutral sentence that says what happened,
              who confirmed it, and where. Name the outlet as
              "via BBC News". No opinion, no adjectives like
              "shocking", no hashtags, no "BREAKING".
              Skip opinion pieces, columns, live blogs and quizzes.
  Featured image:        off  (the photo is not yours to post)
  Link to the article:   on   (added on its own line at the end)
  Check:      Every 5 minutes
  Posts per run:         Up to 5
  Review before publishing: off
  Space published posts by at least: 30 minutes
  X account:  @yournewsdesk

• The prompt does the filtering. The connector has no keyword filters; the AI skips items that do not fit your prompt, so tell it what to skip. For a narrower feed, use a category or tag feed URL instead.
• Link on. The link is added by code on its own line, so it is always the exact article URL, never one the model made up.
• Featured image off for other outlets. The image in BBC's or Sky's feed is usually a wire or staff photo licensed to them, not to you. Re-uploading it is the classic copyright takedown, and X now gives re-uploaded media's impressions to the original creator. The link card shows the outlet's own preview image anyway. Turn the image on only for your own site's feed.
• A gap keeps you readable. New posts start 5 minutes after the check and are spaced by the gap you pick, so a feed that dumps 10 items at once does not flood your followers. Items are deduped by id, link and content, so a story never posts twice.

More templates and options on the RSS to X page. Publishing your own site? See WordPress auto post to X.

One call publishes immediately. Authenticate with Authorization: Bearer ot_... (or X-API-Key), pick the account with x_account_id if you run several, and attach your own images with media_urls.

curl -X POST https://opentweet.io/api/v1/posts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ot_your_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "text": "Club confirms head coach has left by mutual consent; assistant takes over for Sunday, via club statement.\n\nhttps://example-club.com/news/statement",
    "publish_now": true
  }'

A 60-second watcher in Python

Run it on any small server. It remembers what it has seen, skips the backlog on the first run, and posts each new item with publish_now. If the same text was already posted, the API answers 409 instead of posting a duplicate.

# Polls your fastest sources every 60 seconds and posts each
# new item in seconds. pip install feedparser requests
import json, pathlib, time
import feedparser, requests

KEY = "ot_your_key"                       # Settings -> API Keys
FEEDS = [
    "https://example-club.com/news/feed/",  # official source
    "https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=%22Example+FC%22+when:1h"
    "&hl=en-GB&gl=GB&ceid=GB:en",           # Google News keyword feed
]
SEEN = pathlib.Path("seen.json")
seen = set(json.loads(SEEN.read_text())) if SEEN.exists() else None

def text_for(entry, feed):
    source = entry.get("source", {}).get("title") or feed.feed.get("title", "source")
    headline = entry.title.rsplit(" - ", 1)[0]       # Google adds " - Outlet"
    return f"{headline}, via {source}\n\n{entry.link}"  # add your own line here

while True:
    fresh = []
    for url in FEEDS:
        feed = feedparser.parse(url)
        fresh += [(e, feed) for e in feed.entries]
    if seen is None:                  # first run: remember, do not post backlog
        seen = {e.get("id", e.link) for e, _ in fresh}
    for entry, feed in fresh:
        key = entry.get("id", entry.link)
        if key in seen:
            continue
        seen.add(key)
        r = requests.post(
            "https://opentweet.io/api/v1/posts",
            headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {KEY}"},
            json={"text": text_for(entry, feed), "publish_now": True},
            timeout=30,
        )
        if r.status_code not in (200, 201, 409):   # 409 = already posted
            print(r.status_code, r.text)
    SEEN.write_text(json.dumps(sorted(seen)))
    time.sleep(60)

publish_now works on one post per request; send up to 50 posts in one request only when scheduling. Every field is in the API reference. The same key works with the MCP server, the CLI and the n8n node.

News accounts post far more than brands: media accounts post a median of about 7 times a day on X (Sprout Social, citing Rival IQ), and Newsweek posted 80 to 100 times a day (Digiday, December 2024). Two numbers decide what you pay: posts a day and link posts a day.

• Over the link allowance: buy link credits, or the post goes out as text with the URL removed. A headline with "via BBC News" and no link still credits the source.
• X's own cap: since about May 16, 2026, accounts without Premium can make 50 original posts a day (reported by Gigazine, citing X's help center). Above that, the account needs Premium, whatever tool posts for it.
• What the links would cost you on the X API: $0.200 per post with a URL. One aggregator on OpenTweet that pulls BBC, Sky News, ABC News and NYT World feeds posted 403 link posts in 30 days; on the X API that is about $80 a month in fees. 10 link posts a day is about $60 a month, 20 a day about $120. OpenTweet pays those fees inside the plan, with no developer account. Details in the X API link post fee and X API pricing.

Generic growth advice (post 2 or 3 times a day, use trending hashtags) does not fit news. This does.

Frequently asked questions