Last updated . Every entry links to its source.
The biggest Twitter algorithm change in 2026 is that X now publishes its ranking code. It went up on GitHub on January 20, got its largest update on August 13 and is now updated most weekdays. Other dated changes: a mutuals boost on July 13 and a July 29 statement that links are not penalized.
Most pages about a Twitter algorithm change repeat claims with no date or source. This one lists only changes we could trace to X's open-source repository, the X API changelog, a post by X leadership quoted in a news report, or a reputable outlet. If we could not find a source, it is not here.
The open-source repository notes that Under the Hood reports now say whether an account or its posts had visibility limited to comply with a law, for example a post withheld in one country after a legal demand, and which country. This is a reporting change, not a ranking change. If a post seems to vanish in one region only, this report is the place to check.
X added code comments explaining that action weights multiply the predicted probability that a viewer takes an action, not raw engagement counts, so a high weight on reports does not mean one report cancels hundreds of likes. For You also runs a Brazil 2026 election filter that removes posts from accounts reported to Brazil's Electoral Court unless the viewer follows them. For most accounts, the takeaway is that ranking is personal to each viewer.
The repository added key configuration parameters, including the weights that blend predicted actions into a post score, the visibility filtering code that decides whether a post is shown, and the code used to train the Phoenix ranking model. It also added SimClusters as another source of posts from accounts a viewer does not follow, plus an Under the Hood tool that shows aggregate stats on labels attached to your account and posts. Since this release the repository has been updated on most weekdays.
Asked by Paul Graham whether X still penalizes posts with links, Elon Musk replied "We haven't for over a year." Hours earlier, on July 28, Nikita Bier posted "you do not need to put the links in replies anymore". In OpenTweet's data on 28,124 posts from 2026, posts with links did not get fewer impressions than the same account's posts without links, though most were small accounts and the comparison is observational.
Source: PPC Land, July 30, 2026. Read more: Does X penalize links? Our data
Nikita Bier, head of product at X, said mutual follow data "was missing from the algo", which made friends appear less in replies and made reply sections feel "more like a battleground". X added it so posts from people who follow each other show up more. Replying to and following back people in your niche now has a clearer payoff.
Source: TechCrunch, July 13, 2026
The first big update since launch added more than 18,000 lines of code, including a grox directory of classifiers for spam, reply ranking and post safety that run as posts are published. The README says the LLM prompts behind them are not published. For posting, it means spam and reply quality are judged by models that read the post, not only by counting engagement.
Source: GitHub commit e414c17, May 15, 2026. Read more: What the open-source code says
X's developer account announced new API rates, and the price of a post with a link went from $0.01 to $0.20. This is a cost change for apps and schedulers, not a ranking change, but it is one reason some publishers and apps now leave links out of posts.
Source: TechCrunch, April 22, 2026. Read more: Why links get removed from scheduled posts
On self-serve API tiers, programmatic replies are now only permitted when the original post's author summoned the replier, by mentioning or quoting them. Enterprise is not affected. This is not a ranking change, but on regular API plans, automated replies to people who did not mention or quote you stopped working.
X published the code behind the For You feed at github.com/xai-org/x-algorithm under the Apache 2.0 license. It ranks posts with a transformer model that predicts how likely each viewer is to take actions such as like, share or report, then blends those predictions into one score. Twitter had released a partial version of its ranking code in March 2023, and this repository is now the reference for how ranking works.
Source: xai-org/x-algorithm on GitHub. Read more: What the open-source code says
What is not on this list
Claims we could not trace to a dated, public source are left out, even when they are widely repeated. For how ranking works in general, read how the X algorithm works or the tactics in X algorithm secrets.Want to check a draft against the signals in the published code before you post? Try the X algorithm score calculator or ask will it go viral.
Often. The open-source repository at github.com/xai-org/x-algorithm has had commits on most weekdays since August 13, 2026, and X also announces product tweaks like the July 13 mutuals change on the platform. Not every commit changes ranking in a way you would notice, so this page lists only changes with a public, dated source.
On GitHub at github.com/xai-org/x-algorithm, published January 20, 2026 under the Apache 2.0 license. Its README has a Notable Updates section with dated release notes. Some parts are not in the repository, which the README lists in a section called What's not in this repo.
X says no. Elon Musk wrote on July 29, 2026 that X has not penalized links "for over a year". In OpenTweet's data, posts with links did not get fewer impressions than the same account's posts without links. The full numbers and caveats are on our does X penalize links page.
We found no public evidence either way. Nothing in X's 2026 statements or release notes listed here says scheduled posts are ranked differently from posts made in the app, and we have not seen a published test that measures it.
No. The February 23 reply restriction and the April 16 link price change affect apps that post through the API, not how For You ranks posts. They are listed here, labeled API change, because they changed what schedulers and bots can post.
The full ranking pipeline, from candidate sources to the final score.
What the open-source code actually says about ranking.
What X said, and what 28,124 posts published through OpenTweet show.
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