Twitter alternatives: Best social platforms to replace X.
Negative headlines, fake news, and Grok AI summaries continue to fill X users’ feeds, so it’s no surprise people are ditching Musk’s platform. Luckily there are alternatives.
Best X alternatives:
- Mastodon: Free, open source, decentralized. With a chronological feed.
- BlueSky: Free, open, algorithmic feed, with a similar interface to X.
Why is everybody leaving Twitter / X?
You might be wondering why Twitter, the platform with the iconic bluebird logo lost and continues to loose so many users, but there are many reasons for this.
Firstly, when Musk purchased the platform for $44bn in October 2022, he made significant changes. The much loved-logo was dropped, the platform got renamed from Twitter to X, the algorithm changed, banned accounts got reinstated, and the “free speech” policy was also changed. To give an example, research done by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue noted that between June 2022 and February 2023, the amount of antisemitic posts on X doubled. Considering these changes and the huge increase in negative posts, it’s understandable that many people do not feel welcome on X anymore and choose to stop using the platform.
At the end of 2024, during the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election, there a was rapid decline in users, which was dubbed the great X-odus as many people and companies chose to leave X. During this time, Musk aligned with US President Donald Trump and used his platform to push the Make America Great Again movement, and he was also appointed as head of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration. While the platform promoted free speech, it did not neutrally allow everyone to express their opinions, but it was biased and the algorithm pushed hate speech. Rather than uniting people, it was creating divisions.
According to the digital market intelligence company Similarweb, the daily active X users in the US dropped by 8.4% from October to December 2024, marking a loss of 2.5 million users in just 2 months. On the contrary, between October 6th to December, BlueSky had a 1,064% increase in users.
Best Twitter alternatives
If you are planning to leave Twitter, we can recommend two great X alternatives. Let’s take a look at them!
Mastodon: the open source Twitter alternative
Mastodon is a German-based microblogging platform that makes an excellent X alternative for a few reasons we will look at below!
Mastodon is a nice X alternative for those who want to try a niche social platform that feels and looks different.
Firstly, Mastodon is a non-profit and runs off donations; because of this, there are no ads and no tracking. Even better, because it isn’t pressured to increase profit and keep investors happy, there’s a greater guarantee that the platform is made and designed for its users. Unlike big tech, it does not need to harvest your data to make money. Mastodon is a unique platform that feels like it’s made for the people, not for profit.
The platform is open source, self-hostable, and decentralized. Because it’s a decentralized network, it’s made up of hundreds of instances which all work together as a federation. When you create your account, you can choose the instance, and what’s nice is that all users in different instances can still communicate. A simple way to think about this is to imagine how we send emails. We all have different mail accounts on different platforms, for example you might use Tuta Mail and your friend Gmail, but you can still communicate freely between each other – when you use Mastodon, you can also engage with users from different instances.
Some key differences between X and Mastodon are that Mastodon has a chronological feed, which is the opposite of X’s algorithm-based feed. Posts on Mastodon have a 500-character limit, so you can write a lot more in Mastodon, compared to Twitter, which is limited to 140 characters. Additionally, Mastodon doesn’t support the option to schedule posts yet, but like on X you can do polls, and most recently a feature to quote posts has been introduced. Besides this, Mastodon has a similar concept to Twitter, you can search for people and follow them, and posts (also referred to as toots) of the people you follow will appear in your feed.
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If you’re interested in trying it out, sign up to Mastodon via our invite link. You can access Mastodon from a browser on your desktop or phone, or you can download the Mastodon app, which is available for download from the Google Play Store for Android and the Apple App Store for iOS users. Mastodon can also be accessed through third-party apps.
Overall, Mastodon is a nice X alternative for those who do not need fancy features and are looking for something unique and different. What makes this alternative platform especially attractive is the fact that it’s quite the opposite to mainstream social media these days. And if you’re leaving US tech and choosing European, then it’s your ideal Twitter alternative.
BlueSky: the new Twitter alternative gaining followers
BlueSky is often referred to as Twitter’s successor and for good reason. As mentioned earlier, when X’s users plummeted, BlueSky’s exponentially increased, and the platform currently has around 38 million users.
If you miss the old Twitter, BlueSky might be what you’re looking for. Since the mass exit from X, many users have switched to BlueSky.
For users who appreciate what Twitter used to be, it’s a good alternative, and it even looks and feels very much like the old Twitter. BlueSky does have some of X’s features, like threaded posts, hashtag customization, and allows you to write short-form posts with a 300-character limit. Unlike X, it also offers an ad-free experience. BlueSky does have some limitations. For example, you can’t schedule your posts from the platform, but you can use external tools for this. It also doesn’t support polls, there are no verification badges or analytic tools, and it doesn’t come with an inbox.
BlueSky is built on the AT protocol, making it an open or decentralized social platform. Because of this, the Twitter alternative doesn’t have a central algorithm (from one company like X) dictating your feed; rather, the posts you see are based on real engagement, giving you better control over your feed and what you see. In BlueSky, you can have multiple feeds, and you get to choose and even build the algorithm that defines your feed. So instead of scrolling a feed chosen by a central algorithm, your feed will be based on what you’ve subscribed to and what you’re actually interested in.
The BlueSky app is available for download from the Google Play Store for Android and the Apple App Store for iOS users, or you can access the platform via a web browser on mobile and desktop.
Choosing the best Twitter alternative
Overall both Mastodon and BlueSky make nice Twitter alternatives, and which you choose should depend on your needs. For those who are looking for a more niche, alternative platform we’d recommend trying out Mastodon. If you’re looking for something more similar to X in features and look, and with more businesses and people actively joining then we’d recommend trying out BlueSky. Which ever you choose, you’re guaranteed no annoying Grok AI and you’ll be supporting platforms that are not ethically declining, giving you more peace and far less negative fake news!
