How ReachGrade scores your X account
A score is only useful if you know where it comes from. This page explains, in plain terms, what ReachGrade reads, the checks we run, how they turn into a number from 0 to 100, and the things we deliberately never do.
What we read, and what we don't
You sign in with X. Sign-in is read-only: ReachGrade can't post, follow, like, send messages or change anything on your account, and it never tries to. Signing in also means you can only score your own account. There's no box to type in someone else's handle.
For the free score we read your public profile and your latest 50 original posts, with their public metrics (views, likes, replies, reposts, quotes, bookmarks). We don't read the text of your replies or reposts; to know how much of your recent activity they make up, we ask X for your post counts over the last 7 days. Protected accounts get the profile checks only.
You get one fresh score per account per day (days run in UTC). The raw data behind a free score is deleted at the end of that UTC day.
The 21 checks
Every check has a fixed threshold, so the same data always gives the same result. Each one also tells you its basis: X's published source code, industry research, or our own heuristic. If there isn't enough data to judge a check fairly (50 posts written in a single afternoon can't tell us anything about a month), it's marked "Not enough data" and doesn't affect your score.
Profile (weight 15)
- Default profile photo.
- Bio missing or shorter than 40 characters, counted the way X counts them (skipped for bios mostly in non-Latin scripts).
- No pinned post.
- No banner image.
- The same link in 3 or more recent posts, but no link in your profile.
Cadence (weight 20)
- No original posts in the last 7 days.
- Fewer than 8 original posts in the last 30 days.
- 5 or more original posts within 60 minutes.
Engagement (weight 20)
- Your median engagement rate (engagements divided by views) is below the 25th percentile for accounts of your size. Our starting benchmarks are 1.0% under 1,000 followers, 0.6% under 10,000, 0.35% under 100,000 and 0.2% above that, and we recalibrate them as we learn.
- Your top 5 posts account for more than 60% of all your views (needs at least 10 posts).
Content (weight 25)
- More than 30% of your original posts carry an outside link.
- Replies and reposts make up more than 80% of your last 7 days, with fewer than 3 posts of your own.
- 3 or more near-identical posts.
- A format, such as images, video or long posts, tried fewer than 5 times.
- More than 2 hashtags per post on average.
Timing (weight 10)
- More than half of your posts go out between midnight and 7 a.m. in your audience's time zone (you choose the time zone).
- Over 40% of your posts land on weekends, and weekend posts get less engagement than weekday ones.
Audience (weight 5)
- Following more than 2,500 accounts while following more than 0.6 times as many accounts as follow you. This one comes from X's older, 2023 open-source code, so we weight it lightly.
Visibility (weight 5)
- Your account or one of your posts is withheld in some countries (an official field from X).
- Your posts are protected (also an official field).
- The median views of your last 14 days of posts are less than half of the 14 days before.
The full report adds one more check: whether you reply to the people who reply to you.
How the checks become a number
Each flagged check takes points off its area: 45 for a high-impact issue, 25 for a medium one and 10 for a low one. Each area starts at 100. Your score is the weighted average of the areas we could judge, using the weights above.
Two adjustments keep the number honest. If we could only judge some of the checks, a high score is pulled toward a neutral 70; missing data never raises a low score. And serious issues cap the score: no original posts in 7 days caps it at 60, one high-impact issue at 75, two or more at 65, and a high-impact visibility issue at 60. Your content style can cap it too: "Quiet lately" tops out at 60, "Mostly replies" and "Link-heavy" at 74, and "Solid basics, a few gaps" at 89.
Next to the score you'll see a confidence label: High when we could judge at least 90% of the checks, Medium from 75%, and Low below that.
Points per fix
Because the score is a fixed formula, we can tell you exactly what fixing each issue is worth. We run the same formula again as if the issue passed, with the same caps and content-style limits, and show the score you'd get. Caps make some issues interlock: a link-heavy account stays capped at 74 until both link checks pass, so fixing one of them alone may not move the number. That's why each issue also shows its share of the points you'd gain by fixing everything (a Shapley value, rounded so the shares add up to the total). Points are points on our scale, not a promise of more views.
What the score bands mean
- 75 to 100 (green): solid habits. The suggestions are about sharpening what already works.
- 50 to 74 (amber): the basics are there, but one or two issues are likely holding your posts back.
- Below 50 (coral): several things are working against you. Start with the first fix we suggest.
We also give your account a content style, such as "Consistent and balanced", "Mostly replies", "Link-heavy", "Strong but infrequent" or "Quiet lately". It describes your recent habits, not you.
The Early account badge
New and small accounts move a lot with every post, so we treat them differently. If you have fewer than 200 followers or your account is less than 90 days old, you still get a score, but with an Early account badge, a Low confidence label and benchmarks from the smallest follower group. You also get a 30-day checklist of the basics.
If we find fewer than 5 original posts, we don't give a score at all. A number based on two or three posts would be meaningless, so you get the checklist instead.
What we never do
- We never post, follow, like or message from your account.
- We never score other people. The website only scores the account you signed in with. Our @reachgrade account replies only to the person who asks, and only about their own account; it declines requests to grade anyone else.
- We never claim to detect hidden penalties. Outside tools can't see X's internal labels; X's own Under the Hood page is the place for that. We only report what your public data shows.
- We never promise results. A higher score means fewer known obstacles, not a guaranteed number of views.
- We never store the text of your posts in a paid report, and we don't use your data to train AI models.
Anyone can ask us never to grade their account, and we'll delete what we hold for it.
Free score and full report
The score, your content style and the first fix are free. The $4.99 full report runs every check on your latest 200 original posts, adds the reply check, and writes three bios to choose from, a pinned-post draft and a 7-day plan. Writing those uses xAI, and only after you agree; if the report isn't useful, you can ask for a refund within 14 days.
New to all this? Start with why your reach might be low on X.