Elon Musk Teases Ad-Free ‘Higher Prices’ Twitter Blue Subscriptions

Elon Musk has said that Twitter will be launching a new “price” Blue subscription that will not display ads on the platform. The current $7.99 per month Twitter Blue subscription promises 50% fewer ads compared to “unverified people,” but this feature has yet to roll out.

We still don’t know the cost or release date of the ad-free tier, and Twitter no longer has a communications team to reach out to. Existing Blue subscriptions come with perks like a blue “ok” checkmark, the ability to undo tweets, a way to upload longer 1080p videos, a reader mode for threads, and prioritization in conversations.

This comes just days after Twitter quietly banned third-party clients like Tweetbot and Twitterrific. On Thursday, the company updated its developer agreement, stating that developers may not use Twitter’s APIs to “create or attempt to create alternative or similar services or products to the Twitter application.”

As my colleague Mitchell Clark points out, some developers pay to access Twitter’s API, but Twitter doesn’t display ads through it, so the company doesn’t earn advertising revenue. Also, people using third-party apps may not need to purchase a Twitter Blue subscription. Part of that is because it already provides an improved (sometimes ad-free) Twitter experience.