Twitter / X: Cheapest tier for gold checkmark drops from $1,000 to $200

Elon Musk's X is changing up its Verified Organizations program by launching a new, more affordable tier for small businesses.

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X has officially rolled out a new $200 per month "Basic" plan for organizations interested in verifying their account with the gold checkmark badge, but aren't looking to fork over a whopping $1,000 per monthfor the "Full Access" plan.

Brands on X can also sign up for an annual Basic plan as well for $2,000 per year. An annual plan is not currently offered for the Full Access plan.

What's the Basic plan?

According to the official @Verified account on X, which first broke the news about the plan on Tuesday, the basic plan is "designed for smaller businesses, subscribers receive ad credits & priority support to enable faster growth on X."

Verified Organization Basic accounts get the gold checkmark verification badge, "priority support" from X, and the X Hiring platform to post job openings. X will also provide ad credits equal to the amount paid by the subscriber. For example, at the $200 per month level, a user will receive $200 ad credits each month. In addition, the subscribed account will also receive all of the benefits from X Premium's Premium+ plan.

For a quick refresher, X Premium is the $8 per month subscription plan for non-organization users, which includes the blue verification badge, the ability to post longer videos and text posts, and other extra features like monetization eligibility. Late last year, X launched an additional Premium+ plan for $16 per month ,which includes all of those features from the Premium plan with some added extras like no ads and access to the company's AI chatbot Grok.

So for $200 per month, Verified Organizations on the Basic plan will get all of the above, just like those paying $2,000 per month.

Basic vs. Full Access Verified Organization plan

There's a big difference in price between $2,000 per year for Basic and $12,000 per year for Full Access Verified Organization plans.

The biggest difference is Basic users won't have access to the Affiliations feature, which the Full Access provides. Affiliations allows the Verified Organization account to list other X accounts on their profile. Once listed, those accounts receive X Premium and a logo next to their verified badge showing their affiliation with the Verified Organization account. 

Basic users also won't receive a "2x boost" for their posts on the platform, according to X.

It seems clear that X has rolled out this new Basic tier because the $1,000 per month Verified Organization subscription is out of reach for many users. The $8-per-month X Premium plan has long-faced a similar struggle in signing up new subscribers as well.

However, the new Basic plan doesn't include the most integral Verified Organization feature: Affiliations. Unless a user is already spending that much to advertise on X each month, in which case, the subscription is basically free with the ad-spend credits, the Basic Verified Organization plan doesn't offer much more than the $16 per month X Premium+ plan. The only real difference appears to be receiving a gold verification checkmark affixed to an account's username instead of a blue one.