Your X inbox has a new doorbell. On September 22, X launched X Numbers, a feature for its XChat messaging service that gives you a private code you can share with anyone you want to be able to reach you — no phone number, no follow back, no accepted message request required.

If you went looking for your X Communities this year and found them missing, you did not break anything. X shut the feature down, with the retirement completed on May 30, 2026. Communities — public, interest-based groups with their own feeds, admins, and moderators — are no longer part of the platform. Here is what happened, and what has taken their place.

X wants creators to treat posting as a business, and it runs two main programs to pay them: revenue sharing and Subscriptions. They work very differently, and most creators who earn on the platform use one or both. Here is how each stands today.

Grok started as a perk for paying subscribers, but it has grown into the AI layer that runs through the whole X experience. If you have not opened the Grok tab lately, here is what the assistant actually does for everyday users today.

If your main X timeline feels like drinking from a fire hose, Lists are the tap you control. A List is a custom timeline built from a group of accounts you choose. Open the List and you see recent posts from only those accounts, in one focused feed, with none of the algorithm's detours. For many longtime users, Lists are the feature that makes X feel manageable again.

Paying for X is no longer a single decision. The service still offers three Premium tiers — Basic, Premium and Premium+ — and each one unlocks a different layer of the platform. Here is what each level actually includes, based on X's own subscription documentation.

If you pay for more than one of Elon Musk's products, your billing page just got simpler. On October 12, the company announced The X Subscription, a single plan that brings together the Grok AI assistant, the Grok Bot agent tools, the Cursor coding platform and X Premium under one monthly bill.