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Nitter & XCancel alternative: read X free, without logging in

Nitter.net and XCancel, the best-known public Nitter instances, went offline in September 2026 after legal action from X. Type any public X username below to read its latest tweets and profile, free, with no X account and no signup.

GET/v1/twitter/profiles/{handle}
Ready

Handle, profile URL or post link — x.com/username/status/… opens the post and its replies. Have an account? Run unlimited lookups in the app

Free · no X account · no signup

Need tweets, search or new-post alerts? Try the X API free →

Why Nitter stopped working

What happened, from sources we checked in September 2026.

Nitter was an open-source front end for Twitter. It fetched public posts on its own server and showed them without ads, tracking, JavaScript, or an X account. That only worked while X let logged-out visitors read the site. In January 2024 X removed the guest accounts Nitter relied on, and the developer declared the project dead soon after.

Development resumed in February 2025, but with a catch: an instance now needed tokens from real, registered X accounts to fetch anything, and those accounts could be rate-limited or banned.

On 24 August 2026, X Corp sent cease-and-desist letters to Nitter and to XCancel, a popular public instance. Both went offline and the GitHub repository was archived. They came back briefly in early September. Then on 11 September the repository was archived again, and in mid-September XCancel suspended its service “until further notice”, citing a new development in the legal proceedings. When we checked on 24 September 2026, nitter.net wasn't loading and XCancel returned an “unavailable for legal reasons” error.

What people used Nitter for, and what to use now

Social Fetch isn't a drop-in Nitter front end. There's no timeline to scroll and no links to share. Here's the closest honest replacement for each job.

Read an account's tweets without an X account
Our free X viewer, also at the top of this page, shows a public account's latest tweets with photos, views and likes, plus its bio, follower counts and verification. No X login and no Social Fetch signup.
Go further back through an account's tweets
With a free Social Fetch account (100 credits, no card) you can page back through an account's tweets in the dashboard, or call GET /v1/twitter/profiles/{handle}/tweets from code (endpoint details).
Open one tweet or its replies
GET /v1/twitter/tweets turns a tweet URL into its text, metrics, and media (details). GET /v1/twitter/tweets/replies lists the replies under it.
Search X
GET /v1/twitter/search runs X search queries, including operators such as from:, since:, and min_faves:. The free advanced search builder writes the query for you without signup.
Follow accounts over RSS
We don't serve RSS. Monitors check an account on a schedule and send each new tweet to a signed webhook, or let you pull new events as JSON whenever you like. The X webhook guide walks through it.

Nitter instances and mirror lists

Nitter was built to be self-hosted, so there was never one official site. Volunteers ran public instances, and community lists, like the one on the project's GitHub wiki, tracked which ones worked.

Those lists go stale fast. Each instance runs on its own pool of X accounts, and when X rate-limits or bans them the instance starts showing errors or empty timelines, often before anyone updates the list. Operators also shut instances down over hosting costs or legal risk, as happened to nitter.net and XCancel in 2026. A list that was accurate last month can be mostly dead today.

We don't publish a list of live instances because we can't vouch for them. If you try one anyway, remember that whoever runs it sees your IP address and every page you open. Self-hosting is still possible, but the code is now archived, so you'd be running software that no longer gets fixes, with your own X accounts' tokens at risk of a ban.

API routes that replace a Nitter instance

For developers: the X and Monitors routes that cover what a Nitter instance did, which was reading profiles and tweets and getting notified of new ones.

  • GET /v1/twitter/profiles/{handle}

    Public profile lookup: bio, follower and following counts, verification. Replaces the Nitter profile page. No X login needed on your end.

  • GET /v1/twitter/profiles/{handle}/tweets

    Recent tweets for a handle, cursor-paginated. Replaces the Nitter timeline.

  • GET /v1/twitter/search

    X search with the usual operators (from:, since:, min_faves:). Replaces Nitter's search page.

  • GET /v1/monitors/sources

    Discover the watchable operationId for tweets (twitter.profile.tweets.list), its minimum interval, and a sample event.

  • POST /v1/monitors

    Create a monitor on a profile's tweets. Replaces the RSS feed, delivered as a signed webhook instead of XML.

  • GET /v1/monitors/{id}/events

    Pull new-tweet events as JSON, cursor-paginated, on your own schedule. For teams that would rather poll a feed than run a webhook receiver.

OpenAPI reference →

Replacing Nitter in code

If you scraped Nitter or read its RSS feeds from a script, this is the usual order to switch over.

  1. 1

    Replace the Nitter profile page

    GET /v1/twitter/profiles/{handle} gives you the same bio and metrics a Nitter profile page showed, as typed JSON instead of scraped HTML.

  2. 2

    Replace the Nitter timeline

    GET /v1/twitter/profiles/{handle}/tweets returns recent tweets, cursor-paginated, in the same JSON envelope every other Social Fetch route uses.

  3. 3

    Replace the RSS feed with a Monitor

    Create a monitor on twitter.profile.tweets.list with an interval or cron schedule. It records a baseline on creation, so tweets that already exist don't fire a false event.

  4. 4

    Pick push or pull

    Attach a webhook endpoint for push, or skip it and pull GET /v1/monitors/{id}/events on your own cadence. A pull-only monitor is the closest thing to how an RSS reader behaves.

  5. 5

    Budget credits like the metered service it is

    Unlike a free Nitter instance, every profile lookup, tweet page, and monitor check costs that route's normal credits. Plan for it like any metered API.

Read a profile's recent tweets (the Nitter timeline's replacement)

Swap YOUR_API_KEY for a key from your dashboard. The playground fills in auth for the same request.

Request
Read a profile's recent tweets (the Nitter timeline's replacement)

Why an API instead of another Nitter instance

  • No dependency on a volunteer-run instance that can disappear overnight, and nothing to self-host or keep patched.
  • A documented, versioned JSON schema instead of scraped HTML, so a change to X's markup doesn't silently break your parser.
  • Monitors replace the RSS feed with a signed, retried webhook: 8 attempts over roughly 21 hours on failure, every attempt logged.
  • Would rather poll than run a server? GET /v1/monitors/{id}/events is a cursor-paginated JSON feed you can read on any schedule.
  • Honest trade-off: the API isn't free. Lookups cost credits, and it only returns public data, never protected accounts.

Frequently asked questions

What's the best Nitter alternative now that Nitter is down?
It depends on what you used Nitter for. To read a public account's recent tweets without an account, use a free viewer such as our X viewer. To search X, go further back, or follow accounts, use a service that fetches public X data for you, such as the Social Fetch API. Public Nitter instances are too unreliable to depend on right now.
Is Nitter shut down?
For now, effectively yes. X Corp sent cease-and-desist letters to Nitter and XCancel in August 2026. After a brief return in early September, the GitHub repository was archived again on 11 September and XCancel suspended service until further notice. When we checked on 24 September 2026, neither nitter.net nor XCancel was serving pages. That could change, so check the project's GitHub page for news.
Is there a working Nitter mirror list?
Community instance lists still exist, but they go stale quickly: instances break when X limits the accounts they use, and operators shut them down over cost or legal risk. We don't publish a list because we can't verify which instances work on a given day.
Can I view Twitter/X profiles without an account?
Yes, for public accounts. Our free X viewer shows an account's latest tweets plus its bio, follower and following counts and verification, with no X login and no signup. You get 2 free lookups an hour; a free Social Fetch account gives you 100 more with no wait.
Is there a free Nitter replacement for reading tweets?
Yes, for recent tweets. Our free X viewer shows any public account's latest tweets with no X account and no signup. Going further back, search, and new-tweet alerts go through the API, which is pay-per-lookup: you get 100 free credits when you sign up, with no credit card, and credits you buy don't expire.
Does Social Fetch have RSS feeds like Nitter?
No. Monitors do the same job differently: they check an X account on a schedule and send new tweets to a signed webhook, or you pull new events as JSON from GET /v1/monitors/{id}/events.
Can I still self-host Nitter?
The code is still on GitHub, but the repository is archived, so it no longer gets fixes when X changes something. Running an instance also takes tokens from real X accounts, which can be rate-limited or banned.
Can I see protected (private) X accounts?
No. The viewer and the API only return public data. A protected account may show limited profile basics, but not its tweets.

Read X without depending on Nitter

Sign up for 100 free credits, no card needed. Look up a profile in the playground, read its tweets, then set up a monitor if you want new-post alerts.

Get 100 free creditsSee pricing

Just want to read an account's tweets? The viewer at the top of this page needs no X account and no signup.