How to Set Up Keyword Alerts on X

"Tell me when someone posts about X" sounds like a feature every social network should have. On X it mostly isn't built in, at least not for arbitrary words. What you get natively depends on whether the thing you want to track is an account or a keyword, and whether you pay for Premium.

Below is what's available as of late 2026, from free to paid, plus the rules that apply when you bring in a third-party tool. Plans and prices on X change often, so check X's own pages before you pay for anything.

What X alerts you about for free

X's notifications cover a few things well:

• Posts that mention your @handle, and replies to your posts.
• Posts from specific accounts, if you open their profile and tap the bell icon.
• Activity on your own posts: likes, reposts, quotes, new followers.

That covers "tell me when this account posts" completely. Turn on post notifications for a competitor's announcement account or a provider's status account, and your phone buzzes each time they post.

What's missing is "tell me when anyone posts this word." For that, the free option is a saved search.

Saved searches: free, but you do the checking

Build your query (the query builder helps), open it on the Latest tab, and save it from the menu beside the search box. Saved searches sync across the web and mobile apps and appear the moment you tap search.

They don't send alerts. You open them. In practice this works better than it sounds, because a monitoring query checked at fixed times catches almost everything a small team can respond to anyway. The small-team routine we use is built on exactly this.

To make saved searches feel more like alerts:

• Keep each query tight, so a new result actually means something.
• Use since: with a recent date during busy periods to hide old posts.
• Keep a separate "urgent" query, such as your brand plus outage words, and check it more often.
• Bookmark the x.com search URL in your browser's bookmark bar for one-click access on desktop.

X Pro: live columns for searches

X Pro is the multi-column dashboard that used to be called TweetDeck. At the time of writing it's included with X's paid Premium plans rather than free accounts. Its main advantage for monitoring is that you can add a column for any search, and the column updates live as new posts arrive. With a screen of columns open, your keyword searches behave much like alerts.

Before paying for it, check the current Premium tiers on X itself: which plans include X Pro and whether the column notification options cover what you need. These details have changed more than once.

Third-party listening tools

Social listening services can watch keywords on X and send email, mobile or chat alerts. They range from simple keyword trackers to full analytics suites. Almost all of them rely on X's API, which has been paid since 2023 and has changed pricing several times. That cost gets passed on, so free tiers for X tracking are rare and often limited.

When you compare tools, a few questions save time:

• How fresh are the results? Some tools poll every few minutes, others hourly or daily.
• Which operators can you use? Many tools support only plain keywords, not from:, -filter:replies or lang:.
• How do alerts arrive, and can you set a threshold so a quiet keyword sends one digest rather than fifty pings?
• What access does it ask for? A tool that only reads public posts shouldn't need permission to post or follow from your account.

Be skeptical of older tutorials. Many no-code recipes that used to watch Twitter keywords stopped working after X's API changes, and some free tools quietly shut down.

What the rules say about automating replies

The moment an alert arrives, it's tempting to automate the next step. X's automation rules draw a clear line here. Sending automated replies to posts based on keyword searches alone isn't permitted. Automated replies and mentions are only allowed to users who opted in, for example by replying to your post or messaging you, and each automated reply needs an easy opt-out. X's rules also prohibit automated likes and bulk or aggressive following.

So the safe pattern is: automation finds the posts, a person decides what to do with them. A tool that alerts you is fine. A tool that answers every post containing your keyword on your behalf puts your account at risk of restriction or suspension.

Choosing a setup

For most small businesses and individuals, the free route is enough: two or three saved searches, bells on a few key accounts, and a set time to check. If you're responsible for a brand where a two-hour delay causes real harm, such as a payments app during an outage, X Pro columns or a listening tool with push alerts are worth paying for. Either way, write the query carefully first. A noisy alert is ignored within a week, whatever it costs.

MoniTwitter is independent and not affiliated with X Corp. We don't receive anything from any tool or plan mentioned here.

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