How to remove a follower on X (Twitter) without blocking them

1. 1

   Open your followers list

   On x.com, go to your profile and open Followers. Find the account you want to remove.

2. 2

   Click the more icon

   It's to the right of the Follow button on the account's row. Choose "Remove this follower".

3. 3

   Confirm with "Remove"

   X's confirmation says the account "won't be notified by X" and can follow you again in the future. Once you confirm, it leaves your followers list, and your follower count goes down by one.

You can also do it from their profile: the more icon there has the same "Remove this follower" option.

X's Following FAQs say the option is available on the web only, a note that has been on the page since 2021. X's Android app still had no such option when we looked in October 2026, so on a phone, open x.com in your browser.

Only their follow ends. If you follow them, you still do, and they aren't blocked.

X doesn't tell them, but they can see they no longer follow you. What X tells people when you block, mute or remove them covers the other cases.

If you use UnfollowMonkey, our next check finds them missing from your followers list and reports that they "unfollowed you": a followers list looks the same after a removal as after an unfollow. They get nothing from us, since their own followers list hasn't changed.

X won't tell you, but your Following list will: the account is missing from it although you never unfollowed it, and your Following count is one lower. Open their profile to see why.

• The profile looks normal and Follow works: they removed you as a follower, or soft-blocked you. If their profile still shows "Follows you", it was a removal; a soft block would have ended their follow too.
• The profile says you're blocked, or Follow gives an error: they blocked you.
• The account doesn't exist or is suspended: it wasn't about you. A deactivated account can come back within 30 days.

Our DMs can't help with this one. We compare your followers list from one check to the next, and a removal changes the list of accounts you follow, not your followers.

Usually "Remove this follower". A soft block, blocking someone and unblocking them straight away, also ends your follow of them: X's page on blocking says a block makes each of you unfollow the other, and unblocking brings neither follow back. You can get that by unfollowing them yourself. And a soft block goes through a block, which X doesn't announce, but which they see if they open your profile before you unblock.

Until 2021 the soft block was the only way, and a common one: a 2025 study of softblocking on Twitter collected 96,541 tweets about it, posted up to January 2020. Twitter's own Following FAQs, as archived in August 2020, still told you to block a follower you didn't want. The removal option was announced as a test on the web on 7 September 2021 and opened to everyone on the web on 11 October 2021. Instagram had let private accounts remove followers since December 2016.