How to check who unfollowed you on X (Twitter) by hand, for free

Open their profile while you're logged in to X. When an account follows you, its profile shows a "Follows you" label (as of October 2026). No label, no follow.

That's a yes or a no about today. The label can't tell you whether they left last week or never followed you at all.

It's also missing when someone has blocked you, because a block on X removes the follow in both directions. Here's how to tell a block from an unfollow.

For one or two people you suspect, that's all you need. For a whole follower list it's hopeless. Nobody opens 1,200 profiles.

Your X data archive includes a list of your followers. One archive is one list, on one day, so you need two.

1. 1

   Request your archive

   Your email address has to be confirmed first. Then, on the web, open the More menu, then Settings and privacy, then Your account, then Download an archive of your data. X asks for your password, then for a code sent to your email or phone, then you click "Request archive". If your menus look different, follow X's own instructions.

2. 2

   Download the ZIP and date it

   X says to allow a few days. It emails you and sends a notification when the archive is ready, and you download it while logged in, in the same browser. Put the date in the file name and keep the ZIP.

3. 3

   Request a second archive later

   Same steps. The comparison covers whatever happened between the two, so archives a month apart show who left that month.

4. 4

   Find follower.js in both archives

   Unzip each archive, find follower.js in its data folder and open it with a text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit (right-click, Open with). Each follower is an entry with an accountId, which is a number of up to 19 digits, and a userLink. There are no usernames. The accounts you follow are in following.js beside it, in the same form. X's help pages name the follower and following lists but not these files: the README.txt in the same data folder describes them, and archives made in 2026 still follow it.

5. 5

   Compare the two files in a spreadsheet

   In an empty sheet in Excel or Google Sheets, paste the whole older file into cell A1 and the whole newer file into B1. Each line of a file lands in its own row. In C1, type =COUNTIF(B:B,A1) and copy it down as far as column A goes. A 0 means the line beside it isn't in the newer file.

6. 6

   Keep only the 0s

   Put a filter on column C (it's in the Data menu of both programs) and keep the 0s. A follower who's gone leaves two of them, an accountId line and the userLink line under it.

7. 7

   Turn each number into a profile

   Type x.com/i/user/ followed by the number into your browser. For example, x.com/i/user/783214 opens the profile of @X. The userLink stored beside the number does the same: it's a link that opens the account's profile. X's README warns that it may not work for protected or deactivated accounts.

Say your September file lists 846 followers and your October file 852, because 12 people left in between and 18 new ones arrived. Your count went up by 6, and the comparison still turns up the account numbers of the 12 who left.

The comparison tells you an account no longer follows you. It can't tell you why, and often it isn't an unfollow: more than half of the follower losses we record as a tracker are accounts that were deleted, deactivated or suspended.

By hand, you sort them one profile at a time: open x.com/i/user/ followed by the number.

• If it opens an ordinary profile, the account is still on X, so it unfollowed you.
• If X won't let you follow it, that's a block.
• If it says "Account suspended", X suspended it.
• If you get an error where the profile should be (on a computer, X says the page doesn't exist), the account is gone.

More on each case in why follower counts drop.

Some of those accounts come back: X lets a deactivated account be restored for up to 30 days, so one that's gone today may follow you again within the month.

The follower file has no dates. All you learn is that an account left somewhere between your two archives.

Someone who unfollows and then follows again between the two is in both files, so the comparison never shows them. That's rare, though: of the 1,874 unfollows we recorded in September 2026, 28 were followed by the same account following again by 11 October.

You'll also see a shortcut recommended: scrolling your own Following list for accounts with no "Follows you" label. That answers another question, who doesn't follow you back.

And it only covers accounts you follow. In our data, two out of three unfollows came from accounts our users didn't follow back, which that scan can't see.

Faster, yes. Scripts you paste into the browser console, and extensions that work the same way, scroll your followers page for you and store the list they collect.

X's automation rules list "scripting the X website" among the things you must not do, and say it can get your account suspended for good.

If you'd repeat the archive routine every month, a tracker runs the same comparison for you.

Ours saves the list of accounts that follow you and compares it with a fresh one at every check. When an account is gone, we send you a DM on X that names it and says whether it unfollowed you, was suspended or was deleted.

UnfollowMonkey

@your_ex unfollowed you 🙈 💔

They followed you for about 3 years.

@moon_signals_88 got suspended 😱

Blocks show up as unfollows, because we can't tell the two apart. To know which, you still open the profile: X won't let you follow an account that blocked you.

The Free plan covers accounts under 2,000 followers and checks once a month. It asks you to follow @unfollowmonkey, because X may refuse our DMs unless you follow us. Kong, a paid plan, checks every day. The plans are on the home page.

X's Help Center tells people to be cautious before giving a third-party app access to their account. You sign in to ours on X's own page, we never see your password and we never post as you. Before connecting any tracker, read what makes an unfollow tracker safe.