Checking by hand

How to see who unfollowed you on X (Twitter) without an app, for free

Twitter, now X, has no list of who unfollowed you and sends no notification when someone leaves. You can still find out for free and without an app, from the "Follows you" label on a profile or from two downloads of your X data archive.

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The short answer

For one person, open their profile while you're logged in: no "Follows you" label means they don't follow you. For everyone, request your X data archive now and a second one later, then compare the follower file in the two downloads. Accounts in the first and missing from the second stopped following you in between. X says to allow a few days per archive, and nobody who left before your first one will show up.

Check one person: the "Follows you" label

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.

Check everyone for free: compare two X data archives

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

    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 data. Your email address has to be confirmed first. 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 and look in its data folder for follower.js (the accounts you follow are in following.js beside it, in the same form). X's help pages don't describe these files, so treat this as the layout as of October 2026. Open the file with a text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit (right-click, Open with). Each follower is an entry with an accountId, which is a long number, and a userLink. There are no usernames.

  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. To see only those rows, 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.

  6. 6

    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. Skip the userLink stored beside the number, which is a link to follow the account.

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.

A follower is missing: unfollowed, suspended or deleted?

The comparison tells you an account no longer follows you. It can't tell you why. X's own help page gives three reasons a follower disappears: they unfollowed you, they deactivated their account, or X hid them for spam activity.

We run UnfollowMonkey, an unfollow tracker, so we see what missing followers turn out to be. Of the more than 9,000 follower losses we recorded between May and October 2026, 47% were unfollows. The other 53% were accounts that had been suspended (23%) or deleted or deactivated (30%). Those figures come from the accounts we track, most of them under 2,000 followers.

Unfollowed
47%
Deleted
30%
Suspended
23%
More than 9,000 follower losses recorded by UnfollowMonkey, May to October 2026, by what happened to the account.

By hand, you sort them one profile at a time. If x.com/i/user/ plus the number opens an ordinary profile, the account is still on X, so it unfollowed you. If the profile says you're blocked, that's a block, and 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, and about a third of the followers we recorded as deleted came back later.

What checking manually can't tell you

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. Of the unfollows we recorded, about one in ten ended with the person following again later.

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.

Can a console script or an extension do it faster?

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.

When is a tracker worth it?

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. Blocks show up as unfollows, because we can't tell the two apart. To know which, you still open the profile, where X shows you when you're blocked.

The Free plan covers accounts under 2,000 followers and checks once a month. It asks you to follow @unfollowmonkey, because X only lets us DM you if 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 for you. Before connecting any tracker, read what makes an unfollow tracker safe.

Frequently asked questions

Can I see who unfollowed me on Twitter last month if I saved nothing back then?

No. X shows no history of who left, and an archive only lists who follows you when it's made. Trackers have the same limit. Ours starts watching when you sign up, so we can only tell you about unfollows from then on.

Can I request the archive from the X app on my phone?

Yes, under Settings and privacy. As of October 2026, X's help pages give two paths from there: one page says Account, then Data and permissions, then Your X data, and another says Your account, then Download an archive of your data. Use whichever your app shows.

Why does my followers list show fewer people than my follower count?

X's help page on following issues says the quality filter leaves suspected spam accounts out of the list, and that turning it off shows the full list. The setting is under Notifications, then the gear icon (Settings on the web), then Quality filter, and X says it's on by default for new accounts.

Does the Twitter archive show when someone followed or unfollowed me?

No, the follower file has no dates. X does email you by default when someone new follows you, so a new follower leaves a date in your inbox.

Sources

Related guides

Let the monkey do the comparing

Connect your X account and we'll DM you when someone unfollows you.