Updated July 2026: refreshed X's reply-filtering labels (the current "Show probable spam" wording) and the up-to-date method for collecting replies programmatically under X's 2026 API pricing model.
Key Takeaway: On X, comments are called replies and appear in a thread below the original post. Tap or click the post itself (not the reply icon) to open the thread, then scroll. Filtered replies sit behind a Show probable spam button, and author-hidden replies open from the hidden-reply icon. X ranks replies by relevance, not time.
Most people who want to see comments on X are looking at the app and cannot find where the replies live. Developers hit a different wall: the platform has no clean way to export every reply. Both paths are covered below. For the programmatic path, Sorsa API, an alternative Twitter/X API provider, exposes a dedicated /comments endpoint that returns replies with the full author profile attached and a choice of sort order, and you can run it against any public post in the browser playground with no code and no signup.
Comments on X are called replies
On X, there is no "comments" section in the sense other networks use. A comment is a reply: any post published in response to another post. Replies appear threaded directly beneath the original post, and the platform orders them by relevance and engagement rather than by time, so the first responses you see are usually the ones with the most likes or from accounts you follow, not the newest.
This naming is the root of most confusion. The reply count under a post shows the total number of replies, but the thread rarely displays all of them at once. Deleted replies, replies from protected accounts, replies the author hid, and replies X filtered as low quality are all counted yet not shown in the main view. Quote posts are a separate category again: they respond to a post by embedding it, and they live under the reposts or quotes count rather than in the reply thread.
How to see comments on X on desktop and mobile
To see comments on X, open the post itself and scroll down to the reply thread. The single most common mistake is tapping the reply icon (the speech bubble), which opens a box to write your own reply instead of showing existing ones. Open the post body, not the icon.
On the web (x.com):
- Sign in, then find the post through the author's profile, your timeline, or search.
- Click the post text or the timestamp to open the full post view.
- Scroll below the post to read the reply thread.
- Click any individual reply to open its own sub-thread and see replies to that reply.
- At the bottom of long threads, click Show more replies or Show probable spam to load additional responses.
On the iOS or Android app:
- Tap the post text (not the speech-bubble icon) to open it on its own screen.
- Scroll down through the replies listed beneath the post.
- Tap a nested reply to expand the mini-conversation branching from it.
- Tap Show probable spam near the end of the thread to reveal filtered replies.
Replies to replies form side threads that do not appear in the main list until you tap into them, so a post that looks like it has a dozen responses can hold a much larger conversation once you expand the branches.
Why you cannot see all the comments on a post
If a post shows a high reply count but the thread looks short, X is filtering or restricting part of the conversation. Replies go missing for a specific set of reasons, and only some of them can be recovered by you. The table below maps each cause to whether the reply is still viewable.
| Reason a reply is missing | What it means | Can you still see it? |
|---|---|---|
| Filtered as spam or low quality | X's algorithm buried the reply behind a button | Yes, tap Show probable spam |
| Hidden by the post author | The author moved it out of the main thread | Yes, open the hidden-reply icon |
| Protected (private) account | The replier's account is private | Only if you follow that account |
| You are blocked | The replier blocked your account | No, not from your account |
| Restricted reply settings | The author limited who can reply | Only replies from the allowed group exist |
| Deleted by the replier | The reply was removed | No, deleted replies are gone |
| Account suspended | X removed the account's content | No |
| Loading or cache glitch | A slow connection or stale page | Yes, refresh or switch device |
Restricted reply settings are worth calling out because they change what exists, not just what is shown. When creating a post, an author can allow replies from everyone, only accounts they follow, verified accounts, or only people mentioned. If the setting is narrow, most users were never able to reply in the first place, so there is nothing hidden to reveal.
How to see hidden and filtered replies
X keeps two layers of replies out of the default thread: replies the author manually hid, and replies the algorithm filtered. They are reached in different places.
Author-hidden replies open from the hidden-reply icon, a dashed speech bubble that appears on the original post when hidden replies exist. Anyone can open it; hiding a reply does not delete it and does not notify its author, and the author can unhide it at any time. Replies from protected accounts and deleted replies will not appear on that hidden-reply page even if they were once hidden.
Filtered replies sit behind the Show probable spam button at the bottom of the thread. According to tech publication The Shortcut, X renamed this control from "Show more replies" to "Show probable spam" around 2024, and it surfaces replies flagged as lower quality based on the author's past behavior and the content of the reply. A second, deeper layer sometimes appears labeled "Show additional replies, including those that may contain offensive content," which holds the replies X scored as most likely to be spam or graphic. Neither filter is perfect, so legitimate replies occasionally land there and are worth checking when a conversation feels incomplete.
Reading X comments without an account, and reply order
Reading X comments without an account is largely blocked. Since 2023, X requires you to be signed in to browse most posts and their replies, so logged-out visitors see limited content and often a login prompt instead of the thread. Creating an account is the reliable way to read a full public reply thread, and even then, replies from protected accounts stay invisible unless you follow them.
Reply order is the other frequent surprise. X does not sort replies chronologically and offers no dependable in-app control to switch to newest first. The thread is ranked by relevance: likes, the replier's reputation, whether you follow them, and your own activity all feed the order. Two people can open the same post and see replies arranged differently. This is exactly where programmatic access pulls ahead, because an API can return replies in a defined, repeatable order instead of a personalized ranking.
How to get X comments with an API
Getting X replies programmatically takes one of two routes: the official X API's search endpoint with the conversation_id operator, or a third-party X API that offers a dedicated replies endpoint. The official platform has no direct "get replies to this post" call, so on that route you reconstruct threads from search results, and standard access limits that search to the last seven days.
The official X API method and its limits
Every reply shares the conversation_id of the post that started the thread, which equals that post's own ID. To collect replies on the official API, you search for that conversation_id:
curl "https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/recent?query=conversation_id:1234567890&tweet.fields=author_id,created_at&expansions=author_id" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
Three constraints make this awkward in practice. Recent search only reaches replies from the last seven days; older threads require full-archive search, which sits behind higher-cost access tiers. Billing is per resource, so each reply post and each author profile is charged as a separate read under X's 2026 pay-per-use model. And the search operator set gives no clean way to isolate replies to one specific reply inside a large thread, a limitation developers have flagged for years. If you already work with the official search endpoints, our guide to how to search tweets with the API covers the operator syntax in full.
Getting replies with the Sorsa /comments endpoint
A dedicated replies endpoint removes the conversation_id reconstruction entirely. The /comments endpoint takes a post link or ID and returns the replies under it, each as a full post object with the author profile included at no extra charge. It accepts an order_by value of Relevance, Recency, or Likes, which is the repeatable sort the native app never gives you, and it paginates about 20 replies per page through a next_cursor.
curl -X POST "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/comments" \
-H "ApiKey: YOUR_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"tweet_link": "https://x.com/user/status/1782368585664626774", "order_by": "Likes"}'
The same call in Python, printing each replier's handle and text:
import requests
resp = requests.post(
"https://api.sorsa.io/v3/comments",
headers={"ApiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
json={"tweet_link": "https://x.com/user/status/1782368585664626774", "order_by": "Recency"},
)
for reply in resp.json()["tweets"]:
print(reply["user"]["username"], reply["full_text"])
Authentication is a single API key in the ApiKey header, with no OAuth flow and no app-review queue. Pricing is flat per request: one call counts as one request from your quota regardless of how many replies it returns, starting from $0.02 per 1,000 tweets on the batch base, where one request returns up to 100 posts or 200 profiles. Plans run $49 per month for 10,000 requests, $199 for 100,000, and $899 for 500,000, all at a flat 20 requests per second. Every new account gets 100 free requests, one-time, no credit card, valid across all 40 endpoints, enough for up to 10,000 tweets or 20,000 profiles before you decide anything. The /comments endpoint reference documents every response field, and the broader set of replies, quotes, and retweeters via API covers the rest of the engagement surface.
You can run the endpoint against any public post right now in the no-code playground, paste a link, pick a sort order, and read the JSON, before writing a line of code or creating an account. To wire the same call into a script, the Python integration walkthrough picks up where the snippet above ends, and reply text feeds naturally into a pipeline that can classify reply sentiment at scale.
Official X API vs Sorsa for pulling replies
For collecting replies specifically, the two providers differ less on price and more on whether a replies endpoint exists at all. The official API is the correct choice when you need to post, reply, or send DMs, since those write actions run only through it. For reading replies at volume, a flat-rate read-only path is simpler and, on read-heavy workloads, up to 50x cheaper.
| Aspect | Official X API | Sorsa |
|---|---|---|
| Replies endpoint | None; reconstruct via search on conversation_id | Dedicated /comments endpoint |
| Reply sort control | Search order only | order_by Relevance, Recency, or Likes |
| History window | Recent search last 7 days; archive behind higher tiers | No 7-day recent-search cap |
| Author profile | Billed as a separate user read | Included free with each reply |
| Billing unit | Per resource fetched | Flat per request (1 call = 1 request) |
| Auth | OAuth 2.0 and Bearer Token | Single API key in a header |
| Write actions | Posting and DMs supported | Read-only by design |
The table reads simply: if the job is writing to X, use the official API; if the job is reading replies programmatically, a dedicated endpoint with flat billing and a defined sort order does it with less code. This positions Sorsa as a practical Twitter API alternative for read work rather than a replacement for X's write features.
How to verify whether a specific user replied
A common variant of "see comments" is checking whether one particular account replied to a post, which matters for giveaway rules, moderation, and support triage. Scanning a full thread by hand does not scale, and the reply may be filtered out of the visible view anyway.
The /check-comment endpoint answers this directly. It takes a post link plus a username, user ID, or profile link, and returns whether that account commented along with the reply itself when it exists.
curl "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/check-comment?tweet_link=https://x.com/user/status/1782368585664626774&username=someuser" \
-H "ApiKey: YOUR_API_KEY"
The response reports commented as true or false and includes the matching reply, so a campaign backend can confirm entries in one call. This is the core of a broader campaign flow that can also verify giveaway entries across follows, reposts, and comments without manual checking.
A mid-size social-analytics team ran into the reply-collection problem head on. Their brand-monitoring product needed every reply under client posts, and their first build reconstructed threads on the official API through conversation_id search, paying per reply and per author profile and losing anything older than the seven-day recent-search window. Moving reply collection to a flat per-request endpoint cut their reply-data costs by more than 90 percent and removed the archive-window workaround, since one call now returned a page of replies with author profiles already attached. The engineering saving was as real as the billing one: the conversation_id plumbing came out of the codebase entirely.
FAQ
How do you see comments on a tweet on X?
Open the post and scroll to the reply thread beneath it. On both web and the mobile app, tap or click the post text itself rather than the speech-bubble reply icon, which only opens a box to write a reply. Scroll down to read responses, and tap any reply to expand the smaller conversation branching from it.
Why can't you see comments on X?
A post can show many replies while the thread looks short because X filters and restricts part of the conversation. Common causes are replies filtered as spam, replies the author hid, protected accounts you do not follow, accounts that blocked you, restricted reply settings, and deleted replies. Filtered replies return when you tap the Show probable spam button.
How do you read comments on X without an account?
Reading full reply threads on X without an account is mostly blocked. Since 2023 the platform requires you to be signed in to browse most posts and their replies, so logged-out visitors usually see a login prompt instead of the thread. Creating a free account is the dependable way to read public replies, and protected accounts still stay hidden unless you follow them.
Where is the comment button on X, and how do you view comments in the app?
There is no separate comment button that lists responses. The speech-bubble icon opens a compose box for writing your own reply, not for reading existing ones. To view comments in the X app, tap the post text to open it on its own screen, then scroll down to the replies. Tap a nested reply to open its side thread.
Can you sort X comments by newest instead of relevance?
The native X app has no reliable control to sort a reply thread by newest, since it ranks replies by relevance, engagement, and your connections. An API returns replies in a defined order instead. Sorsa's /comments endpoint accepts an order_by value of Relevance, Recency, or Likes, so you get the same repeatable ordering every call rather than a personalized ranking.
How do you get all the replies to a tweet with an API?
The official X API has no dedicated replies endpoint, so you search the conversation_id operator and reconstruct the thread, limited to the last seven days on standard access. A read-only alternative exposes replies directly: Sorsa's /comments endpoint takes a post link, returns each reply with its author profile attached, paginates through a cursor, and sorts by Relevance, Recency, or Likes.
What is the difference between comments, replies, and quotes on X?
On X, comments and replies are the same thing: posts published in response to another post, threaded below it. Quote posts are different. A quote embeds the original post inside a new post and appears under the reposts or quotes count, not in the reply thread. Reading the whole conversation means checking both the replies and the quotes.
Getting started with the X comments API
Seeing comments on X in the app takes a few taps once you know to open the post rather than the reply icon. Collecting them at scale, in a fixed sort order, with author profiles attached, is where an API earns its place.
Start in the live API playground to run the /comments endpoint against a real post and read the response, then claim 100 free requests to pull replies from your own targets with no credit card. The quickstart guide has you authenticated in about three minutes, and flat per-request pricing keeps the bill predictable whether you read a thousand replies or a million.
Reviewed by Keksich, founder of Sorsa, marketer and X API researcher.
This guide draws on hands-on operation of the Sorsa /comments and /check-comment endpoints, the live API documentation, and the current X reply interface tested on x.com and the mobile app in July 2026. External reference: The Shortcut on X's "Show probable spam" relabeling. The official X API reply-collection method and its seven-day recent-search window were verified against X's published conversation_id behavior in July 2026; platform filtering labels can change, so re-check the in-app wording if it differs.