The Independent engagement report
@Independent - 3.4M followers on X
Measured over 350 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 1, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 8 interactions against 3.4M followers, an engagement rate of 0%. Measured over 350 original posts, its engagement rate beats 6% of 3,774 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 9.8K times each, and 0.082% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.287% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 11.7 posts a day over the last 30 days, though only 43% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 10:00 UTC, and Monday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 350 posts sampled, 81% carry an image or video and 83% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 4.1K interactions, about 517x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #news, #worldnews, #donaldtrump.
Measured over 350 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 1, 2026. Recurring tags: #news, #worldnews, #donaldtrump.
Compared with accounts its own size
The Independent's engagement rate beats 6% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,774 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 10 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.
On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 7% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.
Where this sits in the catalog
At under 0.001%, The Independent sits below the 10th percentile of the 36,654 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.012%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.002% |
| 25th percentile | 0.012% |
| 50th percentile | 0.08% |
| 75th percentile | 0.433% |
| 90th percentile | 2.10% |
| 99th percentile | 160.5% |
This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built
Posting timing
This account posts most often around 10:00 UTC, and Monday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
| Hour (UTC) | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC | -1% | 51K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 52K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 50K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 53K |
| 04:00 UTC | -6% | 43K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 42K |
| 06:00 UTC | -4% | 48K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 52K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 61K |
| 09:00 UTC | -3% | 70K |
| 10:00 UTC | -2% | 72K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 78K |
| 12:00 UTC | -2% | 86K |
| 13:00 UTC | -2% | 94K |
| 14:00 UTC | -4% | 97K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 101K |
| 16:00 UTC | -3% | 98K |
| 17:00 UTC | -2% | 91K |
| 18:00 UTC | -1% | 85K |
| 19:00 UTC | -1% | 80K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 74K |
| 21:00 UTC | -1% | 66K |
| 22:00 UTC | -1% | 57K |
| 23:00 UTC | -2% | 52K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +4% | 231K |
| Monday | 0% | 288K |
| Tuesday | -2% | 278K |
| Wednesday | -1% | 251K |
| Thursday | -1% | 245K |
| Friday | -3% | 253K |
| Saturday | +3% | 227K |
Best tweets
- Aug 22, 2026517x their median
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has received £20m in donations from cryptocurrency investors since the general election, The Independent can reveal. Read more: https://t.co/1ViWtgd4gS https://t.co/1jZwwnDfyd
- Aug 18, 2026108x their median
How to Sell a Genocide: The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, by American writer Adam Johnson, was withdrawn from Waverley Library Read more here https://t.co/VBZxNwGWwQ https://t.co/72x5wWq24t
- Aug 27, 202684x their median
He was held responsible for the killing of over 8,000 Muslim men and boys Read in full: https://t.co/w3UxoJq4v9 https://t.co/wCxy2UUMuU
- Aug 29, 202680x their median
Judge finds mother with postpartum psychosis not guilty of murdering her two children in case echoing Lindsay Clancy trial https://t.co/YSYy0YMYQL
- Aug 29, 202663x their median
🚨 Russia has successfully tested a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the US Follow live https://t.co/8LCIoCQ3Ud https://t.co/SmTfr4vqo8
- Aug 24, 202661x their median
Now is the time to impose real and immediate economic costs on Israel for its actions in Gaza and the West Bank Read in full: https://t.co/7ul8sizlmo https://t.co/Fsk3wgUu4N
- Aug 17, 202639x their median
As a vigil for Professor Jason Arday is held, award-winning barrister and senior research associate at Jesus College, Cambridge, Dr Charlotte Proudman examines the very different scrutiny faced by professors accused of sexual misconduct Read more: https://t.co/l5KjYK6KeQ https://t.co/BYYzuEoK9D
- Aug 31, 202633x their median
Exclusive: The “Burnham bounce” has ended just weeks after the new prime minister entered Downing Street, leading pollsters have said, as they warned there would be no point in Labour calling an early election. Read more: https://t.co/o4JY8L1VNf https://t.co/CuNAtP4qns
- Aug 25, 202632x their median
Israel has threatened to shoot down kites sent across its border from Gaza, saying they will be treated “the same as a drone” despite admitting there is no evidence they contain explosives Read more here https://t.co/J1JSpVoiLX https://t.co/xfKXkOmFg6
- Aug 18, 202624x their median
BREAKING: Film, TV and stage actor Phyllida Law, whose daughters are actors Emma and Sophie Thompson has died, aged 94. Read more: https://t.co/m8YMZ8pWXU https://t.co/C1ziGJCLTV
Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.
Recurring topics
The most frequent hashtags in the sampled posts. They describe what this account writes about; they are not a performance signal, and the catalog-wide breakdown on the hub shows how little hashtag count moves.
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Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 8 interactions against 3.4M followers, an engagement rate of 0%. Measured over 350 original posts, its engagement rate beats 6% of 3,774 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 9.8K times each, and 0.082% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.287% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 11.7 posts a day over the last 30 days, though only 43% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 10:00 UTC, and Monday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 350 posts sampled, 81% carry an image or video and 83% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 4.1K interactions, about 517x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #news, #worldnews, #donaldtrump.
- What is The Independent's engagement rate on X?
- The Independent (@Independent) has an engagement rate of 0%, based on the median interactions across 350 original posts from the last 30 days against 3,411,920 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At under 0.001%, The Independent sits below the 10th percentile of the 36,654 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
- Does @Independent have real engagement?
- Its engagement rate beats 6% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,774 accounts), which puts it in the bottom 10% for its size group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
- When does @Independent post?
- Most posts go out around 10:00 UTC, and Monday is its busiest day, at roughly 11.7 posts per day across the measured window.