The Atlantic engagement report
@TheAtlantic - 1.9M followers on X
Measured over 335 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 1, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 24 interactions against 1.9M followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 335 original posts, its engagement rate beats 20% of 3,899 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 13K times each, and 0.188% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.685% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 12.2 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on roughly 53% of days. Most posts go out around 22:00 UTC, and Tuesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 335 posts sampled, 19% carry an image or video and 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 784 interactions, about 33x its own typical post.
Measured over 335 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 1, 2026.
Compared with accounts its own size
The Atlantic's engagement rate beats 20% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,899 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 18% 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 0.001%, The Atlantic sits below the 10th percentile of the 37,701 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 | 0.081% |
| 75th percentile | 0.439% |
| 90th percentile | 2.10% |
| 99th percentile | 156.3% |
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 22:00 UTC, and Tuesday 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% | 53K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 53K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 52K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 55K |
| 04:00 UTC | -6% | 44K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 43K |
| 06:00 UTC | -4% | 50K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 54K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 63K |
| 09:00 UTC | -3% | 72K |
| 10:00 UTC | -2% | 75K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 81K |
| 12:00 UTC | -2% | 90K |
| 13:00 UTC | -2% | 98K |
| 14:00 UTC | -3% | 101K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 105K |
| 16:00 UTC | -4% | 102K |
| 17:00 UTC | -3% | 95K |
| 18:00 UTC | -1% | 88K |
| 19:00 UTC | -2% | 83K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 77K |
| 21:00 UTC | -1% | 69K |
| 22:00 UTC | -2% | 60K |
| 23:00 UTC | -2% | 53K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +5% | 238K |
| Monday | 0% | 302K |
| Tuesday | -3% | 302K |
| Wednesday | -1% | 257K |
| Thursday | -2% | 250K |
| Friday | -3% | 259K |
| Saturday | +3% | 233K |
Best tweets
- Aug 20, 202633x their median
“Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty,” @AdamSerwer argued in 2018. https://t.co/aPyRu6lY9H
- Aug 28, 202625x their median
The blowup of the U.S.-Canada relations could give credence to those who claim that “America is no different and no better” than Russia and China, @davidfrum argues. Watch The David Frum Show: https://t.co/kKkUFOXndJ https://t.co/FBVDJANTA1 https://t.co/w9AxVKjonz
- Aug 21, 202625x their median
If the White House’s goal was to shut down talk about the Donald Trump aide Natalie Harp, it backfired spectacularly, @JonLemire argues: https://t.co/g7F7EAjJtw
- Sep 1, 202624x their median
Exclusive: Prior to his resignation, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll took his concerns about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership directly to President Trump, @nancyayoussef, @missy_ryan, and @michaelscherer report: https://t.co/ACatIzdp9j
- Aug 23, 202623x their median
“Iran has, with American help, completely reconfigured the power structure of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf,” Robert Kagan argues. The world will now “discover what Iran unleashed looks like.” https://t.co/tUjwnEpMEU
- Aug 29, 202621x their median
Countries such as Nigeria, Peru, and the Philippines offer lessons in how to clean up after a corrupt regime, which could prove useful once Trump leaves office, @davidfrum argues. https://t.co/hLZhlB5RWc
- Aug 30, 202621x their median
Karoline Leavitt performed perfectly well the job of press secretary, as defined by an administration in which everybody’s main priority is to lie on television, @jonathanchait argues. https://t.co/up9FeYgW7o
- Aug 26, 202621x their median
Insisting the late Cambridge University professor Jason Arday was not a fabulist “is an emotional position rather than a rational one,” @helenlewis argues, “and its very indefensibility makes it a greater demonstration of tribal loyalty”: https://t.co/4LJnkX4qcv
- Aug 23, 202621x their median
Donald Trump may lose his trade war with Canada for the same reason he lost the Iran war, @davidfrum argues. https://t.co/YceGemieoh
- Aug 17, 202619x their median
Introducing Rabbithole: The Atlantic’s new game that invites you down a tunnel of trivia where each answer turns into the next question. The deeper you go, the harder the questions get. Can you make it to the bottom with a perfect score? https://t.co/pw9eXPs6fJ https://t.co/bBTD1NBYok
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.
Buy or sell X accounts - escrow-protected
PlayerSells is an escrow marketplace for X accounts. Every deal is protected, with no middleman risk.
Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 24 interactions against 1.9M followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 335 original posts, its engagement rate beats 20% of 3,899 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 13K times each, and 0.188% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.685% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 12.2 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on roughly 53% of days. Most posts go out around 22:00 UTC, and Tuesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 335 posts sampled, 19% carry an image or video and 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 784 interactions, about 33x its own typical post.
- What is The Atlantic's engagement rate on X?
- The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) has an engagement rate of 0.001%, based on the median interactions across 335 original posts from the last 30 days against 1,862,614 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.001%, The Atlantic sits below the 10th percentile of the 37,701 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 @TheAtlantic have real engagement?
- Its engagement rate beats 20% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,899 accounts), which puts it in the bottom quarter 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 @TheAtlantic post?
- Most posts go out around 22:00 UTC, and Tuesday is its busiest day, at roughly 12.23 posts per day across the measured window.