Do images get more engagement on X?
Text-only posts, with no image or video performed no differently from the same accounts' other posts: the measured 95% interval spans zero across 22,883 X accounts and 427,341 of their posts in the 30 days to 1 September 2026. Posts with media barely move at all, because 58.2% of posts in this sample already carry some, so media is the baseline rather than the boost.
Key findings
- Text-only posts, with no image or video performed no differently from the same accounts' other posts: the measured 95% interval spans zero across 22,883 X accounts and 427,341 of their posts in the 30 days to 1 September 2026.
- Posts carrying an image or video performed no differently from the same accounts' other posts: the measured 95% interval spans zero across 19,790 X accounts and 594,046 of their posts in the 30 days to 1 September 2026.
- Media is the default rather than the exception in this sample: 58.2% of 1,021,387 original X posts across 22,883 accounts carry an image or video, which is why the text-only bucket is the one that moves away from the baseline.
- Posts carrying a video specifically performed no differently from the same accounts' other posts: the measured 95% interval spans zero across 23,772 X accounts and 387,056 of their posts in the 30 days to 1 September 2026.
How much does an image or video change engagement?
| Post carries media | Effect (95% interval) | Accounts compared | Posts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Post carries an image or video | No measurable difference+97.4% to +105.6%, spans zero | 19,790 | 594,046 |
| Text only, no image or video | No measurable difference-48.5% to -46.6%, spans zero | 22,883 | 427,341 |
Each account is compared only against itself, and the 95% interval is computed across accounts rather than across posts. Measured over the 30 days to 1 September 2026.
| Bucket | Posts | Share of sample | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Post carries an image or video | 594,046 | 58.2% | No measurable difference |
| Text only, no image or video | 427,341 | 41.8% | No measurable difference |
The larger bucket sets the baseline. Read the smaller one as the deviation, not the other way round.
Does video do better than a still image?
| Post carries video | Effect (95% interval) | Accounts compared | Posts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Post carries a video | No measurable difference+45.8% to +49.6%, spans zero | 23,772 | 387,056 |
| No video in the post | No measurable difference-29.4% to -27.2%, spans zero | 17,803 | 696,317 |
Video is a subset of the media bucket above, not a separate category, so the two tables are not additive. Measured over the 30 days to 1 September 2026.
What this means next to the other format decisions
Media is worth getting right, but it is not the largest lever measured on the same posts. The gap between posts with an outbound link and posts without one is wider than the gap between media and text, which puts the link decision first in any ordering by size. See links and reach for that comparison, and post length for the one text-level variable that does show a measurable effect.
Frequently asked questions
- Do images get more engagement on X (Twitter)?
- The current media measurement is being recomputed. The method behind it is described on this page.
- Does video outperform images on X?
- Video does not produce a measurable advantage over other media in this dataset. The first-order decision is whether the post carries any media at all.
- Why is the effect of adding an image so small?
- Because the comparison group already has one. 58.2% of the 1,021,387 original posts measured here carry an image or video, so the typical post this bucket is measured against is itself a media post. In a sample where media was rare, the same underlying behaviour would show up as a large positive effect on media rather than a large negative effect on text.
- Should every post have an image?
- Not mechanically. What the data supports is that a post with no image or video underperforms in a sample where media is standard, which is an argument against publishing text-only by default rather than an argument for attaching a stock image to everything. An image that adds nothing still occupies the slot a reader would otherwise scroll past.
- How is media detected?
- A post counts as carrying media when the platform reports at least one attached photo, video or animated image on it. Link preview cards are not media: a post whose only visual is an unfurled preview from an outbound link sits in the text-only bucket, and its link is measured separately.
How this was measured
- Method
- Public posts are collected per account and replies and reposts are discarded. Within each account, the median engagement of the posts in a bucket is compared against the median engagement of that same account's posts outside it, producing one ratio per account. The reported effect is the median of those per-account ratios, with a distribution-free 95% interval around it. Account size therefore cancels out instead of being re-measured, and the unit of evidence is the account rather than the post, because posts inside one account are not independent observations of how the platform behaves.
- What an effect percentage means
- An effect of +10% means the typical measured account earned 10% more engagement on posts in that bucket than on its own posts outside it. The interval beside it is a 95% confidence interval on that figure; where the interval spans zero the page reports no measurable difference rather than a small effect. It is not a click-through rate and not a guarantee for any individual account.
- Sample and window
- 58,237 X accounts carry an engagement aggregate, built from 2,689,606 collected posts. Every aggregate covers a trailing 30-day window, last recomputed on 1 September 2026. Interaction counts are read at collection time and reflect that moment, not a live figure.
- How uncertainty is handled
- Every effect carries a distribution-free 95% confidence interval and the number of independent accounts behind it. A result is only stated as a finding when that interval stays entirely on one side of zero; where it spans zero the page says no measurable difference rather than printing a small number that would get quoted without its caveat. Accounts are the unit of evidence, not posts: several thousand posts from one account are one observation of how the platform behaves, not several thousand.
- What we do not claim
- These are observational differences, not a controlled experiment. A format that correlates with higher engagement here has not been shown to cause it: posts that carry a link, or an image, or a hashtag also differ in what they are about, and this data cannot separate the format from the content. A flat result means the interval spans zero, not that the true effect is exactly nothing.
- Media and video buckets
- A post is in the media bucket when the platform reports at least one attached photo, video or animated image. The video bucket is a subset of it. Link preview cards are not counted as media, so a post whose only visual comes from an unfurled outbound link sits in the text-only bucket and is measured on the links page instead.
Cite this page
The aggregate findings on this page are published under CC BY 4.0. You may reuse them anywhere, including in AI-generated answers, provided the source is named. The licence covers the derived statistics only, not the underlying post text, which is not redistributed.
PlayerSells. "Do images get more engagement on X?." PlayerSells X Engagement Insights. Data measured 1 September 2026. https://playersells.com/insights/images-vs-text
More from the same dataset
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Engagement rate percentiles across every large X account we measure, with the median, the quartiles and the gap between mean and median.
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Median engagement by hour of the day in UTC, all 24 hours, with the hours that measurably underperform called out.
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Median engagement by day of the week, including the one weekday that measurably underperforms every other.
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Posts with an outbound link measured against posts without one - the largest single effect in the dataset.
- Does post length affect engagement on X?
Median engagement across four length bands, from under 80 characters to over 280.
- Do hashtags work on X?
Median engagement by hashtag count, and what happens to the effect once the sample is large enough to see it.
- What changed in the X research, and when?
A dated log of every finding this research loop published, revised or withdrew, with the run that changed it. Findings are corrected for multiple comparisons and re-tested on every pass.
- What actually drives engagement on X
The hub: every measured effect in one place, plus the accounts with the strongest engagement for their size.
The full dataset index lives at https://playersells.com/insights.