Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, one of his goals has been to build out its subscription business, launching a revamped Twitter Blue package that gives subscribers a “verified” checkmark, reduced ads, preferential treatment for its algorithm and other benefits. The subscription, which is still only available through iOS or the web, now offers a discounted annual subscription for customers, which you can choose instead of the web price of $8 per month or the iOS price of $11 that you transfer Apple’s 30 percent consumer fee.
If you want to get some extra funds right away, annual Twitter Blue subscriptions are available on the web for $84 per year, saving you just over 12 percent compared to paying for a monthly web subscription, or a 36 percent more than paying through iOS.
It’s not clear if Apple will care if Twitter gets its share this way, but Apple has historically created exceptions. in their App Store Guidelines for this sort of thing: “reader” apps and “cross-platform services” can usually let you sign into a subscription you’ve already bought elsewhere without paying Apple fees.
Twitter’s new annual call option was listing on a Twitter support page as of today, but we haven’t detected any other significant changes to the plan. Whether you pay monthly or annually, your checkmark will take an indeterminate amount of time to appear and you’ll need to verify a phone number to enable it.
The expedited payment option is appearing in the shadow of recent reports that Twitter has failed to pay rent for some of its office space. is being sued for non-payment in San Francisco and Singapore, there are multiple reports that employees were kicked out of the office for non-payment.
There was also a report early Tuesday of the financial times, which cites three unnamed sources as saying the first installment of interest payments on $13 billion in loans Musk used to finance his $44 billion Twitter acquisition could be due as early as the end of January. The document mentions that bankers are in talks with Musk about restructuring some of the expensive unsecured debt with margin loans backed by his Tesla stake.
