What happened to the Twitter Card Validator, and how to test cards now

What happened to the Card Validator?

On 2 August 2022 the X developer team, then still Twitter, announced on its developer forum that it had removed the preview function from the Card Validator. The reason given was that the validator's previews did not always match how cards displayed across the apps, and that the app itself was the best place to check.

The same post said the validator page stayed online for two jobs: submitting brand new domains, and reading logs that confirm whether X can reach and recognise the card on a URL. Previews would no longer be shown there. When we requested the validator address on 10 November 2026, it redirected to the X login page, so it still exists behind a login; X has published nothing newer about it that we could find.

How do I test a Twitter card today?

There are four checks, from quickest to most thorough. None replaces the others; the composer tells you what X shows, and the source tells you why.

1. The post composer

1. 01

   Open a new post

   On x.com or in the X app, start a new post. The announcement names the web client and the Android and iOS apps.

2. 02

   Paste the full URL

   Use the exact https address with your usual trailing slash. Do not post it.

3. 03

   Wait for the card

   If the page has working card tags, the preview renders on its own under the text box.

4. 04

   Read the card

   Check the card type (wide image or small square), the title and the image.

5. 05

   Discard the draft

   Close the composer without posting. Nothing is published, and the check costs nothing.

2. The page source

View source on the published page, logged out, and search for twitter: and og:. You want one twitter:card tag, and either a twitter:image or an og:image. The X cards markup reference lists the Open Graph fallback for each tag: title falls back to og:title, description to og:description, image to og:image. It also notes that if og:type, og:title and og:description exist but twitter:card is missing, a summary card may be rendered, which is the small square, not the wide one. Which tags to print and why is covered in our twitter:card markup guide; this page sticks to testing.

3. The crawler's view

X's crawler identifies itself as Twitterbot. Requesting your page with that user agent shows whether a firewall, a bot challenge or a security plugin treats it differently from a browser.

curl -s -A "Twitterbot/1.0" https://example.com/town-clock/ | grep -i -E "twitter:|og:"
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code} %{content_type} %{size_download}\n" \
  -A "Twitterbot/1.0" https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/town-clock-1200x630.jpg

The first command should print your tags. The second should return 200, an image content type, and a size well under 5 MB.

4. Before you publish

The composer needs a public URL. For a draft or a staging page, paste the HTML into our in-browser link preview checker, which reads the twitter and Open Graph tags without fetching anything. It tells you whether the tags are complete, not whether X can reach the page, so repeat the composer check after launch.

Why is my card not showing?

X's troubleshooting guide for cards lists the usual causes. The limits below come from that guide and the markup reference.

How do I get X to show the updated card?

There is no scrape button on X. The forum post says card data is cached for up to 7 days before it is refreshed, and the troubleshooting guide describes the crawler re-indexing roughly every seven days. Two workarounds come from X's own docs, followed by the step that finishes the job:

1. Give the page URL a unique parameter for testing. The troubleshooting guide suggests a placeholder parameter such as ?x=test1, which X treats as a new URL and fetches fresh. Use it to confirm a fix, not in the posts you publish.
2. Give the image a new URL. Images are cached by URL, so a changed picture at the same address can stay old. Upload under a new name, or add a version parameter to the twitter:image or og:image URL.
3. Post the clean URL once the test card is right. Posts made before the refresh may keep the old card until X's cache expires.

Does X read the Facebook tags?

Yes, as fallbacks. A site with a complete Open Graph set needs only a twitter:card line to get the wide card. That is also why a fix in the Open Graph tags shows up on X too. Facebook's equivalent of the old validator still exists and still forces a refresh; see using Meta's Sharing Debugger. The tag set both read is explained in the Open Graph section, and image sizing that survives both crops is in the Open Graph image size guide.

What goes wrong

• Trusting an old third-party validator. Third-party preview tools render their own guess at a card, not X's card. The composer is the reference.
• Posting the test URL. A ?x=test1 link in a real post splits your share count and looks odd. Test with it, publish without it.
• Using property instead of name. The markup reference writes twitter tags with the name attribute. Open Graph tags use property.
• Two twitter:card tags. An SEO plugin prints summary_large_image and a share plugin prints summary. Remove one source.
• Blocking Twitterbot by accident. A robots.txt rule meant for scrapers, or a bot challenge on the CDN, stops the card. The troubleshooting guide shows an explicit User-agent: Twitterbot allow rule.
• A huge PNG. A design export over 5 MB fails silently. Export a JPG or WEBP at 1200 by 630.

Check it worked

• A new post in the X composer, with the clean URL pasted, shows the wide image card with the right title. You then discard the draft.
• View source, logged out, shows exactly one twitter:card tag using the name attribute.
• The curl request with the Twitterbot user agent returns your tags, and the image request returns 200 with an image type.
• The image is a public https URL, under 5 MB, in JPG, PNG or WEBP.
• After a change, the composer shows the new card for a test URL with a unique parameter, and the clean URL updates within about a week.

Sources

• X Developers forum, Card Validator: preview removal, 2 August 2022 (Internet Archive copy, January 2024)
• X Developer Platform, Troubleshooting Cards (Internet Archive copy, April 2025)
• X Developer Platform, Cards markup reference (Internet Archive copy, May 2025)

Questions

Related reading

1. 01Twitter cards on X: tags and testingSet up Twitter card tags so links to your WordPress posts show a large image on X: the summary_large_image card, fallbacks to Open Graph, sizes and testing.6 min read
2. 02How to use the Facebook Sharing DebuggerUse Meta's Sharing Debugger to see the tags Facebook scraped, read each warning, force a fresh scrape, and refresh many URLs or call the Graph API instead.9 min read
3. 03Link preview checker: test your Open Graph and card tagsPaste a page's HTML to check its Open Graph and X card tags, see mock previews, and find duplicate, missing or relative tags. Runs in your browser only.10 min read
4. 04Open Graph image size: 1200 by 630 and the safe zoneThe right Open Graph image size is 1200 by 630 pixels at a 1.91:1 ratio. Minimums, file limits, formats, and a centre safe zone for square crops.6 min read