Why Removing Followers on X Is Harder Than It Should Be
There's no button, no API, and no easy way to drop someone from following your account. Here's the technical reality behind that — and how we worked around it.
The missing API endpoint
X exposes a rich API for most account actions — posting, liking, following, blocking, muting. But one thing is conspicuously absent: removing a specific person from your followers list.
X does have a DELETE /2/users/:source_user_id/followers/:target_user_id endpoint. Sounds perfect, right? There's a catch: it's only available to Enterprise API tier customers — a plan that runs into the tens of thousands of dollars per month. Regular apps, including ours, don't have access to it.
So if you're building anything that helps people clean up their followers list, you hit this wall almost immediately. You can see the follower. You just can't remove them through the API.
Enterprise-only endpoint
DELETE /2/users/:id/followers/:follower_id exists in X's API documentation but is gated behind Enterprise access. Standard and Basic tier apps get a 403 when they try to call it.
The block / unblock workaround
There's one reliable way to force someone off your followers list without Enterprise API access: block them, then immediately unblock them.
When you block someone on X, they are automatically removed from your followers. When you then unblock them, they stay removed — they're no longer following you, but there's no lingering block between you either. It's a two-step dance that achieves exactly what the missing API endpoint would have done in one call.
X's block API is available to regular apps, so this path is technically open. It's just awkward — and it means a brief moment where you've blocked someone before unblocking them, which is not ideal but is functionally harmless.
How it works, step by step
Identify the follower
We scan your follower list via the API and flag accounts that haven't posted or engaged in over a year.
Block them (briefly)
We call POST /2/users/:id/blocking — a standard API endpoint — to block the target account. This immediately removes them from your followers.
Unblock them
We immediately call DELETE /2/users/:id/blocking to lift the block. The removal sticks — they're gone from your followers — but the block is cleared.
Why we built a Chrome extension for this
Even with the block/unblock trick in hand, there's another constraint: X's rate limits mean you can only remove a handful of followers per hour through the API before getting throttled. Do it too fast and X starts treating you as a bot.
Our Chrome extension takes a different approach entirely. Instead of hitting API endpoints programmatically, it operates at the browser level — simulating real human clicks on X's web interface. It opens each profile, finds the ⋯ → Remove this follower menu option, and clicks it exactly as a person would.
Because it mimics genuine browser input rather than API calls, it avoids the API rate limits entirely. We also built in deliberate pacing — a few seconds between each removal, longer pauses every 10 or 30 accounts — so the pattern looks human and doesn't trigger X's automated detection.
The irony
X's own app lets you remove followers — there's a "Remove this follower" option right there in the profile menu. It's a first-party feature. But that same capability is locked away from third-party developers unless they pay for Enterprise access. So we built an extension that does exactly what the X app does, just automatically. Sometimes the only path around a platform limitation is to work at the browser layer instead of the API layer.
Clean your followers list
Our tool scans your followers, identifies the inactive ones, and gives you the extension to remove them — one click at a time, no Enterprise plan required.