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Fake Followers Checker for Twitter: Free Audit (2026)

Run a fake followers checker on Twitter yourself: five signals, a free Python script, an agent prompt, and what 118 new @github followers showed.


Published · Updated · 7 min read

Cover image: 118 GitHub followers, audited

A fake followers checker for Twitter samples an account's followers and counts how many look fake or inactive: no photo, no bio, no posts.

You can run one yourself on any public account on X (Twitter): yours, a rival's, or an influencer you may pay. You get the signals, a prompt, a free script and our @github audit. We run Weir, the API both use.

Paste this into Claude, ChatGPT or any agent with Weir connected:

Use Weir to fetch 2 pages of followers of @github. Never show me a
follower's handle, name, bio or photo. Report only the share with a
default profile image, no bio, fewer than 10 posts, following 10x more
accounts than follow them, joined in the last 30 days, or 3+ of these.
  1. Pull a sampleOne or two pages of followers.
  2. Count the signsPhoto, bio, posts, ratio, age.
  3. Read the sharesWatch three or more signs.
  4. DecideKeep, block or report.

How to check fake followers on Twitter: the signals

You check fake followers on Twitter by reading each follower's profile for signs that bought or abandoned accounts share. Each sign has an innocent reason too.

Sign Field to read Innocent reason
Default profile image profileImageUrl Never bothered to add one
No bio description Reads, never writes
Zero or very few posts statusesCount A lurker
Follows far more than follow it followingCount, followersCount New and still exploring
Very new account createdAt Just joined X
No recent post Not in the follower list Took a break

The last row costs extra. Weir's follower list has no last post date, so you'd fetch each timeline, at about 4 credits each.

Our Twitter bot checker guide goes deeper on single accounts, including X's "Automated" label.

What we found: a fake Twitter followers audit of @github

We audited two pages of @github's followers through Weir on 28 October 2026. That gave us 118 accounts for 122 credits.

Share of 118 new @github followers with each sign, 28 October 2026
No bio57%
Fewer than 10 posts53%
Follow 10x more than follow them53%
Three or more signs49%
Zero posts37%
Joined in the last 30 days25%
Default profile image19%

Half the sample sounds alarming. It isn't proof of fakes.

  • The order skews it. X listed 20 large developer accounts first, each with over 40,000 followers. None showed a single sign.
  • After them came the newest followers. Of those 98, 59% showed three or more signs, and half had joined X in 2026.
  • New people look like this. Someone who signs up today and follows GitHub has no bio, no posts and no followers yet.

So the audit shows how fresh an audience is, not who is fake. Sample again in a month: accounts still silent by then are more likely inactive.

Run the audit from your AI agent

The prompt at the top runs this audit in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex. Swap @github for any public account.

Our X MCP server page shows how to connect Weir. We made the same calls through it for the chart above.

Twitter fake followers check, free, in Python

This script needs only Python's standard library, so it runs in agent sandboxes with no pip. Set WEIR_API_KEY to a free key first.

The first half pulls followers until the cursor is null:

import json, os, sys, urllib.parse, urllib.request
def followers(user, max_pages=2):
    url = f"https://api.weirapp.io/v1/x/users/{user}/followers"
    headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['WEIR_API_KEY']}"}
    rows, cursor = [], None
    for _ in range(max_pages):
        query = "?" + urllib.parse.urlencode({"cursor": cursor}) if cursor else ""
        req = urllib.request.Request(url + query, headers=headers)
        with urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=60) as r:
            page = json.load(r)
        rows += page["data"]
        cursor = page["meta"]["nextCursor"]
        if not cursor:
            break
    return rows

The second half counts the signs and prints shares, never names:

from datetime import datetime, timezone
def age_days(a):
    born = datetime.fromisoformat(a["createdAt"].replace("Z", "+00:00"))
    return (datetime.now(timezone.utc) - born).days
SIGNS = {
    "default profile image": lambda a: "default_profile" in (a["profileImageUrl"] or "default_profile"),
    "no bio": lambda a: not (a["description"] or "").strip(),
    "fewer than 10 posts": lambda a: a["statusesCount"] < 10,
    "follows 10x more than follow it": lambda a: a["followingCount"] >= 10 * max(a["followersCount"], 1),
    "joined in the last 30 days": lambda a: age_days(a) <= 30,
}
rows = followers(sys.argv[1], int(sys.argv[2]) if len(sys.argv) > 2 else 2)
print(len(rows), "followers sampled")
for name, test in SIGNS.items():
    print(f"{sum(map(test, rows)) / len(rows):4.0%}  {name}")
hits = [sum(test(a) for test in SIGNS.values()) for a in rows]
print(f"{sum(h >= 3 for h in hits) / len(rows):4.0%}  three or more of these")

Save both as fake_followers.py and run python fake_followers.py github. Checked against our audit's two pages, it printed:

118 followers sampled
 19%  default profile image
 57%  no bio
 53%  fewer than 10 posts
 53%  follows 10x more than follow it
 25%  joined in the last 30 days
 49%  three or more of these

What it costs: 1 credit per follower and 1 per call, plus 2 for the first page's account lookup. Weir's 5,000 free credits a month cover about 4,900 followers. Counting verified followers works the same way.

How many fake followers on Twitter is normal?

No fair benchmark exists, so compare an account with itself over time.

The last official figure is old. Twitter's 10-Q for mid-2022 put false or spam accounts at "fewer than 5%" of daily active users. That counts active users, not followers.

Checkers also use their own rules, so two can score one account very differently.

Remove fake followers on Twitter: what X says

X's Following FAQs answer it plainly: "Yes, you can remove any account from following you."

  • Do it on the web. X says removing a follower is "available on web only." Open your followers list or their profile, then use the menu next to the account.
  • They can come back. Removal doesn't stop them following a public account again. Blocking does.
  • X removes some itself. When X locks an account, it says "we remove them from follower counts across profiles globally," so your count can drop.
  • Report spam. The same FAQ points spam followers to X's spam report form.

Buying followers breaks X's authenticity policy, which bans "compensating others to conduct account metric inflation," Follows included.

Other Twitter fake follower checkers, and what they cost

Here is what we could confirm on 28 October 2026, in no order. Read each one's terms before you connect your X account.

  • FollowerAudit checks fake X followers after you log in with X. Its free plan covers 5,000 followers and 2 audits a day; paid plans start at $39.99 a month.
  • Twitter Audit, now part of Fedica, gives a "Twitter Score" of real followers. Your first audit is free.
  • Circleboom lists a "Remove Fake & Bot Followers" feature in its X tool. Its price depends on account size.
  • Botometer X is an archive with no records of accounts made after 31 May 2023, says OSoMe.
  • SparkToro's Fake Followers Audit is gone. By May 2026 its address led to SparkToro's home page.

For big audits, TwitterAPI.io lists followers from $0.01 per 1,000, far cheaper than Weir.

When not to use Weir

  • You want one score with a dashboard. FollowerAudit and Twitter Audit do that without code.
  • You audit huge accounts often. TwitterAPI.io costs far less per follower.
  • You need to remove followers. Weir is read-only, so do it on x.com.
  • You want proof about a person. No tool can give it, ours included.

A follower list is a list of people. Keep shares, drop names, and never publish a list of "fake" accounts. X's Terms of Service restrict scraping, so check what applies to you. This isn't legal advice.

FAQ

How do I check fake followers on Twitter?

Sample an account's newest followers and count five signs: a default photo, no bio, few posts, a lopsided follow ratio and a very new account. Then report the share with three or more.

Is there a free Twitter fake followers check?

Yes. FollowerAudit's free plan covers accounts up to 5,000 followers, and Twitter Audit's first audit is free. Our script runs on Weir's free monthly credits, enough for about 4,900 followers.

Can I remove fake followers on Twitter in bulk?

X's Help Center describes removing followers one at a time, on the web only. Blocking also removes them. Third-party cleanup tools ask for your X login, so read their terms first.

Can a fake followers detector for Twitter prove an account is fake?

No. Every sign has an innocent cause, like a new user or a quiet reader. Use the shares to judge an audience, and look closer only at accounts that trip many signs.

Sources

All checked on 28 October 2026; X's help pages as Wayback copies, dated in brackets:

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