X Card Preview: See How Your Link Looks When Posted on X

When someone posts your link on X, the platform reads the twitter: tags in your page head to build the card under the post. If those tags are missing, X borrows from your Open Graph tags, and if those are missing too, the post shows a plain URL. Paste an address below to see the card X will draw and which tags it came from.

X Card Preview reads the page head once and draws a summary card or a large image card, depending on what the page asks for. Open the Advanced panel to see the tags it found, which values came from Open Graph fallbacks, and each problem worth fixing, from an invalid card type to an image with the wrong shape. When a site blocks the direct request, a browser-grade fetch reads the page instead and the panel says so.

Why X Cards Matter

A post with a large image card takes up several times the space of a text post in the timeline, and it gives the reader a picture, a headline, and your domain before they decide to click. That is the difference between a link that gets scrolled past and one that earns the visit. The card is also what appears when anyone else shares your page, so the tags control how your brand looks in posts you never wrote.

Cards credit you as well. The twitter:site and twitter:creator tags tie the card to your brand and author accounts, and several tools that unfurl links, including AI assistants and chat apps, read twitter: tags when Open Graph is incomplete. A few lines in the page head pay off every time the link travels.

The Tags X Reads

Only twitter:card has no Open Graph substitute. Everything else can fall back to og: tags, which is why a page with solid Open Graph tags needs only one or two more lines for a complete card.

• twitter:card: summary_large_image for a wide image above the text, or summary for a small square thumbnail beside it. Most articles and landing pages should use summary_large_image.
• twitter:creator: the author’s @handle.
• twitter:description: up to 200 characters. Falls back to og:description.
• twitter:image: a full https:// address to a JPG, PNG, WebP, or GIF under 5 MB. For a large card use 1200 by 600 pixels (2:1); for a summary card use a square of at least 144 by 144. Falls back to og:image.
• twitter:image:alt: a description of the image for screen readers, up to 420 characters.
• twitter:site: your brand’s @handle, so the card is attributed to your account.
• twitter:title: up to 70 characters. Falls back to og:title, then the page title.

How to Optimize the Card

Start with the image, since it is most of the card. X crops large card images to 2:1, so an Open Graph image built at 1.91:1 loses a sliver from the top and bottom; keep text and logos well inside the frame. X also lays the title over the bottom of the image, so avoid putting important details in the lower-left corner.

Write a short, specific title, since the overlay cuts long ones, and use the description to finish the thought for the places that show it. Set twitter:site on every page and twitter:creator on articles so the card points readers to accounts they can follow. If the X title or image should differ from the Facebook and LinkedIn version, set the twitter: tag; otherwise let the og: tag carry it and keep one source of truth.

X caches cards for about a week. After you change a tag, post the link again in a draft or reply to prompt a fresh fetch, and change the image file name if the old picture sticks.

Common Mistakes

• Blocked crawler: X fetches pages as Twitterbot. A firewall, bot challenge, or robots.txt rule that blocks it leaves every post without a card.
• Invalid card type: a typo such as summary-large-image, or a value X no longer supports, makes the card fall back or disappear.
• Large card with no image: summary_large_image without twitter:image or og:image has nothing to show.
• Missing twitter:card: with only Open Graph tags, X may show a small card or a bare link instead of the large image you designed.
• Wrong image shape: a tall or square image on a large card is cropped through the middle, and a wide image on a summary card shrinks to an unreadable sliver.

Most of what X shows comes from the same tags Facebook, LinkedIn, and Slack read. Check how the page looks there with the Open Graph Preview.