X Giveaway Rules and Guidelines

Yes, you can run a giveaway on X. X's own Guidelines for Promotions say contests can offer prizes for posting an update, following an account or posting with a specific hashtag.

What X cares about is spam. Most of its rules exist to stop your entrants getting filtered out of search or suspended, so following them protects your giveaway too. We checked X's promotion guidelines and its Authenticity policy (April 2025) on 30 October 2026, and here's what they mean in practice.

X keeps its promotion guidance short. Here's each guideline and what it means for you.

Add a rule that anyone using several accounts to enter is ineligible.

X says entrants who do it risk having all their accounts suspended, which isn't the kind of attention your giveaway needs.

Skip rules like "whoever reposts this the most wins". Duplicate posts break the X Rules and can get your entrants filtered out of search.

X recommends accepting only one entry per person per day.

Entries that mention you land in your Notifications, so you can see them all. X warns that a public search may not show every entry.

A hashtag like #contest or #yourbrand is fine on a post about the giveaway.

Asking people to add it to unrelated posts can put them in breach of the X Rules.

Compliance with local laws is your responsibility, and X suggests asking a lawyer if you're unsure.

X's Authenticity policy doesn't mention giveaways, but four of its bans line up exactly with bad giveaway habits:

• Editing a post to use its existing engagement for different content
• Using trending hashtags to pull attention to your account
• Coordinating to swap Likes, Reposts or Follows
• Paying others to inflate Likes, Reposts, Views or Follows

In giveaway terms, that means you don't edit your giveaway post into an ad once it has thousands of reposts. You don't tag it with whatever's trending. And "follow everyone who likes this" loops and follow trains are out.

That last ban sits awkwardly next to the promotion guidelines, which allow prizes for follows and posts.

The two are easiest to square if the follow or post is part of entering a real giveaway with stated rules, not a scheme to buy numbers. Keep the ask small. And keep a way to enter that doesn't involve engagement at all, like an email signup.

X leaves the legal side to you, so publish terms before the giveaway goes live. Cover:

• Who can enter (age, countries, and who's excluded, like staff)
• That entry is free
• How people enter, and that one entry per person per day is the limit
• That entering with multiple accounts means disqualification
• The start date, end date and time zone
• The prize, its value and how the winner is drawn and contacted
• How you'll use entrants' personal details

Free entry matters most in the US, where it's what keeps a giveaway from being an illegal lottery. Our no purchase necessary guide explains it.

X doesn't require a statement that it isn't involved, but adding one tells entrants to contact you, not X, with questions.

Gleam generates Terms & Conditions for every Competition, so a hosted giveaway has terms from the start. Writing your own custom terms needs the Hobby Plan or above.

Post a question, and everyone who replies is in the draw.

Jazz Apple asked people to follow, like and reply "JAZZ time" for an apple slicer, and promised to draw a winner the next day.

A set phrase is easy to enter, but it fills the replies with identical posts. A real question ("What's your go-to apple?") gets you replies worth reading. Either way, count one reply per person and draw at random, not by hand.

Ask people to post a photo and tag you.

Halsbury Travel asked school groups to tag them in trip photos for a chance at a £30 Amazon voucher, with a link to the terms in the post.

Get permission in your terms before you reuse anyone's photo in marketing, and set a limit on entries so nobody floods the hashtag.

Hide a code in a post and ask entrants to submit it.

We used one to push a PlayStation 5 Pro giveaway, posting the code on X and sending people back to the giveaway page to finish their entries.

Ask for the code once on the giveaway page, not as a reply, so nobody has to post it over and over.

Running everything in replies works for a small giveaway. Once you want more than a follow, a hosted giveaway page does more of the work.

You promote one link on X and everywhere else you post. Entrants pick from Actions like Follow on X, Repost, Post with your hashtag, an email signup or referring friends. Gleam tracks every entry, flags invalid entries and draws the winner at random.

Gleam can't verify X follows or reposts automatically, because X's API doesn't allow it. So before you announce a winner, open their X account and check they did what your rules asked.

The email signup is the Action to care about most. You can reach an email list whenever you like, without waiting on X's algorithm.

Announce the winner by their X handle only.

Never post an email address, phone number or street address, which X's private information policy covers.

Then message the winner from your own account, and expect copycat accounts with near-identical handles to reply claiming the prize. Check the handle exactly before you ask for shipping details.