Short answer
Legal demands from X took down Nitter's main instance and xcancel on August 26, 2026, and TwitterWebViewer went offline on August 28. A handful of Nitter instances still answer, but the dependable logged-out options now are official tweet embeds and Wayback snapshots.
See what still worksThe timeline, with dates
Nitter did not die once. It died in stages over three years, and each stage matters for understanding why nothing like it will last.
- Mid-2023: X started blocking logged-out viewing and cut off the guest tokens Nitter used. Nitter switched to guest accounts, which worked but broke every few weeks.
- January 2024: X removed guest accounts entirely. Nitter's developer said the project could no longer work as designed, and most public instances shut down within weeks. A few kept running on pooled real accounts.
- 2024 to mid-2026: xcancel.com, nitter.poast.org, nitter.privacydev.net and a few others carried on using those pooled accounts. TwitterWebViewer and similar sites offered a simpler front end on the same idea.
- August 26, 2026: X sent legal demands. Nitter's main instance and xcancel went offline the same day.
- August 28, 2026: TwitterWebViewer went offline.
- September 11, 2026, checked today: nitter.net, nitter.privacydev.net, nitter.poast.org, nitter.1d4.us, nitter.unixfox.eu, nitter.it and nitter.fdn.fr are unreachable. xcancel.com is back with a notice that service resumed after legal progress, but profile pages stop at a Verifying your browser screen. nitter.tiekoetter.com still serves profiles. twiiit.com forwards to whichever instance is alive, and nitter.cz now redirects to twiiit.
Why the mirrors died, and why they will again
Every Nitter instance, and every site built on the same idea, works by fetching pages from X with credentials that X did not issue for that purpose, then re-rendering them. That is scraping. It only runs as long as X lets it, and X has shown three times now that it will not.
Each survival trick has a shorter life than the last. Guest tokens lasted years. Guest accounts lasted months. Pooled real accounts lasted about two and a half years before the lawyers arrived. Whatever the remaining instances are doing now can be cut off with one more letter or one more change on X's side. If you want something you can rely on next month, do not pick a mirror.
What still works today
Two things do not depend on X's tolerance. The first is X's own embed system, which renders any single public tweet to logged-out visitors because publishers depend on it. The second is the Internet Archive, which has been capturing profile pages and tweet pages for well over a decade.
Try it with @Wikipedia. Open nitter.net/Wikipedia and you get a connection error. Open twiiit.com/Wikipedia and you are forwarded to a live instance, this week. Open the profile in PeekVault's Twitter viewer and you get a capture timeline stretching back years, with the tweets that still exist rendered through the official embed. Only the last one will look the same in October.
The surviving instances are fine for a quick look. nitter.tiekoetter.com answered today, and twiiit.com is a useful redirector because it checks which instances are up before sending you on. Expect slow pages, browser checks, and occasional blank timelines. Nitter RSS feeds, the feature many people miss most, are gone with the main instances.
What PeekVault does instead
PeekVault is not a Nitter instance and does not run one. It does two things. The tweet viewer takes a tweet link and renders it with X's official embed. The Twitter viewer takes a handle and shows the Wayback capture timeline of that profile, opening each snapshot inline and using the embed for tweets that still exist.
Nothing is scraped from X and nothing is stored. When X serves an embed, you see the live tweet. When it does not, you see what the Internet Archive already saved. That is a narrower promise than Nitter made, but it is one that does not break when X changes its mind.
If you still want a Nitter instance
Start at twiiit.com, which forwards you to a working instance, or check the instances status page on this site for the list as of the last check. Keep expectations low. A profile that loads today may show a browser check tomorrow. Do not enter any login on an instance that asks for one. Nitter never needed your account, and a page asking for it is not Nitter.
FAQ
Straight answers
Is Nitter coming back?+
The software is still on GitHub and anyone can run it, so instances will keep appearing. But every instance needs a way to fetch from X, and X has now cut off three such ways. Any instance that appears should be treated as temporary.
Is xcancel safe to use now that it is back?+
It appears to be the same operators, and its notice says service resumed after legal progress. As of September 11, 2026, profile pages stop at a browser check for most visitors. Use it if the check passes, but do not enter credentials anywhere on it.
Why does twiiit.com send me to a different site each time?+
twiiit.com is a redirector, not an instance. It keeps a list of Nitter instances, checks which ones are responding, and forwards you to one of them. When an instance dies, you land somewhere else.
Will the account owner know I read their tweets through a mirror or an embed?+
No. Neither a mirror nor an embed nor a snapshot tells the account owner anything. Only logged-in activity on X, like a follow or a like, is visible to them.
Is it legal to use a Nitter instance?+
Reading a public page through a mirror is not illegal for you as a visitor. The legal pressure from X is aimed at the operators who scrape. The practical risk for readers is only that the instance vanishes.
Can PeekVault show a live profile timeline?+
No, and nothing else can without an account. PeekVault shows the capture timeline of a profile from the Internet Archive, plus any single tweet through the official embed. For large accounts the newest capture is usually hours old. For small accounts it may be months old or missing.
Does any of this cost money?+
No. PeekVault's viewers are free with no sign-up, the surviving Nitter instances are free, and the Internet Archive is free.
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