Robert Peston engagement report
@Peston - 1.3M followers on X
Measured over 19 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 1, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 14 interactions against 1.3M followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 19 original posts, its engagement rate beats 13% of 3,829 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 40K times each, and 0.035% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 3.19% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 0.93 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 40% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 06:00 UTC, and Thursday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 19 posts sampled, 5% carry an image or video and 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 287 interactions, about 21x its own typical post.
Measured over 19 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 1, 2026.
Compared with accounts its own size
Robert Peston's engagement rate beats 13% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,829 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 9 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.
On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 2% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.
Where this sits in the catalog
At 0.001%, Robert Peston sits below the 10th percentile of the 37,037 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.012%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.002% |
| 25th percentile | 0.012% |
| 50th percentile | 0.08% |
| 75th percentile | 0.435% |
| 90th percentile | 2.10% |
| 99th percentile | 158.8% |
This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built
Posting timing
This account posts most often around 06:00 UTC, and Thursday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
| Hour (UTC) | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC | -1% | 51K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 52K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 51K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 54K |
| 04:00 UTC | -6% | 44K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 42K |
| 06:00 UTC | -4% | 49K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 53K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 61K |
| 09:00 UTC | -3% | 70K |
| 10:00 UTC | -2% | 73K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 79K |
| 12:00 UTC | -2% | 87K |
| 13:00 UTC | -2% | 96K |
| 14:00 UTC | -4% | 99K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 102K |
| 16:00 UTC | -3% | 99K |
| 17:00 UTC | -2% | 92K |
| 18:00 UTC | -1% | 85K |
| 19:00 UTC | -2% | 80K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 75K |
| 21:00 UTC | -1% | 67K |
| 22:00 UTC | -2% | 58K |
| 23:00 UTC | -1% | 52K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +5% | 233K |
| Monday | 0% | 292K |
| Tuesday | -3% | 284K |
| Wednesday | -1% | 253K |
| Thursday | -2% | 246K |
| Friday | -3% | 255K |
| Saturday | +3% | 229K |
Best tweets
- Aug 5, 202621x their median
Lord Lisvane is absolutely right: a lack of experience in the Commons has resulted in a lack of legislative scrutiny before Bills reach the Lords. However, there is also another aspect to this. Governments routinely use programme motions to force legislation through without proper debate. The result is the Lords are now left doing the heavy lifting to fix half-baked Bills. https://t.co/tyZuRsBkd1
- Jul 20, 202612x their median
'The amount we would benefit, by that tax cut, is small.' Tax expert @DanNeidle responds to reports of Andy Burnham's plans to unfreeze the tax-free personal allowance. #Peston https://t.co/vHGND7FAhu
- Jul 11, 202611x their median
My neurodivergent self is super happy with this review in @thetimes by John Dugdale of my new thriller, The Kill Switch, which will be published on Thursday 16 July: “In this enthralling mash-up of whodunnit, political thriller, sci-fi and psychological novel (Gil is attacked too, with radical effects on his brain), AI is compellingly portrayed as inexorably corrupting the worlds the duo move between: Westminster, business and the media…In the last outing of his neurodivergent alter ego, Robert Peston has cracked it, finding a narrative method that works and a huge topical subject he handles impressively.” Four great thrillers to read this July https://t.co/9tz1OGqMG1
- Jul 20, 20266.9x their median
'Some of these appointments suggest we are looking at continuity Keir Starmer.' Green Party Leader @ZackPolanski says he wants to see 'change' from Andy Burnham’s premiership. #Peston https://t.co/V9ptVbNr6C
- Aug 13, 20266.2x their median
There is much misunderstanding about the UK’s tech potential. Read Saul Klein below to understand that the new jobs and biggest potential come from the application of tech to existing markets by pioneering young companies, as much if not more than from foundational tech https://t.co/Z7GbNwEBFp
- Jul 20, 20264.7x their median
“Burnham doesn’t yet have an ear for foreign policy” Responding to Ed Miliband as Foreign Secretary and the rumour that Rachel Reeves turned down Defence Secretary, @Jeremy_Hunt says neither of them are “reassuring... to the outside world” #Peston https://t.co/Ht1HkCEPuX
- Jul 30, 20264.6x their median
everyone is citing "Maradona central banking". But Mervyn King had a deep disdain for markets. In his analogy, the market was a hapless England defender, falling at the feet of central-banker genius. Warsh is saying the opposite - that markets are omniscient https://t.co/UHnpl6AOLr
- Jul 20, 20264.2x their median
'The Ministry of Defence is going to get the money that it needs.' @Jeremy_Hunt reacts to John Healey’s 'unexpected' appointment as Chancellor. #Peston https://t.co/Ohc3Ztkcxi
- Jul 24, 20264.1x their median
As @andyburnham launches No10 North and pledges to devolve much more power to mayors and mayoral authorities, @edballs et al hold his feet to the fire, as they tried to do with Starmer’s government but saw early good intentions fizzle https://t.co/p6yl8WZgp1
- Aug 13, 20263.9x their median
Why it’s wrong to right off the UK economy as incurably stagnant. My Rest is Money conversation with Karen Ward of JP Morgan Asset Management https://t.co/C18SyjiH4T
Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.
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Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 14 interactions against 1.3M followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 19 original posts, its engagement rate beats 13% of 3,829 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 40K times each, and 0.035% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 3.19% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 0.93 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 40% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 06:00 UTC, and Thursday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 19 posts sampled, 5% carry an image or video and 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 287 interactions, about 21x its own typical post.
- What is Robert Peston's engagement rate on X?
- Robert Peston (@Peston) has an engagement rate of 0.001%, based on the median interactions across 19 original posts from the last 30 days against 1,256,377 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.001%, Robert Peston sits below the 10th percentile of the 37,037 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
- Does @Peston have real engagement?
- Its engagement rate beats 13% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,829 accounts), which puts it in the bottom quarter for its size group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
- When does @Peston post?
- Most posts go out around 06:00 UTC, and Thursday is its busiest day, at roughly 0.93 posts per day across the measured window.