Twitter card

A Twitter card, now the card on X, is the preview drawn when someone posts a link: an image, a title and a description instead of a bare URL. It is set with twitter: meta tags, and falls back to your Open Graph tags when those tags are absent.

By , founder of Porteur · Updated 15 September 2026 · Markdown

The tags and the two types

<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Invoicing for freelancers">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Send an invoice in twenty seconds.">
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://yourproduct.com/og.png">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@yourproduct">
TypeWhat it drawsWhen to use it
summaryA small square image beside the textRarely; it makes a link look like a footnote
summary_large_imageA wide image above the textAlmost always, for a product or an article

The fallback to Open Graph

X reads the twitter: tags first and falls back to the Open Graph tags for anything missing. A page with og:title, og:description and og:image already previews correctly, with one exception: without twitter:card the platform may draw the small card rather than the wide one.

  • Set twitter:card to summary_large_image, and let the rest fall back to Open Graph.
  • Add twitter:image only when you want a different image there than on the other platforms.
  • twitter:site names the account, which is shown on the card in some contexts.

How to check it now

  1. Read the tags

    View source on the page and confirm twitter:card is present and the image URL is absolute.

  2. Post the link in a draft

    The card validator was retired. Composing a post without sending it shows the real card, which is the test that counts.

  3. Check one page per template

    The home page, the pricing page and a library page usually use different templates; the missing image is always on the one nobody posts.

  4. Expect caching

    Cards are cached, so a link already shared may keep the old image for a while after you change it.

Questions

Check my site, free

The free check reads the tags your pages carry for search and for shares, and names what is missing, in about thirty seconds.

  • Free check, no card
  • Read-only, your own accounts
  • Readable by your agent

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