What is karma on Reddit? The minimums that actually matter
Karma is Reddit's reputation score for posts and comments. Here's how it works, why subs gate on it, and the real numbers founders need before posting.
Karma in one sentence
Karma is the net score of upvotes minus downvotes across everything you've ever posted and commented on Reddit, split into two visible numbers on your profile: post karma and comment karma. That's it. It's not currency, it's not a trust score Reddit officially uses for anything, and it doesn't unlock features inside Reddit's own product.
What it does do is act as the default filter every subreddit moderator reaches for when they want to keep out throwaway accounts, spam rings, and brand-new lurkers. AutoModerator can read your karma at the moment you submit a post or comment, and if you're under the threshold the mod set, your content gets silently removed before anyone sees it.
That's the whole reason karma matters for anyone doing B2B work on Reddit: not because Reddit cares, but because the subs you want to post in care, and they've quietly encoded that care in config files you'll never see.
How karma is actually calculated
A few mechanics worth knowing, because they trip up almost every founder coming in cold:
- It's net, not gross. A post with 50 upvotes and 10 downvotes gives you about 40 karma, not 50. Reddit also fuzzes the exact numbers to throw off vote-manipulation detection, so the karma you see is approximate.
- Self-posts (text-only) used to give zero karma. That changed years ago. Self-posts now grant karma the same way link posts do.
- Removed content can subtract karma. If a mod removes a post that had upvotes, those can come off your total. Same for comments.
- Awards don't give karma. They give Reddit Premium and coins to the recipient, but the karma number is unaffected.
- Subreddit-specific karma is real but hidden. Reddit tracks karma per subreddit internally, and AutoModerator can gate on it (e.g., "user has under 5 karma in this sub"). You can't see this number on your profile, but mods can.
For a deeper read on how new users experience this, the r/NewToReddit thread on raising karma is the closest thing to a canonical primer, written by the people who answer this question every day.
Why subreddits gate on karma (and don't tell you)
Mods don't publish karma minimums for the same reason banks don't publish their fraud thresholds: if spammers know the number is 50, they farm to 51 and walk right in. The r/NewToReddit discussion on why thresholds stay hidden lays this out directly — visibility helps spammers more than it helps legitimate newcomers.
The practical effect for a founder: your post gets removed, you get no notification (or a generic "removed by AutoModerator" message), and you have no way to know whether the issue was karma, account age, a banned keyword, or post format. You have to read the removal reason, message the mods politely, or check the sub's modlog if it's public.
The minimum numbers that actually matter
There is no public, official list of karma thresholds. Anyone who tells you "you need 100 karma to post on Reddit" is bluffing. But after enough removed posts and modmail conversations, a rough picture emerges:
| Account state | What you can realistically do |
|---|---|
| 0 karma, < 1 day old | Comment in newbie-friendly subs (r/NewToReddit, casual chat subs). Almost every niche sub will auto-remove you. |
| 10–50 combined karma, 1–2 weeks old | Most small niche subs (under ~50k subscribers) will let you post and comment. Larger subs still block you. |
| 100–500 combined karma, 1+ month old | The threshold most active B2B-adjacent subs (r/SaaS, r/Entrepreneur, r/startups, r/marketing) want before they'll let you post without manual approval. |
| 1,000+ karma, 3+ months old | You clear the gates on nearly all defaults and large communities. Strict subs (r/personalfinance, r/wallstreetbets, r/programming) may still want more. |
The community-sourced numbers in this r/NewToReddit thread on what karma actually unlocks line up with the table above. They're directional, not exact, because every sub configures its own AutoModerator.
Account age matters as much as karma
Most gates check karma AND age, not just karma. A 50-karma account that's two days old gets filtered. A 50-karma account that's six months old usually doesn't. Reddit's own anti-spam heuristics also weight age heavily, which is why a brand-new account commenting in a high-traffic sub often gets shadow-removed even when it clears the explicit karma minimum.
If you're planning to use Reddit as a channel, the cheapest move you can make is to register the account now and have it sit. Age accrues for free.
How to build karma without becoming the thing you hate
The useful path is also the boring one: comment in subs you actually use, reply to questions where you know the answer, and don't post anything promotional until you've cleared 100+ comment karma and the account is at least three weeks old.
A few things that work:
- Answer questions in your domain. If you've built B2B SaaS, r/SaaS, r/Entrepreneur, and r/startups have a steady flow of "how do I do X" threads. Useful answers reliably pull 5–20 upvotes each. For a worked example, see how to spot 'first dollar' threads on r/SaaS and reply without getting flagged.
- Comment on rising posts within the first hour. Early comments on threads that take off get carried up by the post itself.
- Skip the karma-farming subs. r/FreeKarma4U and friends inflate the number but flag your profile to mods who check (and most niche-sub mods do check).
If manually watching subs for the right threads is the part that doesn't scale, Bazzly handles the monitoring and surfaces threads worth replying to. The karma still has to come from your own comments — there's no shortcut to that part — but you stop missing the windows where a useful reply lands while the post is still climbing.
What karma does not do
A few things founders assume karma controls, that it doesn't:
- It doesn't make your posts rank higher. Reddit's ranking is based on the post's own votes and velocity, not the author's karma.
- It doesn't prevent shadowbans. Plenty of high-karma accounts get shadowbanned for unrelated reasons (IP issues, link patterns, mass reports).
- It doesn't unlock DMs to other users. Any account can DM. Whether the recipient sees it depends on their settings.
- It doesn't impress anyone in the comments. Nobody clicks profiles to check karma before upvoting. Mods do; readers don't.
Karma is a doorman, not a status symbol. Get past the doorman, then ignore the number.
Frequently asked questions
- How much karma do I need to post in most subreddits?
- There's no universal number. Many active subs gate posting somewhere between 10 and 100 combined karma, with stricter ones (large defaults, finance, crypto, some tech subs) wanting 200 to 1,000+. The only reliable way to know is to read a sub's rules, wiki, and removal reasons — the threshold is usually hidden inside AutoModerator config and not posted publicly.
- What's the difference between post karma and comment karma?
- Post karma is the net score across your submissions; comment karma is the net score across your comments. Reddit shows them separately on your profile. Most AutoModerator gates check one or both, or a sum, depending on how the mod set it up. Comment karma is generally easier to grow because comments are lower-stakes than posts.
- How fast can I build karma without looking like a bot?
- Realistically, a few hundred comment karma in two to four weeks is achievable by leaving genuinely useful comments in subs you actually care about. Faster than that and you risk triggering anti-spam heuristics. Posting memes in r/AskReddit-style subs farms karma quickly but won't help in the niche subs where you actually want to be active later.
- Does karma reset, decay, or expire?
- No. Karma is cumulative. Old upvotes still count years later. The only things that reduce karma are downvotes on your own content and removed posts/comments (which can subtract their score). Deleting your account zeroes everything out.
- Can negative karma get me banned?
- Site-wide, no — Reddit doesn't auto-ban for low karma. But negative karma triggers rate limits (you can only post every 10 minutes), most karma-gated subs will reject you outright, and mods often check profiles before approving borderline posts. Negative karma is a soft death sentence for distribution, not a ban.