Reddit lets you post with 0 karma, but most marketing-useful subreddits do not. Here are the exact minimums, the post-vs-comment karma rules, and a 30-day plan to unlock everything.
Yes, almost always. Reddit globally allows 0-karma accounts to post, but most marketing-useful subreddits set their own karma minimum via AutoModerator. The typical range is 50 to 200 comment karma plus 30 days of account age. For premium subs like r/smallbusiness or niche professional subs, you may need 500 plus.
The safe baseline for marketers is 500 comment karma plus 30 days of account age. At that point, you can post in roughly 80 percent of marketing-relevant subreddits without an auto-removal. The fastest way to get there is 14 to 21 days of helpful commenting in default subs. MediaFast can match you with low-karma-friendly subs while you build trust. If you are not sure whether your account already clears the age half of that bar, you can look up its exact age in a few seconds.
Five tiers of karma. Match yours to the one that describes you today.
You can technically post in subs with no karma requirement. Most niche or popular subs will silently auto-remove your post.
Default subs and small communities accept you. Major business and tech subs still reject you.
Most marketing-relevant subs (r/Entrepreneur, r/SaaS, r/marketing) accept you. Some still require 100+ specifically.
You can post in most marketing-relevant communities at this level. A smaller set of stricter subs still require 500 to 1000 minimum.
Premium marketing subs (r/SmallBusiness, certain niche professional subs) accept you. This is the safe baseline for marketing.
Approximate minimums for 10 of the most relevant marketing subreddits. Subreddits change rules frequently, so always re-check.
Three facts pulled straight from Reddit's own Help Center, not a third-party guess. Each links to the live source.
0 karma
is Reddit's sitewide minimum to submit a post
Reddit itself enforces no global karma floor. Any threshold you run into belongs to the individual subreddit, which sets and enforces it on its own.
View the sourceReddit Help Center, "What is karma?"
5 trust tiers
make up Reddit's Contributor Quality Score
Lowest, Low, Moderate, High, and Highest. AutoModerator can weigh this sitewide score alongside your karma, so clearing a subreddit's karma number does not guarantee your post survives.
View the sourceReddit Help Center, "What is the Contributor Quality Score?"
Per-community rules
not a single published list
AutoModerator is a bot each subreddit's moderators configure on their own wiki page. That is why karma minimums differ sub to sub and Reddit never publishes one master list.
View the sourceReddit Help Center, "Automoderator"
"Don't set out to accumulate karma; just set out to be a good contributor, and let your karma simply be a reflection of your legacy."
Reddit Help Center, "What is karma?"
A quick walkthrough of the new-account karma mechanics covered above, including where to find subreddits that skip the gate entirely.
Most subs care more about comment karma. Here is why.
Earned from upvotes on your submitted posts (text, link, image, video).
Weight in subreddit gates
Lower weight in automod rules. Some subs only check post karma in title posts.
Speed to build
Slower to build. Each post takes time and not all posts get upvoted.
Earned from upvotes on your comments anywhere on Reddit.
Weight in subreddit gates
Higher weight in subreddit gates. Most automod rules check comment karma first.
Speed to build
Faster to build. Helpful comments in big threads can earn 50 to 200 karma each.
Five ways to find the minimum before you waste a post on a silent removal.
Click into the subreddit. On the right (desktop) or under the About tab (mobile), look for 'Karma Requirements' or 'Posting Guidelines'.
Use removeddit.com or undelete.pullpush.io to see what posts get removed in the sub. Many removal messages contain the karma minimum.
Many subreddits have a /wiki/rules page that lists every automod check. Type the sub URL plus '/wiki/rules' to find it.
Search 'karma' in the sub's recent posts. Mods often answer the same question publicly. The exact minimum will be in those comments.
If nothing else works, message a mod and ask directly. Keep it short and respectful. Most will answer within 24 to 48 hours.
Build karma the right way. Skip the karma-farming bots.
Skip posting. Browse your target subreddits and observe patterns.
Comment helpfully in 2 to 3 large default subs (r/AskReddit, r/todayilearned). Focus on adding value, not karma farming.
Continue commenting in defaults. Start commenting in your niche subs without promoting.
Post 2 to 3 high-value non-promotional posts in niche subs. Story, question, or insight format.
Now you can post a build-in-public update in r/SaaS or similar. Continue commenting at 5 to 1 ratio (5 helpful comments per 1 promotional).
More on karma, accounts, and Reddit setup.
Karma is easy to build wrong and hard to recover. These eight mistakes cost weeks and sometimes the account itself.
Farming karma in r/AskReddit only
Big subs give shallow karma. Build karma in your target niche subs where it actually unlocks posting permissions. MediaFast shows per-sub karma thresholds.
Copy-pasting top comments for upvotes
Reddit's plagiarism filter is real. Bots scan for duplicate strings. Original 2-sentence replies beat stolen essays.
Hitting 1000 karma in a week
Mods and anti-spam systems watch velocity, not just totals. A slow, steady climb looks human. A sudden spike looks like a farm.
Posting from VPN or proxy IPs
Reddit fingerprints aggressively. New accounts on flagged IPs shadowban silently. Use residential connections.
Karma 1000+, account 5 days old
Subs check account age separately from karma. Some, including r/Entrepreneur, set age minimums well beyond what a high karma number might suggest.
Ignoring comment karma vs post karma
Most subs weigh comment karma more heavily than post karma when filtering new posters. Build both in parallel.
Mass-deleting old posts to clean history
Mods see deletion patterns. Better to leave the cringe, let it age, build forward.
Buying karma from karma-sellers
Banned reliably. Reddit's adversarial team flags patterns within 30 days. Tools like MediaFast suggest organic karma threads instead.
Building karma without a system is a 90-day random walk. With one, it's a 30-day plan. Here's the breakdown.
| Task | Manual approach | With MediaFast |
|---|---|---|
| Finding karma thresholds per sub | Read each sidebar, message mods | Threshold list for 500+ marketing subs |
| Discovering high-karma threads to comment on | Scroll Hot for 30 min/day | Daily digest of trending threads |
| Writing comments that actually get upvoted | Trial and error for weeks | AI drafts based on the thread's tone |
| Tracking your account health | Manual karma math each week | Live dashboard with risk flags |
| Knowing when you're ready to promote | Guess and hope | Per-sub readiness score |
| Avoiding karma-farm flags | Pray Reddit doesn't notice | Velocity alerts before you trip filters |
How three founders went from 0 karma to posting in gated subs. Names anonymized.
These are illustrative composite examples built from common patterns we see, not real named case studies with verified outcomes.
B2B SaaS founder
What they did: Spent about a month commenting helpfully in r/sysadmin, r/devops, r/SaaS, building comment karma well into four figures without posting once.
Outcome: Cleared the karma gate in a handful of target subs. The first promotional post performed well, picking up a solid batch of upvotes and a handful of trial signups.
Indie hacker, content app
What they did: Tried to skip the line by buying a large chunk of karma outright. The account was banned within about two weeks.
Outcome: Started over with MediaFast tracking karma velocity and thread suggestions. Cleaner ramp, no flags, posting comfortably within a couple of months.
Agency owner, founder ghost-marketer
What they did: Built karma across several personas, each focused on a different niche, with a couple of helpful comments a day on each.
Outcome: All of the accounts cleared promo gates within about two months. Now runs client campaigns from aged-and-trusted accounts.
These work in 2026 because they map to what Reddit's spam filters and mods actually look for.
Reply to questions in the bottom half of /new threads where competition is low and helpful answers stand out.
Use specific numbers and timestamps in answers ('I tried this in 2024, here's the result'). Specificity wins upvotes.
Comment on threads less than 4 hours old. Late replies tend to earn far less karma for the same-quality answer, since fewer people ever scroll that far down.
Build comment karma to 500 before any post. Most subs check comment karma when filtering new posters.
Avoid memes for karma farming. Anti-bot filters flag accounts whose karma comes almost entirely from meme subs.
Spread karma across 7-12 subs, not 1-2. Concentrated history looks botlike.
Use MediaFast's thread radar to find questions you can answer in 5 minutes for high upvote density.
Once at 1000 karma, slow down to 1 comment/day in the sub you plan to promote in. Familiarity matters more than karma after a point.
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Seven questions about Reddit karma minimums for marketers.
Reddit itself has no global karma minimum to create posts. You can post on Reddit with 0 karma. The minimums come from individual subreddits, each of which sets its own karma threshold via AutoModerator. Some subs require 1 karma, others require 1000. The vast majority of useful marketing subs require somewhere between 50 and 200 karma plus 30+ days of account age.
Most subreddits check comment karma first because it is harder to game. Comment karma is built by writing useful replies in threads, while post karma can be inflated by posting popular memes or images. Comment karma signals 'this person engages with the community'. For marketing posts, aim to keep your comment karma well ahead of your post karma. That balance tends to look more natural to mods and to Reddit's algorithm than a post-heavy history.
You can speed it up by commenting helpfully in high-traffic default subs (r/AskReddit, r/todayilearned, r/explainlikeimfive). A genuinely funny, helpful, or informative comment in a top post can earn 100 to 500 karma in a day. Karma farming via meme reposts or low-effort comments is detectable, gets you flagged, and can lead to shadowbans. Build karma through real contribution.
No. Reddit Ads run from your business ads account, not your personal Reddit account. You can launch a paid Reddit Ad campaign with zero karma. Karma minimums only apply to organic posting and commenting. However, if your ad gets engagement via comments, your personal account will be replying, and that interaction history matters for trust.
Check four places in order: the sidebar (right column on desktop), the About tab (mobile), the /wiki/rules page for that sub, and recently-removed posts via removeddit.com. Most subs publish their minimums in the sidebar. If not, the wiki or removed posts will reveal them. As a last resort, message a moderator.
You have three options. First, spend 14 to 30 days building karma in default subs before any promotional activity (recommended). Second, post only in builder-friendly subs that have no karma minimums (r/indiehackers, r/SideProject, certain weekly threads). Third, run Reddit Ads instead of organic posting, since ads bypass karma gates entirely. Do not buy karma or use throwaway accounts to skirt the rules. Both get detected.
No. Your karma is cumulative. Once earned, it does not decrease except in two cases: if you delete posts or comments (their karma is subtracted), or if your post or comment gets removed by mods with negative impact on your account. Otherwise, karma stays forever, even if you go inactive for years.
MediaFast matches your current karma score against each subreddit's threshold and only surfaces communities where you can post today. No more wasted posts.
If you are here to promote a product, use a rules-first playbook built for the kind of offer you are taking to Reddit.
Promote a SaaS on Reddit