See exactly how long it will take to reach your karma goals and unlock the subreddits you want to post in.
What to do with this number
The free calculator projects your karma growth. MediaFast turns the account behind that number into a traffic channel, with subreddit picks and rule-aware posts and comments.
Not sure which one fits? Compare every plan side by side further down this page.
Without enough karma, Reddit's spam filters will silently remove your posts. Subreddits lock their doors to low-karma accounts. Karma is the price of admission.
Can comment freely in almost all subreddits.
Can post text content in most general subreddits.
Can post links in most subreddits. Spam filter trusts you more.
Access to most niche and professional subreddits.
Can post in restricted subreddits. Strong credibility signal.
Near-full access. Minimal spam filter friction on any content.
Commenting on popular posts in large subreddits earns karma faster than original posts. A well-timed comment on a trending thread can earn hundreds of upvotes in hours.
Most marketing-relevant subreddits (r/entrepreneur, r/SaaS, r/startups) require 500+ karma before allowing self-promotion posts. Plan your warmup timeline accordingly.
10 genuinely helpful comments that each earn 20 upvotes beats 100 low-effort comments that earn 1 each. Reddit rewards depth and value in every interaction.
Reddit karma is a running score attached to your account that reflects how other people have voted on your posts and comments. It is not a 1 to 1 count of votes, and it is not the same thing as reach. According to Reddit's own help documentation, karma is only an approximate reflection of votes, and some communities use it as a spam prevention gate before letting new accounts post.
Reddit tracks two separate karma totals today. Post karma comes from upvotes on things you submit as a new thread, images, links, or text posts. Comment karma comes from upvotes on your replies inside other people's threads. Both count toward the combined total shown at the top of your profile, but subreddits can and do check them separately with AutoMod rules. A subreddit that gets hit by promotional spam will often specifically require comment karma, since comment karma is harder to fake with a single viral link.
Reddit openly describes karma as an approximate reflection of votes, not a direct count. The platform also fuzzes the vote counts it displays, nudging the visible number up or down slightly, specifically to make it harder for bots and vote manipulation rings to reverse-engineer how the ranking and karma systems respond to a given number of votes. Reddit has never published the exact formula, so a manual tally of upvotes on your history will rarely match your karma total exactly, and that gap is expected behavior, not a bug.
A single post or comment can absolutely show a negative score if it gets downvoted more than upvoted, and Reddit dampens how much damage one badly received comment can do so a pile-on cannot single-handedly wreck your account. Your combined account total going visibly negative is uncommon for an account with any real positive history, but it is mathematically possible for a very new account that posts a handful of things and gets downvoted on most of them before building any positive karma to offset it.
No. Once a post or comment has earned or lost karma, that karma generally stays attached to your account's running total even after you delete the content itself. Deleting hides the content from view going forward, it does not retroactively undo the votes it already collected.
If a guide throws around terms like vote fuzzing or cake day without explaining them, here is what each one means in plain language.
Karma
A running score on your account that reflects how other users have voted on your posts and comments over time.
Post karma
The portion of your karma earned specifically from upvotes on posts (submissions) you have made.
Comment karma
The portion of your karma earned specifically from upvotes on your replies inside other threads.
Vote fuzzing
Reddit's practice of deliberately adjusting displayed vote counts so the number shown does not exactly match the real tally, making it harder to reverse-engineer or manipulate.
Karma farming
Posting low-effort, often recycled or bait content purely to accumulate karma quickly, usually flagged as it violates most subreddit and site-wide rules.
Shadowban
Community shorthand for content being silently filtered or removed so only the author can see it. Reddit has moved much of its enforcement to visible account suspensions with notifications, but informal shadow-style filtering by spam detection still happens at the post and comment level.
Cake day
The yearly anniversary of the day you created your Reddit account, marked with a small cake icon next to your username for 24 hours.
AutoMod (AutomModerator)
Reddit's built-in automation tool that moderators configure to auto-remove, auto-approve, or flag posts based on rules like minimum karma, account age, or keyword filters.
Account age gate
A rule, usually enforced through AutoMod, that blocks posting or commenting until an account has existed for a minimum number of days, independent of its karma total.
Reddit does not publish a universal karma requirement chart. Every subreddit sets its own AutoMod rules, so treat these as commonly observed ranges rather than exact thresholds, based on how karma gates are typically described across niche, mid-size, and large subreddits.
| Karma range | What it typically unlocks | Friction you should expect |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 50 combined karma | Commenting almost everywhere | High. AutoMod on many niche and professional subreddits will auto-remove posts or links from accounts this low, even if the content is fine. |
| 50 to 200 combined karma | Posting text in most mid-size communities | Moderate. This is the range where most smaller, niche subreddits stop treating you as a likely spam account. |
| 200 to 500 combined karma | Link posts and self-promotion in many marketing and startup subreddits | Lower, but subreddits that get hit by spam often (startup, SaaS, marketing communities) tend to gate self-promotion links specifically, sometimes regardless of total karma. |
| 500 to 2,000+ combined karma | Posting in larger default-style subreddits and stricter niche communities | Low from karma alone, though account age and a clean moderation history matter as much as the number by this point. |
Run through these in order if you are starting from a brand new or low-karma account. Tools like MediaFast can help with steps 5 and 6 by surfacing questions worth answering and drafting posts that read as genuinely useful rather than promotional.
Fill out your profile like a real person
Add a profile picture and a short bio. Accounts that look like a person, not a placeholder, get less automatic spam-filter suspicion.
Join five to ten subreddits in your actual niche
Subscribe to communities related to what you genuinely want to talk about, not just where you plan to promote something later.
Read the sidebar and pinned rules before you post anything
Most karma-related rejections come from breaking a posted rule, not from Reddit itself. Rules live in the About section or a pinned post.
Comment before you post
Spend your first one to two weeks replying to existing threads with genuinely useful comments. Comment karma is what most AutoMod rules check first.
Answer questions you can genuinely answer well
Search a subreddit for recent questions in your area of knowledge and give a real, specific answer instead of a generic one-liner.
Post original content, not links, early on
Text posts, questions, and personal experiences tend to clear new-account filters more easily than outbound links.
Space activity out over days, not hours
A burst of 20 posts in one afternoon from a new account is a classic spam signal. Consistent, spaced-out activity reads as organic.
Track your karma velocity weekly
Use a karma calculator or your profile history to check whether your weekly karma gain is trending up. A flat or falling trend means your content or subreddit choice needs to change.
Avoid vote manipulation groups and karma-for-karma exchanges
Reddit actively detects and can shadow-remove content from accounts tied to vote exchange rings, and it can undo the karma gained.
Only self-promote once you have a track record
Once you have consistent comment karma and a few weeks of clean history in a community, self-promotion posts (when the subreddit allows them) land far better.
More karma automatically means more reach. Karma affects whether AutoMod lets a post through, not how Reddit's ranking algorithm treats it once it is live. A high-karma account can still post something that gets zero upvotes.
Buying karma or using karma farming bots is safe. Reddit actively looks for vote manipulation patterns. Accounts caught using farming services or bot networks risk having karma reversed or the account suspended entirely.
Deleting a low-scoring post gets you your karma back. Deleting a post removes it from view, but the karma it already earned or lost generally stays attached to your account history.
Karma is the same as reputation on every subreddit. Total site-wide karma is a blunt signal. Individual subreddits often care more about your history and behavior inside that specific community than your global number.
You need thousands of karma to do anything useful on Reddit. Most everyday activity, commenting, joining discussions, asking questions, needs little to no karma. Karma mainly becomes a gate for posting links, self-promotion, or in strict, small communities.
Awardee and awarder karma still count toward your total. Reddit retired the Coins and Awards system in September 2023, and awardee and awarder karma were retired along with it. Only post karma and comment karma exist today.
A negative comment score always means people disagree with you. A negative score can also mean a comment was reported as low-effort, off-topic, or against a subreddit rule. Vote count and vote reason are not the same thing.
Every claim on this page about how karma, cake day, and shadow-style filtering work is grounded in Reddit's own help documentation or reporting on Reddit's public statements, linked below.
Everything you need to know about Reddit karma and how it affects your marketing.
Reddit karma is earned when other users upvote your posts or comments. Each upvote adds to your karma, though Reddit applies a fuzzy algorithm to prevent karma farming. Post karma and comment karma are tracked separately and visible on your profile.
Most general subreddits require no minimum karma. However, niche and professional subreddits often require 50-500 karma before allowing link posts or self-promotion. Some highly curated subs require 1000+ karma. Always check the subreddit sidebar for their specific rules.
Both types contribute to your total karma score, but they are tracked separately. Some subreddits specifically require a minimum of post karma or comment karma, not just the total. Comment karma is generally easier to build because it requires less effort than writing full posts.
Yes. Downvotes reduce your karma. If you post controversial content or spam, your karma can decrease significantly. Deleted posts do not remove their karma contribution, whether positive or negative.
No. Reddit retired its Coins and Awards system in September 2023, and awardee and awarder karma went with it. If you see an older guide mention four karma types, that guide is out of date. Today Reddit only tracks post karma and comment karma.
Reddit does not use a straight one to one relationship between votes and karma. The platform openly fuzzes displayed vote counts and dampens how karma accumulates to make it harder for bots and vote manipulation rings to game the system, so your visible total will rarely match a manual tally of every upvote and downvote.
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 RedditMediaFast generates high-quality Reddit posts that earn upvotes and grow your karma naturally.
