Reddit glossary
What are upvotes and downvotes on Reddit?
An upvote is a vote that a post or comment deserves to be seen, a downvote says it does not. The score shown is upvotes minus downvotes, and Reddit adds small random changes to the numbers it shows. Higher scores rank content higher in a subreddit and in the feed.
Updated KissMyPost Research
51.8%
of 2025 posts ended with a score of 1 or less
Comments: 57.2% scored 1 or less, 9.0% reached 10, and 3.0% went below zero.
Source: KissMyPost, all Reddit posts and comments created in 2025: 494.3 million posts and 3.86 billion comments.
Every logged-in user can vote once on each post or comment. Votes feed the ranking: in Hot, a post with more recent votes rises, and in Top the highest score in the chosen period wins. Moderators can hide scores for a while, so a fresh comment may show a dot instead of a number.
Most content never gets noticed. A new post starts at 1, because the author's own vote counts, and half of all posts stay there or lower. A score of 10 already puts a post in the top quarter.
A downvote does not remove anything. Content is removed by moderators, AutoModerator or Reddit, which is a different thing (see removed vs deleted).
Common questions
Does a downvote remove a post?
No. A downvote lowers the score and the ranking. Only moderators, AutoModerator or Reddit remove content.
Why is my new post at 1 point?
Posts start with the author's own upvote. In 2025, 51.8% of posts ended at a score of 1 or less, so staying at 1 is the most common result.
Are Reddit scores exact?
Not exactly. Reddit fuzzes the numbers it displays to make vote manipulation harder, so a score can differ slightly between refreshes.
See it for your own subreddit
Check how a subreddit handles removals, scores and posting times, or search how often a phrase appeared on Reddit since 2005.