The most upvoted Reddit posts: highest scores recorded, 2016 to 2026

If you've ever looked up the most upvoted Reddit post of all time, you've probably seen a number without a date. I wanted one with a date on it, because a Reddit score is roughly upvotes minus downvotes and it keeps moving after it's first recorded.

So I went through 3.32 billion posts and 26.6 billion comments posted up to the end of September 2026, minus known bot accounts. In early November I rechecked the live score of every post and comment first recorded at 20,000 or more, wherever I could still find it. Then I asked which ones score highest, and what the very top has in common. Here's what I found.

What is the most upvoted post on Reddit?

Leaving out game-style posts (prediction tournaments, quizzes, polls) found by their titles, the highest live score belongs to "Times Square right now", a video in r/wallstreetbets. On November 3-4, 2026 it stood at 495,324, and I didn't measure whether it still moves.

The highest-scoring Reddit posts, ranked

On November 3-4, 2026, "Times Square right now" scored about 12% more than second place among regular posts. First place is clear. Second and third, an r/movies image titled "The Senate" and a backstage photo in r/pics, are less than half a percent apart, and I'd call them about the same. So are ranks seven and eight, and nine and ten. Here's the top ten, next to the score each post had when it was first recorded:

Some of these moved a lot after they were recorded, and you can see it in the hollow dots. "The Senate" scores 63% more on November 3-4, 2026 than when first recorded, while the r/pics photo has barely moved, and the data doesn't say why.

One article put "Times Square right now" at more than 460,000 in 2022. That's above the score first recorded here and below the live one, so a record you read may be a snapshot from the day it was written.

Try itWhat scores, what gets removed and when to post in any one subreddit: Subreddits

I like this list more than I thought I would. If you came looking for the best Reddit threads, keep in mind that this ranks posts by score, not by quality. It's a mix of memes, news, animals, history and small personal moments, and none of the top ten is a text post.

Game-style posts

Two posts score higher than "Times Square right now", and both are game-style posts I found by their titles. One is a "MEME QUIZ" in r/memes, the other a predictions tournament in r/mildlyinfuriating. Reddit launched Predictions in October 2021, as TechCrunch reported, and Adweek covered the Predictions Tournaments. The quizzes and polls are probably Reddit's built-in format too, but I didn't confirm that.

I found eleven of these in the top 1,000. I don't know how Reddit counts votes on them, so they're out of the rankings and every share below:

What is the most upvoted comment on Reddit?

Among comments posted between November 2016 and September 2026, the top one is a reply under that r/pics backstage photo, at 133,961 on November 3-4, 2026. Second is a comment in r/announcements, and half of the top ten are in r/AmItheAsshole:

Go down to the top 1,000, and r/AskReddit and r/AmItheAsshole together wrote 94.4% of the top 1,000 comments from November 2016 to September 2026, mostly posted before 2024. Two subreddits own a list like that, even though I'd seen hints of it before I started counting.

That share depends a lot on the year, though. Here it is by year, for comments that scored 20,000 or more when first recorded:

Up to 2023, the two wrote at least two thirds of the comments scoring 20,000 or more when first recorded, every year, and after that between 26% and 38%. The data doesn't say why, and the mix of big subreddits shifts from year to year, so I read the chart as a description of each year rather than a trend.

So if you've read that almost every top comment comes from AskReddit or AITA, that's true of the top 1,000, which are mostly older comments; among all comments scoring 20,000 or more from 2017 to 2023, the two wrote 69% to 88% a year. Rank only the comments posted since November 2023 and the two hold only about a third of that separate top 1,000, with r/mildlyinfuriating right behind r/AskReddit.

Which subreddits have the most upvoted posts?

The same ten subreddits hold a bigger share of the posts at every step up, though I picked the ten from the top list, so part of the top share is built in. I took the ten subreddits with the most posts in the top 1,000, among them r/pics, r/memes, r/MadeMeSmile, and checked their share at three heights:

They hold about a quarter of posts above 20,000, more than half of those above 100,000 and about seven in ten at the very top. The ten were picked from the top list itself, so part of the top share is built in. Still, in the top 1,000 you're mostly scrolling the same ten communities.

What do the most upvoted posts have in common?

Were 2020 to 2022 special? Much less than it looks

I'd already seen a trial top list when I wrote down my guess: posts from those three years would hold at least 1.5 times their share of all posts among the records. Against all posts the ratio is 2.09, so that held. But the fair test is other very popular posts:

Against posts above 100,000, the share is about the same. Against posts above 20,000 the ratio is 1.20: somewhat more concentrated in those years, but below 1.5. By my own bar the guess holds against all posts, but not against other very popular ones.

Pictures, videos and the word upvote

What kind of posts are they? Pictures and videos make up 89.6% of the top 1,000 posts, about the same as the 90.8% among posts above 100,000, so the share describes very popular posts without being a recipe for the top.

Twelve of the top 1,000 posts have the word "upvote", from "UPVOTE so everyone sees we got SUPPORT" in r/wallstreetbets to the r/movies post that wanted to come up when you Google "The Senate". The word also appears in titles that aren't requests, so these twelve can't show whether asking helps.

Why nothing before November 2016 makes the list

You won't find old Reddit classics here: the numbers for posts take a step in November 2016, and I haven't measured why. Here's how many posts scored 20,000 or more each month, as first recorded:

In this data, only 16 posts scored 20,000 or more before November 2016, and after it there are thousands a month. That's not a slow climb. It's a step.

Reddit changed how scores were counted in December 2016, as TechCrunch reported at the time. Whether that explains the step, which starts a month earlier in this data, I haven't measured. Even the highest live score among those older posts, 123,563, is below the cutoff for the top list.

Comments show a similar step: only two scored 20,000 or more before November 2016. TechCrunch said comment scores should be largely unaffected, so I can't say the algorithm change explains it. No comment from before November 2016 made the list.

What I take from this

• A Reddit record needs a date. "Times Square right now" is first among regular posts on November 3-4, 2026, and scores had moved since they were first recorded.
• Ten subreddits hold about seven in ten of the top 1,000 posts from November 2016 to September 2026 (the ten were picked from the top list itself, so part of the top share is built in).
• Pictures and videos are 89.6% of the top 1,000 posts, about the same as among posts above 100,000 (90.8%) and more than among posts above 20,000. To see what scores well where you post, look at your own subreddit.

Is there a record you'd like me to check next? Tell me.

What this data can't tell you

• Scores move. A score is roughly upvotes minus downvotes, and it isn't a count of votes. I used the live score wherever Reddit still showed it on the day I checked. Scores had moved since they were first recorded, and I didn't measure whether they still do; shares can move by several points.
• Some scores are as first recorded. That covers posts Reddit no longer shows and some top comments, and a post that's gone may sit a little low. Older comments were recorded weeks after posting and recent ones, according to the documentation for this data, about a day and a half after; for some the timing is unknown. Votes for July to October 2023 were recorded again later, only for what was still up.
• Some comparison groups are as first recorded. The baselines (all posts, and all posts above 1,000) use the score first recorded, and that undercounts recent years. The groups at 20,000 and 100,000 or more are picked by first recorded score, though their live scores are used where found. For posts from 2024 to 2026, the median live score is 3% to 9% above the first record.
• The lists start from recorded scores. I rechecked only posts and comments that were already high when recorded. A post recorded lower would have needed to grow more than any post I measured, but for comments posted since November 2023 the margin is thin: the 1,000th scored 28,783, only 1.4 times the cut, so that list may be incomplete. Six of the top 1,000 posts are from August and September 2026 and may still be collecting votes; I didn't measure that.
• Nothing from before November 2016 made the list. As first recorded, 16 posts scored 20,000 or more before November 2016, against 2,168 to 4,798 a month from November 2016 to December 2017. I rechecked only those 16; the highest live score among them is 123,563, below the 168,647 the top 1,000 needs. Only two comments scored 20,000 or more before then. I haven't measured why the numbers step up.
• What's counted. Game-style posts are found by their titles and left out, since I don't know how Reddit counts their votes. Known bots are removed by list, so unlisted bots stay in. Post type comes from Reddit's fields, so galleries count as links. Removed, deleted and NSFW posts stay in the counts but aren't shown. The top lists are complete counts, so the intervals describe this kind of post rather than sampling error.
• A gap in the data. Comments posted in a 14-minute window on July 26, 2023 are missing from the data, so none of them could appear in a list.
• Yearly series describe each year. The mix of big subreddits changes, and differences between years mix real change with when scores were recorded, so I don't treat them as trends or give a cause.

Method

Data: 3,321,413,578 posts and 26,580,846,540 comments from 2005 to September 30, 2026, after removing accounts on a known-bot list (high and medium confidence) and posts and comments from July to October 2023 whose score is unknown; one duplicated post is kept once in the top lists. For July 10 to October 31, 2023 the first recorded score comes from the same posts and comments recorded again in 2026. Rankings: top 1,000 posts and comments. Game-style posts are left out of the post rankings: titles such as "predictions tournament", "quiz" or "predictions:" and no picture or video, plus question-style text posts from October 2021 to December 2022 in the seven subreddits where such a game post made the top 5,000 (r/AskReddit and r/AmItheAsshole excluded, since questions are their normal format). The question rule flagged 192 posts.

Live scores: on November 3-4, 2026, I rechecked every post and every comment first recorded at 20,000 or more, using the last recorded score before 06:00 UTC on November 4, 2026. 796,052 posts and 43,515 comments came back with a live score; the rest keep the score first recorded (column score_source in the CSV files). The median post's live score was 0.1% above its first record; one in a hundred rose by 31% or more, and the most was 5.35 times. In the top 1,000 posts, 959 scores are live and 41 belong to posts Reddit no longer shows; 850 are the same posts as in a ranking by first recorded score. Top 1,000 comments: 920 live, 25 no longer shown (removed or deleted), 55 without a live snapshot. A post would have needed to grow 8.4 times from below 20,000 to reach the top 1,000 (the 1,000th live score is 168,647) and 6.4 times for the top 5,000 (128,789); the most I measured among posts first recorded just above 20,000 was 5.35 times. For comments posted from November 2023 on, the 1,000th scored 28,783, only 1.4 times the cut. Median live score above first record for posts from 2024, 2025 and 2026: 3.4%, 6.9%, 8.6%.

Planned before looking at results: the record lists; the share of the top 1,000 in ten subreddits and in r/AskReddit plus r/AmItheAsshole; years; post type; and titles with "upvote". There were seven hypotheses in the full study, each with what would disprove it; this page covers the ones about the top of the rankings. Before writing that plan I had seen three test queries (the top posts, the top posts of July to October 2023, and the highest comments), so the hypotheses about AskReddit and AITA, about 2020 to 2022 and about the word "upvote" describe what I'd seen rather than predict it.

Found while analysing: the score break in November 2016; game-style posts at the very top; the lower AskReddit and AITA share after 2023. The game-post rule was widened to question-style polls after I had seen the first top list; with every game-style post kept in, as first planned, the ten-subreddit share is 70.5%, and without them it's 70.9%. The planned test for 2020 to 2022, against all posts, held (ratio 2.09, 95% interval 1.99 to 2.19). I added two stricter tests after seeing the results: against posts above 20,000 the ratio is 1.20 (1.14 to 1.26), so the records are somewhat more concentrated in those years, and against posts above 100,000 it's 1.02 (0.97 to 1.07), about the same. The first draft of this article used first recorded scores. I held it back and rechecked the scores live, which changed the order at the top.

Statistics: shares with 95% Wilson intervals, ratios of shares with log-ratio intervals; "more" or "less" only where intervals don't overlap, and ranks only where the gap on one date is clear. I checked seven hypotheses in seven versions of the data (the main one plus top 500, top 5,000, without the largest subreddit, without July to October 2023, only November 2023 on, and first recorded instead of live scores), up to 49 slices (not every hypothesis was run in every version), with no correction for multiple comparisons. With a Bonferroni correction for seven hypotheses (z = 2.69), the ten-subreddit share is 66.9% to 74.6% and AskReddit plus AITA 92.1% to 96.1%, so the conclusions hold. Across the versions, the ten-subreddit share stays between 66.1% and 76.0%, pictures and videos between 88.0% and 91.6%, and 2020 to 2022 between 2.09 and 2.27 times their share of all posts (not computed for the November 2023 version). First recorded against live scores: 76.0% against 70.9% for the ten subreddits, 2.27 against 2.09 for 2020 to 2022. The AskReddit plus AITA share falls to 33.6% in the November 2023 version, and the "upvote" title ratio (8.4 in the main version) falls to 3.2 in the top 5,000 and has an interval that includes no difference in the November 2023 version, so neither is a headline finding.

Comparison groups: pictures and videos are 89.6% of the top 1,000 against 80.6% expected from all posts above 1,000 with the same mix of years (ratio 1.11); among posts above 20,000 they are 84.4%. "Upvote" titles are 12 of 1,000 against 0.169% expected the same way (ratio 7.08), and two of the twelve are one r/AnarchyChess series, so I only give examples and don't claim a pattern. A finer split of post type by domain gives pictures 60.0%, videos 30.2%, Reddit-hosted posts 2.9%, links 3.5% and text 3.4%.

Recording delay: for the top 1,000 comments posted before June 2023, the median gap between posting and first record is 49.6 days (n = 918); for posts the time isn't stored. From November 2023, according to the documentation for this data, first recorded scores come from a second pass about 36 hours after posting. Votes for July 10 to October 31, 2023 were recorded again in 2026 (two of the top 1,000 posts and twelve of the top 1,000 comments); for June 1 to July 10, 2023 the recording moment is unknown. For 2,516 comments above 20,000 from February to June 2021 the recording time is missing, including 45 of the top 1,000 comments and the r/announcements comment in second place. Six of the top 1,000 posts are from August and September 2026. Of the top 1,000 posts, 22 were removed when recorded and seven are NSFW; 11 of the removed ones are also among the 41 Reddit no longer shows, so 52 are removed or gone. They stay in the counts but aren't shown.

The top 1,000 comments come from 897 threads, at most seven from one; resampling by thread gives an AskReddit plus AITA interval of 92.8% to 96.0%, close to the Wilson one. The CSV files have no post titles (except game-style posts), comment text or usernames.

Conflict of interest: KissMyPost makes Reddit research tools. Funding: none.

Corrections: contact me; each fix gets a dated note on this page.

Questions people ask

The data

The counts behind this article are in these files. The ranked lists have one row per post or comment, with the live score where there is one and the score first recorded, without titles, comment text, IDs or usernames. They're free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; please credit KissMyPost and link to this page.

• CSVTop 1,000 postsOne row per post: rank, date, subreddit, score (live on November 3-4, 2026 where available), score source, score when first recorded, whether Reddit no longer shows it, comment count, post type and removed/NSFW flags. No titles, IDs or usernames. Game-style posts excluded.
• CSVTop 1,000 commentsOne row per comment: rank, date, subreddit, score, score source, score when first recorded and hours between posting and recording. No comment text, IDs or usernames.
• CSVAskReddit and AITA share by yearShare of comments at 20,000 or more when first recorded in r/AskReddit or r/AmItheAsshole, with 95% intervals.
• CSVTop posts by yearTop 1,000 posts per year against each year's share of all posts and posts at 20,000 or more.
• CSVPost scores by month, 2015 to 2017Posts at 20,000 or more and the highest post score in each month, when first recorded.
• CSVGame-style postsGame-style posts (prediction tournaments, quizzes, polls) found by their titles among the top 5,000 posts.
• PNGMain chart, 1600 × 1000The highest-scoring posts chart as an image.

Zenodo DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24141468