Reddit AMAs by the numbers: how many, who answers, what busy threads share
This is an analysis of almost all r/IAmA posts from 2009 through September 2026, excluding posts marked “NSFW” or posted by bots, pinned posts, and moderator posts.
By Dmytro Krutytskyi, KissMyPost Research·Published ·Data through September 2026·7 min read
In 2025, r/IAmA, the person hosting an AMA responded in 81.0% of threads where there were other commenters, or 298 of 368 threads. Note that this is a restricted sample of AMAs that survived the subreddit’s moderation process, and does not include all submissions sent to the subreddit.
Check your own subreddit
See when your subreddit is most active, what gets posts removed and who writes there.
How many Reddit AMAs have there been?
To find out, I collected all non-nsfw posts to r/IAmA since 2009, along with every comment underneath them. This includes site-wide posts with “ama” in the title, but not all of these are actually AMAs. Many r/IAmA posts get removed, so I also kept track of which ones are still around.
How many posts r/IAmA gets each yearPosts submitted to r/IAmA and posts still visible, per year, 2009 to 2025
Source: KissMyPost analysis of public Reddit posts in r/IAmA; known bots, pinned posts, moderator posts and NSFW posts excluded; 446,286 posts from 2009 through September 2026, the partial year not drawn.
KissMyPost.com
The data shows that for every full year since 2011, there have been fewer posts than the year before. Through the end of September, 2026 has seen 1,980 posts so far.
The gap between those two lines is not really worth overinterpreting; before 2019, I don’t have records of removed posts, so all posts are included in the “visible” count. But starting with 2020, most posts disappear. In 2025, for instance, only 649 out of 3,597 are still up.
How often does the host answer in the comments?
Usually true. Among visible r/IAmA posts from 2025 where there’s a commenter other than the poster, the poster responded at least once in 81.0% of cases (298 of 368), with a 95% confidence interval of 76.7% to 84.7%.
This is a lenient test; it counts any comment made by the post’s own author, so it’s not necessarily clear that the host actually answered the question asked.
In practice, hosts usually show up pretty soon: in 2025 threads, the first host comment came within an hour of the original post, about 55.4% of the time.
“…could become America’s next national parks. AMA”r/IAmA, October 2026, the host’s reply is marked OP; usernames hidden
Screenshot of reddit.com, captured Nov 15, 2026
Here’s the same share for each year, along with a variant that includes removed posts as well.
How often the host commentedShare of r/IAmA posts with a comment from someone else where the poster also commented, per year, 2009 to 2025. Visible posts only, and every post including removed ones
Source: KissMyPost analysis of public Reddit posts and comments in r/IAmA; known bots and moderators excluded; posts whose author deleted the account left out; 368 visible posts in 2025.
KissMyPost.com
The line rises in 2020 and then stays close to its peak for three years.
In 2020, only 1,496 of the 12,344 posts were still visible on the site. If you count all the posts, visible or removed, they still show 84.0% in 2019 and 80.2% in 2020.
In contrast, the share in 2023 has dropped to 37.0%, and almost all of that occurred in just two months. In July, the host replied with an outside comment in 31 of the 216 visible threads, but in August that number dropped to 15 out of 246. I don’t know why there would have been such a difference in the summer, but I kept it in the above data and the above line is flagged.
r/IAmA posts in 2023 by month
KissMyPost.com
r/IAmA posts in 2023 by month
Month
Submitted
Still visible
Visible, with a comment from someone else
Of those, host commented
January 2023
516
42
33
33
February 2023
376
40
25
25
March 2023
375
44
24
24
April 2023
380
59
31
30
May 2023
364
59
45
45
June 2023
531
40
28
27
July 2023
983
464
216
31
August 2023
996
336
246
15
September 2023
415
9
6
6
October 2023
362
14
4
4
November 2023
342
4
1
1
December 2023
432
9
4
4
Known bots and moderators excluded. Posts whose author deleted the account are not in the last two columns.
What do the most-discussed AMAs have in common?
In this post, I’m defining “top tenth” as threads that reach the 90th percentile among visible AMAs in each year, excluding the host’s own comments from the calculation. The cutoff for 2025 is 125 comments.
Busy AMAs and when the host first repliedShare of visible r/IAmA posts in the top tenth of their year by comments from other people, by when the host first replied, all years from 2009 to 2026 pooled, with 95% confidence intervals
Source: KissMyPost analysis of public Reddit posts and comments in r/IAmA; known bots and moderators excluded; 159,713 visible posts with a comment from someone else.
KissMyPost.com
It’s a big catch, and it happens on replies to the post within the first hour.
I also looked at the title and body of the post, as well as the time of day it was posted.
Busy AMAs and what the post looked likeShare of visible r/IAmA posts in the top tenth of their year by comments from other people, by feature of the post, all years from 2009 to 2026 pooled, with 95% confidence intervals
Source: KissMyPost analysis of public Reddit posts and comments in r/IAmA; known bots and moderators excluded; 159,713 visible posts with a comment from someone else.
KissMyPost.com
Titles that sound like a team stand out: visible r/IAmA AMAs with "we", "our", "us" or "team" in the title reached the top tenth by comments from other people 45.7% of the time (2009 to 2026 pooled). For every other title it was 19.1%.
Posts with text in the body did better too, at 26.0%, while title-only posts sat at 6.5%.
Try itWhen to post in any subreddit, who writes there and what does well: Subreddits
Are AMAs happening outside r/IAmA?
Where AMA titles get postedReddit posts with AMA, IAmA or 'ask me anything' in the title, per year, 2009 to 2025: r/IAmA, r/AMA and r/casualiama, and every other subreddit
Source: KissMyPost analysis of public Reddit post titles; known bots excluded; AMA matched in capitals only; 150,055 posts in 2025.
KissMyPost.com
To get a sense of whether an actual AMA is taking place, I ran a language model check on 100 posts with “AMA” in the title that were not in r/IAmA, r/AMA, or r/casualiama, and spanned all years. It judged 75 of them to be actual AMA offers.
It has only one reader, so it didn’t convert many posts from 2025 into tallyable actual AMAs, and even then, the title count is only a rough lower bound. There are also AMAs that have different titles and were missed completely.
Try itHow often any word or phrase shows up on Reddit, month by month: Historical search
What this data can't tell you
Limits, one per row
KissMyPost.com
Limits, one per row
Limit
Why
Not a verified AMA
A post in r/IAmA is not a verified AMA. Many posts are later removed, so the counts mix real AMAs with posts that were not.
Removal flags
The data's removal flags are empty before 2019 and change meaning in mid-2023, so visible posts and the share still visible can't be compared across those lines as a trend.
After moderation
From 2019, the visible posts are the ones left after moderation, and one possible reason, not measured, is that moderators remove posts whose host stays silent. Before 2019 every post counts as visible. Host shares and top-tenth thresholds on the two sides of that line describe different groups of posts, so the thresholds of 2020 to 2022 aren't comparable with those of 2011.
The host is the post author
The host is the post author here: a host reply is any comment by the account that wrote the post. It doesn't show the host answered the question that was asked. Posts whose author deleted the account are left out of the host shares, because their host can't be found by account id. Comments that were removed still count as comments from other people.
Association, not cause
Posts in the top tenth by comments of their year are compared with the rest. This is association, not cause: it shows what goes together with a busy AMA, not what makes one busy, because a thread that takes off keeps its host answering.
Known-bot list
Accounts on a known-bot list are excluded from posts and comments. Bots that aren't on the list remain.
Other subreddits
In other subreddits, AMAs are only found when the title says AMA, IAmA or ask me anything. Events titled differently are missed, so the count outside r/IAmA is a rough floor, not a census. The check of 100 titles had one reader and no second opinion, so there's no agreement rate.
After the data snapshot
Posts and comments deleted or edited after the data snapshot was taken aren't visible here.
NSFW posts
NSFW posts are left out of every count (4,700 of them in r/IAmA), so totals are slightly below everything submitted.
Summer 2023
In summer 2023, in July and August, many more r/IAmA posts show as visible than in the months around them, and hosts rarely replied to them. The 2023 row mixes in a different group of posts from the other years.
Account id change in 2018
There's an account id change in 2018: before July 2018 account ids are hashes of the username and afterwards they're numbers. A host who posted and replied across that switch would be missed. I did not measure how many posts this affects.
Partial year
2026 runs only from January to September, so it isn't compared with full years.
Method
Steps, in order
KissMyPost.com
Steps, in order
Step
What
Posts
Every post in r/IAmA from January 2009 through September 2026 (data through 2026-09-30), 446,286 in all. Left out: NSFW posts (4,700), pinned posts, moderator posts and accounts on a known-bot list (high and medium confidence).
Comments
Every comment under those posts, minus moderators and known bots (AutoModerator included). Counts come from the comments themselves, not from vote or comment totals on the post.
Visible
A post with no removal flag in the data. The flags are empty before 2019, so every earlier post counts as visible.
Host
A comment marked as from the submitter, or from the same account id as the post (author not deleted). The submitter mark is only filled in from 2017, and only partly that year, so both are used.
Host share
Among visible posts with at least one comment from someone else and an author account that still exists, the share where the host commented. 95% confidence intervals by the Wilson method.
Top tenth
Comments from people other than the host at or above the 90th percentile of that year's visible posts. Shares pool all years; ratios got a bootstrap by year.
Team title
Title contains "we", "we're", "our" or "team" in any capitals, or "us" in lowercase only, so "US" isn't counted.
AMA titles across Reddit
"AMA" in capitals only (the Spanish and Italian "ama" means "loves"), and "IAmA", "ask me anything" or "ask us anything" in any capitals. Three groups by subreddit: r/IAmA, r/AMA with r/casualiama, and the rest.
Title check
100 AMA-titled posts from outside those three subreddits, drawn from all years, read as raw text by one language model (Claude Opus). It judged 75 of 100 to be a real AMA offer (95% confidence interval 65.7% to 82.5%).
Planned before looking, and found while analysing
Each plan and what happened
KissMyPost.com
Each plan and what happened
Plan
What happened
Five predictions, written before the host and top-tenth counts were run (the yearly post counts had already been seen)
See the next five rows
Fewer posts every full year after 2011
Held
A host reply in most threads every year since 2017
Failed in 2023
A first-hour reply goes with the top tenth
Held
Team titles no different from solo ones
Failed
Posting time barely matters
Failed
Three other ways to count the headline share
2024 alone gives 84.5%. Every post, removed ones included, gives 72.7%. The last three full years pooled come out lower, and they take in the summer of 2023, but still above half. The host commented in most threads every time
Title pattern for AMA
The first pattern caught the Spanish and Italian word "ama", so AMA became case-sensitive
Ratio of top-tenth shares, first-hour reply against no reply
Moved a lot with the years chosen, though the direction never changed, so the shares are given and not a multiplier
Added after a review of the first results
Host shares count only posts whose author account still exists, the team pattern counts lowercase "us" only, the time of day is shown as four blocks with no single best one, and an estimate of real AMAs outside r/IAmA was dropped
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
Do Reddit AMA hosts actually answer questions?
In 2025, the host of r/IAmA replied to at least one comment in 81.0% of visible threads with an outside comment.
Do AMAs where the host replies fast reach the top tenth by comments more often?
Pooled across all visible r/IAmA AMAs from 2009 through 2026, when the host answered at least once during the first hour, the AMA reached the top tenth of the year by number of comments from others 29.1% of the time. That’s 3.8% if the host never replied.
Is r/IAmA still active?
Yes, but much smaller: 3,597 posts in 2025, compared with 79,475 in 2011 and 1,980 through September 2026.
The data
What the files hold
KissMyPost.com
What the files hold
Item
What
Files
r/IAmA posts per year (submitted, visible, with a comment from someone else), the host share per year with intervals, the top-tenth thresholds and shares by feature, the months of 2023, and AMA titles per year by group.
Host shares count posts with a comment from someone else and an author account that still exists. Visible counts before 2019 equal submitted, because the data has no removal flags then. 2026 (January to September) is in the CSV files.
CSVr/IAmA posts per yearPosts submitted to r/IAmA per year, 2009 to 2026 (January to September).
CSVVisible posts per yearr/IAmA posts still visible in the data (not marked removed), per year.
CSVHost share per yearShare of visible r/IAmA posts with a comment from someone else where the poster also commented, with the base and 95% interval.
CSVTop tenth by featureShare of visible r/IAmA posts in the top tenth of their year by comments from other people, by host reply, title, body and posting time, with 95% intervals.
CSVTop-tenth thresholdsComments from other people needed to reach the top tenth of each year's visible AMAs.
CSVr/IAmA by month in 2023Posts submitted, visible, visible with a comment from someone else, and host commented, by month of 2023.
CSVAMA titles in r/IAmAPosts with AMA, IAmA or 'ask me anything' in the title in r/IAmA, per year.
KissMyPost is a Reddit analytics tool: it reads a subreddit's history (posts, comments, removals, rules) and tells you when to post, what format works and who writes there. This study uses the same data: public Reddit posts and comments back to 2005.
Dmytro Krutytskyi is the founder of KissMyPost, a Reddit analytics tool. He studies what online communities talk about, who writes in them and how audiences overlap, and writes up what the data shows here, with the method and the numbers. Questions about the data, or need a cut we didn't publish? Write to him directly.
Krutytskyi, D. (2026). Reddit AMAs by the numbers: how many, who answers, what busy threads share. KissMyPost Research. https://kissmypost.com/research/reddit-ama-by-the-numbers
Data: Krutytskyi, D. (2026). Reddit AMAs by the numbers: r/IAmA posts, host replies and AMA titles [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24248249
