Subreddit karma and account age requirements, checked on 70,483 subreddits

What a new account runs into

You make a Reddit account, write a post, and it gets removed. Sometimes a bot tells you why: your account is too new, or your karma is too low. Sometimes it doesn't say how new is too new. So you guess.

I wanted the actual numbers. I worked out posting rules across Reddit from the messages subreddit bots send when they remove a post and from the pattern of the removals themselves. Then I took every subreddit where new accounts, less than two years old, posted at least a hundred times from April to September. That's 70,483 subreddits. And I asked the data three questions. How many of them show a number at all? When they do, what's the typical number? And how often do the first posts of brand-new accounts get removed anyway?

How many subreddits have karma or account age requirements?

About 4% of the 70,483 subreddits state a minimum karma or account age in their bot's removal messages. Counting limits that show up as a clear step in the removals too, about one in ten of them have one. For any karma number, about 2% of the subreddits state one and about 5% have one I could find either way.

In about nine in ten of these subreddits I found no number in bot messages or removal patterns. A subreddit's rules page may still state one; I didn't scan those. Here's how the numbers I found split between age and karma:

Among the numbers I found, age limits are more common than karma limits. About one in fifty of the 70,483 subreddits shows both an age and a karma number. And most of the numbers I found come only from the removals. I didn't find them in any bot message.

New accounts' first posts are often removed

So are the other nine in ten open to new accounts? Not necessarily. I don't think you can read the data that way.

Reddit's posting-requirements data lists an account-age or karma check for some subreddits without giving the number. About one in five of the subreddits with a record in Reddit's posting-requirements data had a number in this data or an account check in Reddit's posting-requirements data. That one in five includes the subreddits with a number; Reddit's own checks alone cover 14.0%.

In about one in nine of the subreddits I checked that had no number and enough posts (11.7%), moderator removals were more than 10 points higher for accounts under a week old than for accounts in their second week. I didn't measure why; an unstated age filter is one possible reason.

So what happens to a new account's first post? Here's the share removed in the typical subreddit, by how old the account was:

In the typical subreddit, about half (49%) of first posts from accounts less than a day old were removed, from February 2025 to January 2026. For accounts three months to just over a year old, the typical subreddit removed 14% of first posts. The share drops with every step in age. The data doesn't show that age is the reason, though. One possible reason, not measured: newer accounts may break rules or spam more often.

Try itHow often posts from new accounts get removed in a subreddit you pick: Subreddits

Who removes them? The data labels almost every removal as made by Reddit itself or by the subreddit's moderators or AutoModerator, so I split them that way. Here's how the removals of first posts split, averaged across subreddits:

For first posts from accounts under a day old, removals in the average subreddit were about three in five by Reddit itself and two in five by moderators or AutoModerator. For first posts from accounts older than three months, Reddit and the moderators made roughly even shares of removals. Keep in mind that I only see the label as it stood in the data, so a moderator removal that came later may be missing.

Karma points the same way, on a different set of posts and months. Here I counted every post instead of each account's first one, from April to September, by the author's comment karma when they posted:

In the typical subreddit, 34% of posts by accounts created since December 2024 whose authors had zero or negative comment karma were removed by anyone, April to September 2026. For authors with 250 or more comment karma, the typical subreddit removed about 2% of posts in the same months. The data shows who got removed. It doesn't show why. If you post in business subreddits, I looked at what gets removed there in an earlier piece.

How much karma do you need to post?

If you're asking how much karma you need to post, the honest answer is that it depends on the subreddit, and most don't state a number in bot messages or show a clear step in removals (I didn't scan rules pages). When a subreddit's bot names a karma minimum, it's comment karma, or total karma or karma of no stated type, about nine in ten times. Among subreddits whose bot states a comment-karma minimum, the median is 50. Among those stating total karma or karma of no stated type, the median is also 50. Here's how the stated minimums spread out:

Exactly 50 is the single most common comment-karma minimum, about a third of them. About one in five is under 10, and about one in six is exactly 10. For total karma or karma of no stated type, 50, 10 and 100 are each about one in six. Then there's a long tail. About one in twenty of those minimums runs into the thousands, so I wouldn't lean on the median for the one subreddit you're trying to post in.

Account age requirement: a week is the most common

Among subreddits whose bot names an age, the median minimum is a week. Here's the full spread:

A week is the most common single value, at a little over one in five, but the values vary widely. 30 days comes next. About one in twenty of the subreddits whose bot names an age asks for three months or more.

What happens at a stated account age limit

If you've hit an age limit, this part is for you. It only covers account age. I took every subreddit whose bot names an age limit and that had enough posts on both sides of it: 1,221 of the 2,124 in the main sample with a stated age. Limits off the grid of ages I tested, or with too few posts on one side, such as some 21-day or 90-day limits, aren't checked. Then I compared posts from all accounts younger than the limit with posts from accounts from the limit up to twice the limit, counting only removals by moderators and AutoModerator:

Where a subreddit's bot names an age, moderators removed posts from accounts younger than the limit far more often than posts from accounts up to twice the limit. In those subreddits, the median subreddit's own gap in moderator removals between the two groups was 26 points. The medians of each side, 60% and 12%, come from different subreddits, so they don't subtract to the gap. The drop is mostly at the limit. Between twice and four times the limit, where I have no stated rule, moderator removals fall only about 2 points.

The comparison at the limit isn't independent proof that the limits do anything, though. I only know a limit because the bot writes it in its removal messages, so these subreddits were picked because their bot names the limit. You can read it as a description of what happens to your post at the line in those subreddits, nothing more. Whether a limit keeps spam out is something I can't tell from this.

Bigger subreddits more often have a number

The share of subreddits with a number rises with every step in size:

In the smallest size group, under 1% show a number. In the biggest, it's about 37%. Part of that may be mechanical. One possible reason (not measured): bigger subreddits get more posts, so a step in removals is easier to spot. Still, even among subreddits with a similar number of posts from new accounts, the second-biggest size group had a number more often than the second-smallest. It's a correlation. I can't say size is the cause. If you run a subreddit yourself, I wrote about how to grow a subreddit separately.

What the biggest subreddits say

Here's what I found for the largest safe-for-work subreddits in this sample whose bot states a minimum, minus one I left out, and whether the removals line up:

In r/books and r/loseit, posts below the stated age weren't removed more often than posts above it, so I marked those rows. This data doesn't show that those subreddits ignore their rule. I left out r/AmItheAsshole, whose bot names an age of more than a year. The accounts in the data were at most just over a year old when they posted, so I can't check a limit like that.

Try itSubreddits similar to the one you want to post in: Find Subs

So what should a new account expect?

My read of all this: don't take a missing number as an open door. In about nine in ten subreddits here I found no number, and in the typical subreddit about half of brand-new accounts' first posts were removed. Where a bot does name a number, the median stated age is a week and, separately, the median stated karma is 50. If your first post vanished, you've got a lot of company. When you try again, here's the best time to post on Reddit by subreddit.

If you spot a mistake, tell me and I'll fix it here with a dated note. And if there's a question about posting rules you'd like me to ask this data next, tell me that too.

What this data can't tell you

A missing number isn't a missing rule. I only have a number where a subreddit's bot writes it in a removal message, or where removals show a clear step. I didn't scan rules pages or sidebars, so a number posted there but never written in a removal message is missing here. So the shares with a number likely undercount. But measured steps may include some false ones, which I didn't measure, so they're not strict lower bounds.

Only accounts created since late December 2024 are in the data, so the oldest age group means three months to just over a year. If your account is older than that, this data doesn't describe you. Account age is known only to the day, so "under a day" means up to about a day and a half from midnight of the sign-up date. Account age and karma come from different months, listed in the method below. Karma at the time of a post is estimated from public posts and comments. I know the exact creation date for 74.3% of the new accounts' authors who posted in the account age window, so the age figures leave out the rest.

Removed means removed by anyone: Reddit itself, a moderator or AutoModerator, for any reason at all, and age or karma may have nothing to do with it. Who removed it is the label as it stood in the data, so later removals by moderators may be missing. These shares only cover posts that were published.

Age and the calendar are mixed up here. Posts in the oldest age group come from later months than posts in the youngest, so a change in how Reddit removes posts during the year could look like an age effect. Karma, measured over the same months for every group, points the same way, but it can't rule that out.

Limits change over time, and I treat a stated number as current only if the bot used it in the last year. I searched bot messages in English only, so for subreddits in other languages "no number" means even less. Comments weren't measured. If you want the bigger picture, I also counted how many subreddits there are.

The intervals don't include mistakes in reading bot messages or in spotting steps, and I didn't measure how often a step shows up where there's no real limit. They treat each subreddit as one unit, so they don't account for the same person posting in many subreddits. The step at a stated age only covers subreddits whose bot names the limit and that have enough posts on both sides, and the link between size and having a number is a correlation.

Method

Data: KissMyPost's table of posting thresholds for posts, built on October 22, 2026 from Reddit data through September 2026. It covers 91,398 subreddits, 8,207 of them with a number for posts. Accounts on KissMyPost's list of known bots are excluded. The main sample is the 70,483 subreddits with at least 100 posts from accounts created since December 20, 2024, in April to September 2026.

A stated minimum is a number a subreddit's bot writes in its removal messages. Two automated judges checked a sample of message templates; they agreed on 295 of 300 in a first check, and no chance-corrected agreement was computed. In a second check of 150 fresh templates, the age was read right in 58 of 60 and the karma number and type in 80 of 90. A measured minimum is a clear step in removals by account age or karma. Where a subreddit has both, the measured one matches the stated one within 1 day or 20% for age and 25% for karma in 81% to 87% of cases. As a rough check on how accurately the numbers are read (not on whether a limit exists at all), allowing for that puts the share with any number at 9.2% to 9.6% rather than 10.4%. 4,616 subreddits have only a measured number. About one in five of the 52,346 subreddits with a record in Reddit's posting-requirements data (10,882, 20.8%) had a number in this data or an account check in Reddit's posting-requirements data (snapshot June to October 2026); Reddit's own checks alone: 14.0%. For any karma number, 5.0% (3,519) of the main sample have any number and 2.1% a stated one; 95.0% have no karma number.

Typical minimums use every subreddit in the table with a stated number: age n = 2,572, comment karma n = 574, total karma n = 1,159. Medians have 1,000 bootstrap resamples over subreddits; in brackets is the 95% interval of the median, which says nothing about the spread of values: comment karma 50 (25 to 50), total karma 50 (40 to 50). In the main sample alone, the medians are 7 days, comment karma 30 (20 to 50) and total karma 50 (30 to 50). Measured minimums fall into fixed bins, so they're only approximate. In the whole table they are about 7 days (6 in the main sample), about 20 comment karma and about 60 total karma.

Removals by account age use the first post of each account in each subreddit, February 2025 to January 2026, and the median over subreddits with at least 30 accounts in that age group: 49.5% (48.7% to 50.0%) under a day against 13.9% (13.6% to 14.1%) at 90 days or more. The average over subreddits is 53.6% against 24.4%. Accounts in the data exist from December 20, 2024, so for the older age groups the first post in this window may not be the account's first post in that subreddit. People who first post in a subreddit after three months may also be a different group of people, which I didn't measure. So this describes who got removed. It can't separate the effect of age from that. Counting posts instead of accounts gives 52.5% against 8.0%, and pooling all posts, where big subreddits dominate, gives 55.3% against 16.5%. Who removed a post is an average over subreddits: 53.6% under a day is 33.1% removed by Reddit itself plus 20.3% moderators and AutoModerator (the rest is other), and 24.4% at 90 days or more is 11.7% plus 12.7%. Medians of the parts don't add up, because moderator removals are concentrated in fewer subreddits: for accounts under a day old, the median subreddit's moderator share is 1.1% while the average is 20.3%. Where Reddit's posting-requirements data lists an account check, the median for accounts under a day old is 95.4%; in subreddits whose posting-requirements data lists no account check, 43.8%. Karma uses posts rather than accounts, April to September 2026. Where a bot removed a post for too little karma, the rebuilt karma was below the stated minimum in 88% to 99% of cases. Shares of subreddits use Wilson 95% intervals. Within bands of similar post volume, I compared subreddits with 1,000 to 10,000 subscribers against 100,000 to 1 million, because the smallest size group is nearly empty there and the largest is small in most bands.

The step at a stated age uses removals by moderators and AutoModerator in subreddits with at least 30 posts on each side. It compares posts below the limit with posts between the limit and twice the limit. The placebo compares between the limit and twice it against two to four times it, in the same subreddits. 1,221 of 2,124 subreddits in the main sample with a stated age qualified: gap 25.7 points (22.5 to 28.8), placebo 1.9 points (1.5 to 2.2). Limits that don't fall on the grid of tested ages, or that have too few posts on one side, aren't checked. No karma step is tested against a placebo here; the table shows karma removals below and above the limit only as description.

I re-ran the main results three other ways: only stated numbers, only safe-for-work subreddits, and only subreddits with at least 300 posts. The share with a number was 3.9%, 11.1% and 14.4%. First posts removed, under a day against 90 days or more: 43.6% against 12.9% (safe-for-work) and 51.6% against 14.2% (300 or more posts). The gap at the stated age was 25.1, 26.4, 25.7 points (safe-for-work, 300 or more posts, whole table), and the placebo 1.9 to 2.0 points everywhere.

Planned before looking at results: fewer than half of subreddits show a number (held, 10.4%); the typical stated minimum is at most a week and 50 karma (held, though I had seen the overall spread before writing the plan); posts from accounts under a day old are removed more often than posts from accounts over 90 days old in most subreddits (held, in 95.7% of 27,557 subreddits); posts below a stated limit are removed at least twice as often as above it (held in the first run, but replaced after review because that comparison was circular; see the placebo above); the share with a number rises with size (held); and most subreddits where Reddit's posting-requirements data lists an account check publish no number (held in the main sample, where 47.2% have a number, so most have none, but not in subreddits with 300 or more posts, at 51.2%, so it doesn't hold across samples and stays out of the short answer).

Found while analysing: the table of the largest subreddits became the 30 biggest safe-for-work subreddits with a stated minimum (one left out, see the table), because the highest stated limits can't be checked on accounts this young. Rows with a stated age over a year are left out (3 such subreddits in the whole table). After a review of the first results, the typical minimum uses the whole table, removals by age are counted per account rather than per post, removals are split by who made them, and the age-step check counts only moderator removals and adds the placebo. A planned list of subreddits open to new accounts was dropped: it was unstable near its cut-off and pulled in support communities and subreddits in other languages.

I didn't correct for the number of comparisons. Words like more, most or fewer appear only where the 95% intervals don't overlap.

KissMyPost makes Reddit research tools; nobody paid for this study.

Questions people ask

The data

Six CSV files come with this article: shares of subreddits with a posting minimum (with the size and alternative cuts), the stated minimums, removals by account age and karma, who removed first posts, the step at a stated age, and the table of the largest subreddits. Shares are in percent; most come with 95% intervals, but the who-removed averages and the largest-subreddits table don't. None of the files contain post text or usernames. They're free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; please credit KissMyPost and link to this page.

• CSVSubreddits with a posting minimumShare of subreddits with a karma or account age minimum: by kind, by subscribers, with Reddit's own checks and the alternative cuts.
• CSVStated minimumsMedians and the spread of stated minimum account age and karma, by karma type, for the whole table and the main sample.
• CSVRemovals by account age and karmaShare of first posts (by account age) and of posts (by age and comment karma) removed: median subreddit, pooled and by who removed them.
• CSVWho removed new accounts' postsAverage share removed per subreddit, split into removed by Reddit itself, by moderators and AutoModerator, and other.
• CSVRemovals at a stated age limitModerator removals below and above a stated age limit, and the placebo at twice the limit, with 95% intervals.
• CSVLargest subreddits with a stated minimumThe largest safe-for-work subreddits with a stated minimum, with posts and removals on each side of the limit.
• PNGMain chart, 1600 × 1000First posts removed by account age, as an image.

The CSV files are also on Zenodo, with a permanent DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23899271