Reddit Karma Requirements: Why There's No Single Number

The short answer: there is no Reddit-wide number

Reddit has no single karma number you need before you can post. As of 2026-10-16, karma requirements are set community by community, and Reddit says the exact thresholds communities use are not disclosed. Any article that tells you "you need X karma to post on Reddit" is describing one subreddit, a guess, or an old snapshot.

Karma itself is a rough score. Reddit's What is karma? page describes it as a reflection of the votes your posts and comments receive, and adds that votes and karma "don't have a 1:1 relationship." The same page explains where the requirements come from:

“some communities require a certain amount of karma before allowing you to post there.”

Source: What is karma?, Reddit Help. Reddit gives the reason as preventing spam in the community.

Who sets karma requirements

Reddit runs on two layers of rules. The Reddit Rules describe them this way:

“Below the rules governing each community are the platform-wide rules that apply to everyone on Reddit.”

Moderators enforce community rules; Reddit's admins enforce the platform-wide ones. Karma minimums sit in the community layer. Moderators can apply them through AutoModerator rules or through Reddit's built-in safety filters. That is why two subreddits on the same topic can treat the same new account completely differently.

Reddit also has its own spam limits that are separate from any subreddit rule. Its help page on "You're doing that too much" says there is a limit on how often users can post and comment in a community, and that brand-new accounts without much karma may hit it. The same page notes that Reddit Premium does not change this filter.

What a subreddit gate can check

As of 2026-10-16, Reddit's full AutoModerator documentation lists the karma and age checks a moderator can use. A gate can look at:

• your total post karma, comment karma, or the two combined
• your post karma, comment karma, or combined karma inside that one community
• your account age, in units from minutes to years

By default an AutoModerator rule triggers only when all of its karma and age checks match; a moderator can set it to trigger when any one of them matches. So "karma requirement" can mean very different things. A community might care only about comment karma earned inside it, and your total karma elsewhere may not count at all.

Karma is also not the only signal. Reddit documents other filters moderators can turn on:

• Crowd Control can hold posts for moderator review. For comments, its settings range from filtering accounts with negative karma in that community, to also filtering new accounts, to also filtering non-members.
• The Contributor Quality Score places every account in one of five tiers, based on signals such as past actions on the account, network and location signals, and steps like email verification. Moderators can use it in AutoModerator, and it informs the reputation filter. Reddit's reputation filter page describes the score as using karma, verification and other account signals.

So a healthy karma total on its own does not mean a post will go straight through.

Declared, observed and unknown requirements

When you try to work out a subreddit's requirement, sort what you know into three buckets and do not mix them up.

Declared. What the community or Reddit tells you directly: the rules, sidebar or wiki of the subreddit, and the Poster Eligibility Guide. Reddit's Poster Eligibility Guide appears when you select Create a post and tells you whether you meet the karma, account age and email verification criteria. It does not tell you the numbers:

“Specific karma and account age thresholds used by communities aren't disclosed at this time to deter potential misuse.”

Source: Post Check & Poster Eligibility Guide, Reddit Help.

Observed. What happens when you act: a post that never shows up, a removal message, a rate-limit warning. These are real signals, but they rarely tell you which check triggered. A missing post could be a karma gate, Crowd Control, a reputation filter, Reddit's own spam limit or a moderator's manual call.

Unknown. Everything else, including the exact threshold. The moderator version of the eligibility guide says it is built from AutoModerator rules that immediately remove posts, refreshes every six hours, and ignores rules set to filter rather than remove. So a community can hold posts for review on criteria the guide never shows you. Numbers on third-party lists belong in this bucket too until the community itself confirms them.

How to check a subreddit before you post

1. Read the subreddit's rules, sidebar and wiki. If a minimum is written there, that is the closest thing to a declared number.
2. Select Create a post and read the Poster Eligibility Guide if it appears. It tells you which criteria you do not yet meet.
3. If your post does not appear, sort the community by New first. Reddit's Why can't I see my post? page lists this check, along with community rules and spam filters.
4. Take part in the community before you post. Reddit says that even earning a small amount of karma by commenting on another post within a community can help you get past its spam filter.
5. If you think your post was removed by mistake, send the moderators a modmail message. Reddit's own help page suggests this.

Reddit's karma page also points new users to r/NewToReddit, which it describes as an unofficial community that lists subreddits without high karma restrictions.

What Reddit says not to do about karma

Karma gates exist to slow down spam, and Reddit's policies close the obvious shortcuts. As of 2026-10-16:

• Reddit's spam policy lists "Repeatedly posting or sharing old content for the purpose of rapidly gaining karma" as something that may violate it.
• The User Agreement says: "You will not license, sell, or transfer your Account without our prior written approval." So an account with karma already on it cannot be sold or transferred under that term unless Reddit has approved it in writing.
• Rule 5 of the Reddit Rules asks users not to "intentionally mislead others", and Rule 2 asks them to participate authentically and not to engage in content manipulation.

If your contributions are mostly links to your own business, the spam policy asks you to be thoughtful about how often you post, or to consider Reddit's advertising options.

What this does not cover: rules of individual subreddits, which change and are best read on the subreddit itself. This is not legal advice.

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