Short answer: Reddit rewards help and bans ads. So you earn your users. Find the subreddits where your users complain about the problem you solve. Spend a week being useful and building karma. Then answer the threads that ask “what tool do you use for…”. Answer in the open, where the people who read but never post can see. Stories and data, never ads.
TL;DR
- Reddit is also a place to test your idea. Complaint threads tell you if it is worth building. Check before you promote.
- Pick subreddits by buyer intent, not size. A 20k niche sub asking “is there a tool for X?” beats a 3M sub that kills most promo posts.
- Trust first. Use an account that is 30+ days old with 100+ karma. New accounts that drop links get shadowbanned in minutes.
- The 90/10 rule is dead in 2026. Mods judge your whole pattern of behavior, not a ratio.
- One good comment keeps paying. Reddit is the #1 most-cited site in AI answers. That means ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google.
Your first users are already on Reddit
Supademo’s co-founder had a free plan. He was willing to do things that don’t scale. He posted a simple offer in the right subreddits. “Drop your product URL and I’ll build you a free interactive demo,” he wrote. That offer pulled in the company’s first 2,000 signups. One thread hit 11,000 views in 24 hours. No ads, no sales team. (They’re past $4M ARR now, per Supademo’s own writeup.)
That’s Reddit’s pitch in one story. Strangers sorted into rooms by the exact problem they have. They post in public about what’s broken and what they’d pay to fix. You don’t have to find your users. They’ve lined up by topic.
The effort keeps paying, too. No site gets cited more in AI answers than Reddit. Think ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews. AI Overviews cite it in roughly 21% of results. That comes from Karmic’s look at citation data. A helpful comment can get quoted to buyers in your space for months.
Test your idea on Reddit first
Almost every guide skips the step that matters most. Check that your idea is real before you chase a single user. Right now, those complaint threads are the cheapest proof of demand you’ll find. We wrote the full method, search phrases included, in how to find customer pain points on Reddit.
Spend an hour reading your target subs. Search for three kinds of thread.
- “Is there a tool that…” or “What do you use for…”. These people are shopping for a fix.
- “I hate that [existing tool] does X” or “alternative to [competitor]”. These people are unhappy, and you can win them.
- “How do I…” asked over and over. This is a task people struggle with.
Count them. Ten people asking “is there a tool for X” this month is real demand. You didn’t have to make it up. Silence is an answer too, and a cheaper one than building. Full method: how to validate a startup idea. For tools that do it for you, here’s an honest look at the best idea validation tools.
Why most product posts get removed
Reddit punishes anything that smells like an ad, and fast. No platform you’ve used is faster at it. Most promo posts get removed. Mods remove some. Spam filters and shadowbans remove the rest, and nobody tells you. The fix isn’t a better disguise. Answer questions because you know the answer. When you mention what you built, say plainly that it’s yours.
A member answers questions with no link. That is normal. A member points to a competitor when it’s the better fit. A member has months of real history. Do that, and your rare product mention reads as helpful. Skip it and you’re gone in five minutes.
Score each subreddit, don’t guess
You want to post in r/Entrepreneur. It has 3M members. That instinct is exactly backwards. Big general subs put up with the least promo. And they have the most noise. Don’t guess. Rate each sub on four things, from 1 to 5, and multiply.
| What to rate | 1 (skip) | 5 (best) |
|---|---|---|
| Fit | Only loosely related to your product | Members have your exact problem |
| Rules on self-promotion | Forbids it outright | Has a stated place for it, like a Feedback Friday thread |
| Buyer intent | Memes and news | People ask “what tool do you use for…” weekly |
| Room to be seen | Huge, every post buried in minutes | Small enough that a good post gets seen |
Here are some real subreddits and where they land. Member counts are rough.
| Subreddit | ~Members | Read |
|---|---|---|
| r/SaaS | ~100k–150k | Core SaaS founder hub, moderate tolerance |
| r/SideProject | ~300k | Built for showing what you are working on |
| r/roastmystartup | ~50k | Feedback welcome |
| r/AlphaandBetaUsers | ~100k | For people who want early testers |
| r/micro_saas · r/NoCodeSaaS · r/B2BSaaS | ~8k–22k | Small, high-fit niches |
| r/Entrepreneur | ~3M | Broad, low promo tolerance. Comment, don’t pitch |
The niche sub where your end users hang out wins. It beats the general founder subs. Founders give feedback. Customers give revenue.
Read the room before you post
Drop a link from a brand-new account and you get filtered. Often you get shadowbanned. Your posts go invisible, and Reddit won’t tell you.
- A new account that posts a link gets filtered. That is the platform working as designed, not a wall to climb.
- Spend a week reading and commenting before you say a word about your product. You will learn each room’s norms. That is the point.
- Write each comment for the thread it’s in. Pasting one comment across many threads is spam. Every sub treats it that way.
The 90/10 rule is dead
For years the rule was nine helpful posts for every promo post. It’s still everywhere. In 2026 it’s dead. Use it as a rule and you are posting to hit a count. That’s exactly what mods watch for. They judge your entire pattern, not a ratio you can game.
The replacement is harder to fake. Be a real member. Picture a stranger reading your last three months of history. They should see a helpful person who built a useful thing. Not an account that exists to promote something. Aim for the first and the ratio takes care of itself.
The posts and comments that get users
The formats that convert give value even if no one clicks.
- The comment that answers a buyer-intent thread. Someone asks “what do you use for X?” Give a full answer. Include the competitors. Mention your product only if it fits, and last. The public reply, not a DM, is what spreads.
- The offer post. Supademo’s “I’ll build you a free demo” is the template. Do the work for free in exchange for feedback. It doesn’t scale, and that’s the point.
- The specific build story. Not “I built a marketing tool”. The detail is what makes people believe you. “I built a tool that auto-posts your blog to 10 platforms. I was sick of copy-pasting the same thing ten times.”
A comment template that helps first
For threads where somebody asked what to use. Fill the brackets. Cut anything you wouldn’t say if the product weren’t yours.
[Direct answer to their actual question: the useful part, given freely.]
For [their use case] I'd honestly look at [genuine option, even a competitor].
It's strong at [X]. If [specific condition that matches your product], [your product]
also does [the one relevant thing], because [the specific reason it exists].
Happy to share [template / checklist / the thing] if useful.
The competitor comes before your product, and not as a tactic. If something else is the better answer for the person asking, say so. That is the answer. Datadog has recommended a rival ahead of its own cheaper tool. If you can’t bring yourself to do that, you are writing an ad, not an answer.
Turn threads into users
Two things do the heavy lifting.
- Help in the open so lurkers convert. The person you reply to is one user. The hundred people who read the thread next week are the rest.
- Keep it in the thread, not in the inbox. Answering where the question was asked is what the sub rewards. It is also what the next hundred readers find. DMs nobody asked for are the fastest way to get reported and banned.
What gets you banned
- Posting a link with no comment history in the sub.
- Copy-pasting one message across lots of subs.
- Ignoring the sidebar rules. Every sub has its own promo policy. Read it.
- Using a VPN, or juggling accounts to upvote your own posts.
- Posting and ghosting. A post you don’t reply to dies. Keep the afternoon free to reply.
A 7-day plan to get users from Reddit
| Day | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | Validate first: read your target subs, count the “is there a tool for X” threads. Shortlist 5 subs with the scoring table. |
| 2–4 | Comment helpfully, no links. Build toward 100+ karma and learn each room’s norms. |
| 5 | Answer 2–3 buyer-intent threads in full, in the open, using the comment template above. |
| 6 | Post one specific build story in the sub that most welcomes them. Check its rules first. Reply to every comment all day. |
| 7 | Go back to the threads that got the warmest replies. Answer the follow-up questions, in the open. Note what worked; repeat weekly. |
Days 1–30 should stay mostly promo-free. You’re earning the right to be heard. Post more offers once the community knows who you are.
Not sure your idea will land before you spend your one good Reddit post on it? Run it through the idea validation tool first. You’ll get the threads where people already describe the problem, each one linked to its source. You’ll also get the subreddits most likely to want a fix.