Karma

Karma is Reddit's reputation point system, accumulated when other users upvote a user's posts or comments. Each account has two main counters: post karma (from submissions) and comment karma (from replies). Karma is visible on a user's profile and serves as a rough proxy for how much the community has engaged with that user's contributions over time.

Karma has no monetary value and cannot be spent. Its practical purpose is gatekeeping. Many subreddits set minimum karma thresholds for posting, commenting, or sending messages, which filters out brand-new accounts and helps moderators reduce spam. AutoModerator rules frequently reference karma counts alongside account age.

For marketers and founders, karma matters because a low-karma account that suddenly drops a product link in a niche subreddit is almost always auto-removed or downvoted. The community treats karma as a signal of whether someone is a real participant or a drive-by promoter. Building karma the legitimate way means commenting on threads in subreddits you actually care about, answering questions, and sharing useful context before ever mentioning what you sell.

Karma also affects how seriously your replies are taken. A 50,000-karma account answering a question on r/SaaS reads as a peer; a 12-karma account answering the same question reads as suspicious, even if the answer is identical. This perception gap is why most experienced Reddit marketers maintain a personal account they post from authentically rather than creating a fresh brand-named account that has no history.

Karma can go negative if a user accumulates enough downvotes, though Reddit clamps how much karma a single thread can subtract. Negative karma rarely affects account function directly but signals to moderators that someone has a pattern of being downvoted, which can trigger stricter moderation actions.