There is a place for everyone on Reddit. One of the most unique social media platforms in the world, it has often been overlooked by marketers and internet users alike for its seemingly unserious approach. But, Reddit statistics show that this site has real power.
Dubbed “the front page of the internet,” Reddit has turned into one of the most popular and influential social networking sites that allow its users to say anything about everything. And we mean everything. With subreddits that cover almost any topic imaginable, no matter how controversial or ridiculous, Reddit was and has remained the platform for free speech, the latest news, random pictures, heartwarming stories, and of course, cat videos.
(Reddit; Foundation Marketing)
According to the platform’s 2019 report, the number of Redditors has increased by 100 new monthly users or a 30% year-on-year increase. In 2018, there were 330 million monthly active users, up from 250 million in 2017.
(Marketing Land)
Last year Reddit and Twitter had the same number of users, but 2019 seems to be luckier for the former. Reddit user statistics reveal that this year Reddit beat both Pinterest (322 million) and Twitter (321 million) in terms of the number of monthly users.
(Statista)
The number of users decreases with age. For instance, 14% of adults between the ages of 30 to 40 and 5% of 40 to 60 year-olds are Reddit members. Only 1% of seniors use this social networking site.
(Reddit)
Not only do Gen Zers make up a huge share of Reddit’s user base, according to Reddit stats, they also account for over 8 billion monthly views on the platform. For this generation, Reddit is the go-to site for information and discovery of new stuff.
In fact, 60% of Gen Z Redditors say that things are big on Reddit before they are hot anywhere else and 2 in 3 Gen Z users say that they are more likely to buy a product if Redditors like it.
(Statista; Pew Research)
Analysis of Reddit gender demographics shows that the number of male Reddit users exceeds that of female users. In fact, a survey on internet use showed that a third of male internet users in the US go on Reddit, while only 17% of American women who go online, use this site.
A 2016 poll, on the other hand, indicated that men accounted for 67% of all Reddit members, while women made up 33% of users. Regardless of the exact ratio, both surveys on Reddit user demographics clearly show that there are more men on this social media platform than women.
(TechJunkie)
The Reddit user base mainly consists of white non-Hispanics who account for over half of all users. Hispanics are the second-largest user group, by ethnicity, with 14%. Black non-Hispanic adults on Reddit account for around 7% of the user base, while other non-Hispanic groups make up the remaining 11%.
(Statista; Statista)
In addition to being young, male, and well-paid, the average Reddit user lives in the suburbs. 13% of surveyed US adults who live in suburban areas visit Reddit unlike 11% of those who live in cities and 8% of adults who reside in rural areas.
(eMarketer; Weareflint; Statista)
18% of Brits use this site and 14% of Canadians use this platform regularly, as surveys on Reddit users by country show. In all fairness, this only refers to logged-in users and since anyone can read a Reddit post, the actual number of users could be three times as high.
(TechJunkie)
36% of Redditors use Windows to access the platform, while 31% use Android. iOS, macOS, and Linux follow in terms of use. This is pretty much a given as Windows and Android are the most popular operating systems across the world.
(Foundation Marketing)
Redditors consider themselves technology enthusiasts, more so than users of other social networking sites, like Instagram, where 33.2% of users are passionate about consumer tech, and YouTube with 32.6% of its users saying they are into technology.
(Statista; TechJunkie)
15% of US citizens with at least a college degree use Reddit, while only 6% of those with a high school diploma or less have visited the site. Seeing how the average age of a Reddit user is between 18 and 29, data seems to suggest that most Redditors are still in college.
(Social Media Today)
Perhaps the only segment where Reddit beats Facebook is the average time spent on the website. Facebook users spend around 11 minutes on the site, whereas people stay on Twitter for around 6 minutes.
(Statista)
In the third quarter of 2019, 43% of users said they access the platform to get news, while only 8% of US users go to Reddit to boost their professional network. 17% of visitors access the site to get info on products, companies, and brands, while another 17% stated that they visit the site for other purposes. Surprisingly, 5% use Reddit to keep in touch with friends and family.
(Ahrefs)
Facebook’s popularity is dwindling, but Reddit is on the rise. According to how much traffic the website generates, Reddit’s popularity puts it among the top 10 websites in the world. It is preceded by YouTube and Wikipedia, but it outranks Pinterest, eBay, and Instagram.
(Alexa)
Alexa ranks websites according to the average daily visitors and the number of pages viewed in the last 3 months. Around the world, Alexa ranks millions of sites and Reddit’s Alexa rank globally went down from #15 to #18 in the last 90 days.
(Statista)
Reddit is one of the most-visited and most popular sites on the net. Actually, many links to other websites that get reposted to Reddit lead in a huge spike of traffic to the original website, sometimes even causing the site to go down temporarily. This effect is also known as the “Reddit hug of death.”
(Reddit)
2019 was a big year for Reddit. Monthly comments showed a 37% annual growth, reaching 1.7 billion, while monthly view counts increased 53% YoY.
(Reddit; Business Insider)
The most upvoted post of 2019 referred to the $150 million investment in the company from Chinese Tencent. Users were worried that the money would come at a price, i.e., censoring of content on the platform, Reddit facts reveal. The company responded by proclaiming the “tank man” photo on Tiananmen Square the most upvoted post for the year with 228,000 upvotes.
(Alexa)
Reddit US users account for 41.4% of traffic on the site. The UK and Canada are ranked second and third, however, with 7.6% and 5.7% of traffic, respectively, they pale in comparison to the number of US visits.
(Statista)
When asked about how often they use the site, 22% of respondents said they access Reddit several times a week and another 20% stated that they use the platform on a daily basis.
(Mediakix; Pew Research Center)
With the penetration of smartphones, especially among the 18 to 29 population (around 96% of them own a smartphone) who make up the majority of Reddit users, it makes sense when Reddit stats show that 40% of all content views on this site come from mobile devices. It also makes sense since 60% of all organic search engine visits, based on Google stats, come from mobile browsing.
(Statista; Statista; Digital Trends)
Not only do users access the site through mobile devices more often than desktop users they also spend more time on the site on their smartphones. In September 2019, mobile Reddit users spent around 128.41 minutes per month on the site through the mobile app. This is 30% more time than desktop users spend on Reddit, Reddit statistics for 2019 show. Pretty good when you consider there are over 2.4 million apps to choose from on Google Play.
(Foundation Marketing; HubSpot)
Titles that have more than 120 characters or less than 20 do not perform so well. A study of 60,000 Reddit posts showed that those with 60 to 80 characters got 8,600 upvotes.
(Reddit)
Data analysis shows that posting at this particular time produces the highest Reddit traffic by hour. Also, most of the posts created around this time get over 100 upvotes. Of course, timing isn’t everything. On Reddit, it’s all about content.
(Foundation Marketing)
Posts that pose a question are more likely to get twice as many comments as statement-like titles. On the other hand, titles that do not include a question get over 1,000 more upvotes than other posts.
(Foundation Marketing)
In fact, popular posts with links get 16,000 more upvotes than text posts. Not all links are received the same. Videos get the most upvotes, followed by photos. Actually, the best photo and video posts generated over 10,000 more upvotes than posts with external links to other websites.
(HubSpot)
In 2018, video viewing time increased by 38%, Reddit trends reveal. This translates to viewing 400,000 hours of native video a day to over 13 million hours a month. What’s more, three of the five most popular Reddit posts in 2018 included videos. The company itself said that “video is king” when it comes to traffic and engagement on the site.
(HubSpot)
Half of Reddit users under the age of 34 prefer to watch short, so-called “snack-sized” videos than longer content.
(RedditMetrics; TechJunkie)
With 48,607,024 subscribers, /r/announcements is the most popular subreddit. This subreddit is used to announce new changes to the site. Although it doesn’t really show what users are interested in, the high number of subscribers proves that most Reddit users follow daily activities on the site.
/r/funny, as the name suggests, has content that centers around jokes and ways to make people laugh. According to Reddit Metrics, it currently has 27,512,469 subscribers, making it the second most popular subreddit in 2019.
(RedditMetrics)
A Yahoo! Answers type of site where users can post questions, but with comments and discussions. This subreddit currently has 25,521,633 subscribers, slightly less than the second most popular subreddit.
(Statista)
How many subreddits are there today? The number of subreddits has been growing significantly since 2008 when there were about 10,926 subreddits to almost 1.2 million subreddits in 2017.
(Reddit)
In 2019, /r/skincareaddiction was the most popular beauty community with over a million subscribers. The most discussed beauty brand in this community was Cerave.
(TechCrunch)
According to subreddit traffic stats, there is a YoY increase of over 63% in the top 50 beauty and over 52% YoY rise in the best 50 style communities. This boost in the number of subscribers is partly due to feuds between beauty bloggers. For instance, /r/beautyguruchatter helped drive numbers by 87%.
(Reddit)
Another wedding community /r/weddingsunder10k went up by 109%, while family and parenting communities saw an 87% year-on-year increase.
(Reddit)
If these are not topics one would normally associate with Reddit, don’t worry. Reddit members still discussed gaming (42% increase in subscribers in the top 50 gaming communities), TV shows (two Game of Thrones communities — /r/freefolk and /r/gameofthrones — were the two top TV communities), and sports (34% YoY increase in the number of subscribers in the best 50 sports communities).
(Reddit)
Reddit statistics show that China was the most discussed news topic this year, while political scandal did not lag far behind. Robert Mueller’s hearings and the impeachment inquiry were among the top three most discussed major events on this site.
(Reddit; Statista)
Interestingly, the 2018 AMA post with Bill Gates also received the most upvotes — over 124,000. /r/IAmA is one of the most popular and interesting Reddits on the site. Other upvoted AMAs include posts with the Cookie Monster (75,500), Andrew Yang (69,300) and Derek Bloch (68,400).
(The Content Factory)
The /r/birdswitharms subreddit has around 186,000 people following it. It is basically a subreddit where people photoshop human arms on pictures of birds.
(Reuters; CNBC)
Back in 2017, Reddit hit $1.8 billion in value, however, following a $300 million boost from Tencent Holdings Ltd. and the company’s former investors, such as Tacit, Snoop Dogg, and Fidelity, the company saw a huge increase in value.
(eMarketer; TechCrunch)
This will give Reddit a 0.1% share of the US digital ad market which is projected to jump to 0.2% by 2021 when ad revenue is expected to reach $261.7 million, Reddit facts indicate. Mobile is expected to account for 57% of the total revenue.
(Investopedia)
Reddit Gold costs $3.99 a month or $29.99 a year. It allows users to remove ads and filter comments, as well as gift their membership to other users.
(Sysomos)
All of the money was spent on stickers back in 2012. The company has not invested in advertising since then.
(Sysomos; The Daily Dot)
The Reddit mascot, Snoo, is a genderless, alien blob that was originally created as a doodle by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Its appearance changes depending on the subreddit you are visiting and some users can even create their own Snoo.
(The Daily Dot)
The first comment was actually a complaint that comments were allowed on the site. One of the most interesting facts about Reddit is that the commenter, charlieb, is still an active Redditor.
(Beebom)
Co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “fake it till you make it.” In Reddit’s early days, they created hundreds of fake accounts to make the site look more attractive.
(The Daily Dot)
In 2014, MIT offered a course on Reddit that was called “credit for Reddit” and which focused on how social media sites affected daily activities and society.
Last year there were over 330 million monthly active users, Reddit reports. In addition, there were 150,000 active communities and 14 billion views per month. The company’s summary of its 2018 results also shows that there were 153 million posts on Reddit, 1.2 billion comments and 27 billion votes.
The most popular post with 313,000 upvotes was “this is what happens when one company owns dozens of local news stations.” It was posted via r/videos. In fact, video content was the biggest driver of traffic on the site last year.
Reddit is a platform for young people and a 2016 poll confirms this. It found that 64% of Reddit’s user base was between 18 and 29 years of age, while only 29% of users were aged between 30 and 49. 50 to 64 year-olds made up just 6% of all users and over 65 year-olds accounted for just 1% of all users.
Around 26.4 million Americans use Reddit. This number increased from 24 million in 2018, while estimates say that it might reach as high as 35.2 million by 2023. These are impressive numbers, but even more fascinating is that these figures only show the number of logged-in users and as Reddit can be accessed without an account, the real number of users could be much, much higher.
Although surveys and analysis of Reddit members by gender vary, for instance, a 2016 poll revealed that 49% of Reddit users in the US are men and 51% female, there is more data to back up the claim that Reddit is a platform for young men. Statista estimates that one-third of US male online users access Reddit, while the share of women on the site is much lower. Stats indicate that only 17% of US female online users go on Reddit.
Reddit had 430 million active monthly users in 2019. In September 2019, there were 1,297 million visits to the site, a decline from 1,396 million in August 2019.
Basically, Reddit is what its users make it. And that’s part of its appeal. It can be a platform for voicing or opposing opinions, for expanding your knowledge or validating information you already have. It can be the go-to site for brands, trends, funny memes, and news. At times, it can even be an outlet for plain and simple misogyny and racism. Whatever Redditors post, Reddit statistics show that visitors to the site will either love it or hate it. Either way, they will engage.
So, what have you learned about Reddit today?