How to Get Comment Karma on Reddit
Your profile carries two karma counters. The automated gate at the door of a subreddit often reads only one of them, and it rarely tells you when you failed.
How to get comment karma on Reddit comes down to one habit: leave useful comments early in active threads, in communities you actually read. Comment karma is earned only from votes on your comments, separately from post karma, which is earned from votes on your posts. Reddit keeps the two in separate columns on your profile, and they do not borrow from each other.
That separation is why the counter matters more than it looks. A large share of subreddits run automated rules that decide whether your post or comment is allowed to appear, and those rules can be set to check comment karma specifically. An account with plenty of post karma and very little comment karma can be turned away by exactly those rules, and the removal is often invisible to the person who posted. If your posts in one community keep vanishing without a message, low comment karma is one of the first things to rule out.
Two things make this uniquely a Reddit problem. The first is that the platform keeps two karma counters on the same profile and lets each community decide which one to care about. Reddit's AutoModerator, the rule engine most moderators use, can check an author's comment karma, post karma or the combined total, and it can even check karma earned inside that one community alone. The threshold is set by the moderators and is frequently not published anywhere a newcomer would find it.
The second is how failure looks from the inside. When AutoModerator removes a post, the author generally keeps seeing it on their own profile and often inside the community as well, while logged in. Everyone else sees nothing. There may be no notification, no error and no reply. So the most common experience of a karma gate is not a rejection message; it is a post that sits there with no votes and no comments for hours, because nobody besides its author can see it. Checking from a logged-out browser window is the quickest way to find out which of those two situations you are in.
What is comment karma on Reddit?
Comment karma is the part of your karma earned from votes on comments you have written. Upvotes push it up, downvotes pull it down, and like the rest of Reddit's karma it is not a one-to-one tally of votes: Reddit states that karma is not a direct count and it fuzzes the vote numbers it displays. What Reddit karma is covers the number as a whole; this article is about the comment half and the gates that read it.
On your profile Reddit shows a combined figure up front, with the split into post and comment karma available on the profile itself. Look at the split, not the total, whenever you are trying to work out why a community is filtering you.
What is post karma on Reddit?
Post karma is earned from votes on the posts you submit, whether links, images, videos or text posts. It is the half that grows in jumps: one post that does well in a large community can add more than months of comments.
That is exactly why it is a poor proxy for trust, and why many moderators prefer to gate on comment karma. A single lucky image post says little about whether an account knows how the community works. A long history of upvoted comments says quite a lot. So accounts built mainly on reposted images tend to have high post karma, low comment karma, and a surprising number of removed submissions.
How much karma do you need to post on Reddit?
There is no site-wide number. Each community sets its own requirement, if any, and the most common setup is an AutoModerator rule that combines a minimum account age with a minimum karma figure. Some communities state the threshold in their rules or sidebar. Many do not, on the reasoning that a published number is a target for people trying to game it.
So the honest answer to how much karma do you need to post on Reddit is: whatever that specific subreddit decided, which you may have to infer. A few practical signals help. If the rules mention karma at all, the requirement is real. If your post shows no votes and no comments after an hour in an active community, check whether anyone else can see it. And if you are removed repeatedly in one place, spending a week or two commenting there before posting again is usually what the rule was designed to make you do.
Can a subreddit check karma earned only in that subreddit?
Yes. AutoModerator can compare an author's karma inside that one community, not just their total across Reddit. A community that uses this is asking a narrower question: not whether you are a trusted Reddit user in general, but whether you have taken part here. High karma earned elsewhere does nothing for that check, and the only way through it is participation in that community's own threads.
How to tell if your post was silently removed
Open the post's link in a private or logged-out browser window. If it shows as removed, or the community listing does not include it, it was filtered, whatever your own logged-in view says.
Other signs point the same way: zero votes and zero comments for a long stretch in a busy community, or a post that never appears in the community's new listing when you check logged out. Some communities send an automated message explaining the removal; many do not.
If you find a removal and cannot tell why, message the moderators through the community's modmail, politely, with a link. Moderators can see why AutoModerator acted, and a short question often gets a short answer, sometimes with the post approved by hand. Reposting the same thing repeatedly tends to have the opposite effect.
How to get comment karma on Reddit without gaming it
The mechanics favor timing and fit over cleverness. None of what follows is a trick.
Arrive early in active threads
A comment's ceiling is set by how many people scroll far enough to see it. In an active thread, the first reasonable answers collect most of the attention and later answers sit below them. Sorting a community by new or rising and answering questions while they are fresh is the single most reliable way to earn comment karma, and it costs nothing but attention.
Answer in communities you actually know
A comment that adds something the thread did not already have earns votes. A generic comment earns nothing, or earns downvotes from people who have read the same line a hundred times. Pick three or four communities where you know the subject and the tone, and your comments will fit without effort.
Avoid karma-trading communities
Communities built around handing out upvotes exist, and moderators of the places you actually want to post in know about them. Reddit publishes rules against vote manipulation, and some moderators filter accounts whose karma came mostly from that kind of activity. Karma earned there can leave you with a healthy total and the same removals you started with, because a community-level check will not see any of it.
How to increase karma on Reddit overall
Comments are the steady half and posts are the volatile half. Most accounts that grow well do both, in that order: comment for long enough to understand what a community rewards, then post the kind of thing it upvotes, in the format its rules ask for. The broader version of that, including why your profile total never matches your post scores, is in how to get karma on Reddit.
A separate number sometimes gets mixed up with karma. If you moderate a community yourself, its member count is public on the community page and has nothing to do with anyone's karma. Reddit subscribers change that community figure and nothing on any user's profile, so they do not help an account clear a karma gate anywhere.
Questions people ask about comment karma
What is the difference between post karma and comment karma?
Post karma comes from votes on your submissions; comment karma comes from votes on your comments. Reddit keeps them as separate figures on your profile, and a community's automated rules can check either one, or the combined total.
Why was my post removed even though I have a lot of karma?
The community may check comment karma, karma earned inside that community, account age, or several of these together. A high total can still fail a narrower check, and the threshold is often not published.
Does Reddit tell you when AutoModerator removes your post?
Not reliably. Some communities send an automated message; many do not. Your own logged-in view may still show the post, so check from a logged-out browser window to see what everyone else sees.
Can comment karma go negative?
It can drop below zero if your comments are downvoted enough, and a negative figure is exactly the kind of signal automated rules are set up to catch. Deleting a heavily downvoted comment is the usual way people stop the slide.
Does comment karma count less than post karma?
Reddit does not publish a weighting. What matters in practice is which counter a given community checks, and many deliberately check comment karma because it reflects sustained participation.
How long does it take for comment karma to update?
It is not instant. Karma catches up with votes on its own rhythm, so a comment that is doing well now may not show its full effect on your profile until later.
Keep reading
- Reddit subscribers — A community's member count is its own public figure, and Reddit subscribers move that number, not anyone's karma.
- How to get karma on Reddit — The whole counter, and why the profile total never matches your post scores.
- What Reddit karma is — What the number represents, and who actually spends it.