Which Subreddits Allow Self-Promotion? The Promo-Tolerance Index

151 communities, each given our own 0-10 estimate of whether they allow self-promotion, from what each one publishes about itself and how its recent threads read. The growth-hack era is over: on Reddit you earn the right to mention your product, and it starts by knowing the room.

How to read this

• 7-10 (green) — clearly-disclosed, genuinely useful product mentions are usually tolerated. Still: value first.
• 4-6 (amber) — promotion survives only in context: answer first, disclose, never lead with a link.
• 0-3 (red) — removed on sight. Contribute only; pitching risks removal and a ban from the subreddit.

Methodology & limits. These are LeadReddit's own estimates, not official Reddit figures — Reddit publishes nothing like them. Each score comes from what the community publishes about itself, a sample of its recent threads, and its written rules where we have them. Two limits worth stating plainly: we only ever see posts that are still online, so we never observe what a moderator removed; and each score is a snapshot from the date shown on that community's page, not a live reading. Treat it as a starting point for your own judgement, not a permission slip. Each subreddit links to its full guide.

Measured removals — what actually gets taken down

Everything above is an estimate. This section is not: it is the only part of this page built on posts we watched over time. We captured self-promotional posts at the moment they were published, then re-read each one by permalink two days later to see whether it was still there.

12 of 145 self-promotional posts were removed by moderation — 8.3%, across 11 subreddits. Captured 27 August 2026, re-checked 29 August 2026.

Why several cells say "n too small" instead of a percentage. Five of seven is arithmetically 71%, and it would be the most quotable number on this page. It is also seven posts. We are not publishing a per-subreddit ranking on counts that small, because it would not survive the first person who checks it — and the raw counts are right there for anyone who wants to draw their own conclusion. We publish a rate only at n ≥ 20.

Method, and its limits. Self-promotion was identified by a deterministic classifier (first-person ownership phrasing plus a non-platform outbound link), not by human judgement, so it is reproducible from the data below. Posts were captured within hours of publication from each subreddit’s new queue, then re-read individually about 44 hours later; a post whose own feed entry reads as removed is counted as removed. The figure is a floor. A filter that removes a post within seconds of publication does so before our capture ever sees it, so what we measure is delayed removal — moderator action and late automation — not filtering at the door. We also observe only public state: we cannot tell a moderator removal from an automated one.

Data, free to reuse. The full 145-row dataset, one line per post with its permalink and final state: promo-removal-2026-08-29.csv. Released under CC BY 4.0 — use it commercially, just credit it. Reddit usernames are deliberately excluded.
Cite as: LeadReddit, “Measured removal of self-promotional posts on Reddit”, 29 August 2026. https://leadreddit.com/reddit-promo-tolerance-index

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