How to get app users from Reddit without getting banned

Most builders try Reddit once. They post a link, get removed or flamed, and decide Reddit doesn't work.

I've been on both sides of that. My first post about my app got removed by the moderators and picked apart in the comments. Later posts got testers, feature requests, and people telling their friends about the app.

The difference wasn't luck. Reddit has two sets of rules, a reputation system you can't see, and a crowd that spots a sales pitch from a mile away. This guide is everything I learned about all three, with the exact posts, comments and messages to use.

The short version

• Reddit's own rules apply everywhere. Each community adds its own on top, and its moderators enforce them.
• New accounts with little karma get filtered automatically. Comment in your communities before you post.
• Say you built it. Hiding it is the fastest way to get flamed and removed.
• Ask for feedback, not downloads. Put one real screenshot in the post.
• Find people already talking about the problem, answer them, and message the commenters one at a time.
• Send links only when people ask, and never through a link shortener.
• A good thread keeps sending people from Google and AI answers long after it goes quiet.

Reddit has two rulebooks

There are two layers of rules on Reddit, and most people only know one of them.

Reddit's rules apply in every community. The Reddit Rules are short, and two of them decide most of what happens to app builders:

• Rule 2: "Participate authentically in communities where you have a personal interest, and do not spam or engage in disruptive behaviors."
• Rule 5: "You don't have to use your real name, but do not intentionally mislead others or impersonate an individual or entity in a deceptive manner."

Reddit defines spam as "repeated or unsolicited actions (whether automated or manual) that negatively affect users, communities, and/or Reddit itself." The penalty, in Reddit's words, is "content removal and temporary or permanent banning of the user's account."

Each community adds its own rules, and its moderators enforce them. Reddit tells moderators that "promotional content is not inherently considered to be spam," and in the same breath that "some communities do have strict policies that disallow any kind of promotional content." Moderators decide what counts as spam in their own community.

That's why the same post can be fine in one subreddit and get you removed in the next:

• Some ban promotion outright. My first post went up in r/baseball, whose Rule 9 says self-promotion "is allowed only with the explicit, prior approval of the moderators." It was removed. r/androidapps bans "any self-promotion, tester requests, new app ideas or app feedback" and points people to a sister community instead.
• Some exist for it. r/TestFlight describes itself as the place to "recruit testers to help you develop your own app." r/alphaandbetausers is built for products "that are ready to be tested." r/SideProject is where people share what they made and ask for feedback.
• Some allow it on a schedule. r/startups sends feedback requests to its weekly Feedback Friday thread, which says "You may make an additional request for beta testers."
• Many niche communities have no promotion rule at all. No rule isn't a free pass. The moderators can still remove anything they see as spam, and Reddit's Rule 2 still applies.

One myth to drop: there's no sitewide "10% rule." Reddit describes it as something "other communities abide by." Some use it, most don't say.

Try this: before you post anywhere, open the community's sidebar and rules, and paste them into the rules-check prompt at the end of this guide with your draft. If the rules don't answer your question, message the moderators and ask. A two-line message to the mods has saved more posts than any trick.

Build an account Reddit trusts

Reddit filters accounts before a single person reads your post. You won't get an error. Your post just doesn't show up.

Karma is your reputation. Reddit says your karma "is a reflection of the upvotes and downvotes you receive on posts and comments you've made," and that "some communities require a certain amount of karma before allowing you to post there."

There are two levels to it:

• Your account across Reddit. Brand-new accounts with little karma run into Reddit's spam filter. In Reddit's own words: "If you're brand new to Reddit and don't have a lot of karma yet, you may be hitting this spam filter." Paying for Reddit Premium "won't affect the spam filter."
• Your standing in each community. Moderators can filter by how you've done in their community specifically. Reddit's Crowd Control setting, at its strictest, "filters accounts with negative community karma, new accounts, and non-members."

Reddit also gives every account a hidden Contributor Quality Score, built "to identify potential spammers or users less likely to contribute positively," and moderators can filter on it.

You'll see advice like "you need 30 days and 100 karma." Ignore the numbers. Reddit says the karma and account-age thresholds communities use "aren't disclosed at this time to deter potential misuse."

When to do this: before your first post, and in every new community you want to post in.

How: spend a couple of weeks being useful in the communities where your users are. Answer questions, share what you know, upvote good posts. Reddit itself says: "Even earning a small amount of karma by commenting on another post within a community, can help you get past the filter." Your account history is also the first thing people check when they wonder if you're a spammer.

Don't be sneaky. People can tell.

The first time I posted my app, I tried to be clever about it. I didn't name the app or link it. I asked a question instead: "Why is following specific baseball players still so clunky?"

The moderators removed it. The comments were worse:

In another thread around the same time, one person put it better than I could: they think they're "being subtle by 'asking questions' rather than directly promoting their solution to the question." Another wrote that at least a VC "wouldn't be pretending not to pitch you while pitching to you."

That's the whole lesson. Redditors see these posts every day, and pretending is worse than pitching.

It's also against the rules. Rule 5 bans misleading people about who you are. r/iosapps removes posts with "undisclosed developer affiliation." Reddit's own guide for businesses tells you to "clearly identify as a business, brand, or someone who represents them" and to "engage before you post."

Saying "I built this" isn't a weakness. It's what makes people willing to help.

Find the people who already have the problem

The size of a community matters less than who's in it. One founder posted the same thing in a 95,000-member subreddit and a 9,500-member one and "got nearly the same visits." A small community full of people with your exact problem beats a giant general one.

For my app, a minor league baseball tracker, that wasn't an app community. It was r/DynastyBaseball, where people manage fantasy rosters full of minor league prospects.

There are three places to look:

1. Communities about the problem, not about apps. If you're not sure where your users gather, my prompt for finding unexpected users does the digging and makes the AI prove each group is real.
2. Threads where people describe the problem or ask about a competitor. Reddit search supports filters like title:, subreddit: and selftext:, plus AND, OR and NOT (in capitals). For example: title:"is there an app", subreddit:DynastyBaseball alerts OR tracker, or "[competitor name]" alternative. Reddit's AI search also answers questions with links to the threads it used.
3. Communities made for testers. r/TestFlight, r/alphaandbetausers, and the weekly feedback threads in places like r/startups.

Try this: write down five communities and five threads. For each community, note whether it allows self-promotion, tester requests and links. Every step below uses this list.

Ask for feedback, not downloads

After the removal, I changed what I asked for. Instead of looking for customers, I looked for testers. I posted in r/DynastyBaseball, said what I'd built and why, and asked one question: what would make this genuinely useful for you?

That's the same app, and the same kind of people, as the post that got flamed. The only differences: I said it was mine, I said what it did, and I asked for help instead of attention.

People who have the problem want to tell you how to fix it. Their feedback told me what to build. A few months later, in a thread about a new feature, a user from an earlier thread wrote:

"You implemented the carrot drop-down to show splits for current year by level based on our thread. I keep telling my buddies about it to sign up."

That's the real payoff. A tester who sees you build what they asked for turns into the person recommending your app to friends. On a later post, even one of the community's moderators replied with a detailed feature idea.

When it works: you have something people can try today, even if it's rough, and you're willing to change it based on what they say.

When it doesn't: you only want downloads, or there's nothing to test yet. An idea with no product reads as market research for something that doesn't exist.

How:

• Say you built it in the first line.
• Describe the problem in the words people in that community use.
• Make it free for testers. My app has a free tier, which made the ask easy. If yours has a hard paywall, give testers an extended free trial or a code.
• End with one real question, like "what would make this most useful for you?"
• Reply to every comment, and post an update when you ship what someone asked for.

Put a real screenshot in the post

People scroll Reddit fast. A screenshot of your app doing its main job explains it before anyone reads a word.

My own posts in the same community show the difference:

My text-only post got 3 upvotes and 8 comments. The post with a screenshot got 26 upvotes and 27 comments. To be fair to the numbers, other things changed between March and May too: the app had more features, and some of those people already knew it. But I lead with an image now, and I'd tell you to do the same.

Pick the screen that shows the result:

• Good: the moment the app does its job (for me, the "your player is on deck" alert), a before and after, the one screen people would screenshot to show a friend.
• Weak: your logo, an App Store banner, a collage of six screens.
• Never: a mockup of a feature that doesn't exist yet. Testers will find out, and it reads as an ad.

Some communities don't allow image posts or want a certain flair on them. Check your rules list first.

Answer the threads that already exist

You don't have to start a thread to be part of one. People post every day asking for exactly the app you built: "is there an app that does X?", "what do you use for Y?", "anything better than [competitor]?"

Those threads are the warmest place on Reddit. The person asking already wants a solution.

Answer them, and say it's yours. A good reply helps first and mentions your app second:

I had the same problem, so I ended up building [app]. It does [the one thing they asked about]. It's free while I'm testing it, and I'd love to know if it works for you.

What not to do: post "this app is the way to go!" as if you were just a happy user. That's the sneaky version from earlier, and it's the one Rule 5 bans. Redditors check your post history, and when they see you built it, the thread turns on you. r/iosapps spells it out: always disclose your relationship to the software when a comment promotes your app.

A few more things that keep these replies working:

• Answer the actual question. If another tool fits them better, say so. People trust the person who doesn't push their own thing every time.
• Don't paste the same reply everywhere. Reddit lists "repeatedly posting the same or similar comments in a thread, community or across communities" as something that gets accounts removed. Reddit also auto-collapses comments "detected as likely to be spam or low quality."
• Old threads count. People still find a two-year-old thread from Google. A helpful answer there keeps working (more on that below).

Message the people in the comments

Posting isn't the only way in. Everyone commenting on a thread about your problem, or about a competitor, already told you they care.

So I messaged them, one by one. This is the exact message I sent:

They replied "Sure please send" two minutes later, and only then did I send the link.

Why this works, line by line:

1. The first line is about them. "Saw you commented about..." proves a real person read what they wrote.
2. One sentence on what the app does, in the words they used.
3. Ask for feedback. Not a download.
4. No link. A link from a stranger looks like spam. Wait until they ask.

This is where people get banned, so the rules matter. Reddit lists "sending large amounts of chat messages or community invites to users who are not expecting them" as spam. So:

• Only message people who talked about the problem. That's what makes your message expected instead of random.
• Write each message to what that person said. No copy and paste.
• One message each. If they don't answer, leave it.
• Send a few a day, not a batch.

It's slow, and it doesn't scale. That's the point. Paul Graham's essay Do Things That Don't Scale describes the Airbnb founders going door to door in New York to meet their hosts one at a time. Each person you message is a door, and every reply tells you what to build next.

Be careful with links

Links are where most honest people get banned. Reddit's systems treat them as the riskiest thing you can post, and some of what happens to them is invisible to you.

Your post can disappear without telling you. Moderators' filters can hold a post with a link. Reddit's spam filter can remove it. And in serious cases, Reddit's own Reddiquette page says shadow banning "(you can see your posts and votes, but no one else can) can, and will, take place." If your posts get no response at all, open them in a private window while logged out. If you can't see them, nobody else can either.

Never use a link shortener. Reddit has built a sitewide warning that cautions users about link shorteners, and Reddiquette lists "use link shorteners to post your content" under things not to do. Hidden destinations look like spam because spammers use them.

Honest links still get people banned. One founder whose post reached the top of r/startups for the month then linked his own video in the comments, said it was his, and got a permanent ban.

Every community handles links differently, so your rules list decides which of these to use:

• "Message me and I'll send it." The person asks, so the link is never unsolicited. On my tester post, I replied "DM me for access code" instead of dropping a link.
• "Comment and I'll send it." Same idea, and the comments make the thread more active.
• A link in the post, only where the rules allow it, and never in the title.

When you do send one, send one link: your own website, with both store links on it. It works on iPhone and Android, and a real domain looks less like spam than a raw store link. I send people to prospectping.com.

Why one good thread keeps working

Most people reading Reddit never post, and many of them aren't even logged in.

In Reddit's Q1 2026 shareholder letter, 74.8 million of its 126.8 million daily visitors were logged out, and the logged-out group grew 26% in a year. A lot of those people arrive from a search.

Google sends them there. Reddit and Google expanded their partnership in February 2024 so Google could use Reddit's data "to improve its products and services." Reuters reported the deal at about $60 million a year. Between July 2023 and July 2024, Reddit's visibility in Google results rose about 14 times, according to Sistrix data. Google says the deal "absolutely did not include ranking its content higher on Search."

AI answers lean on Reddit too. Semrush tested 217,000 prompts and found Reddit links in 12.6% of ChatGPT Search answers and 9% of Google AI Mode answers. And the threads that get cited are usually small: "Most cited Reddit posts have fewer than 20 upvotes and 20 comments."

So a modest thread where people talk about your app can keep sending you users for years. I'm fairly sure the Reddit threads about my app are a big reason ChatGPT knows about it, though I can't prove which thread did it.

One thing that probably doesn't help much: the link itself. SEO write-ups consistently report that Reddit tags outside links "nofollow", which tells Google not to count them as a vote for your site. What helps is the thread: a real question, real answers, and your app named in the words people search with.

Try this: answer every question in your thread fully and in plain words. Name the problem the way your users would type it into Google. Then read my guide on getting your app into AI answers.

What most people get wrong

• "Reddit hates founders." Reddit hates being sold to. Its own business guide tells you to say who you are, and the founders who say "I built this" up front get the most help.
• "Post in as many subreddits as possible." That's the fastest way into the spam filter. One founder posted five times in seven days across four subreddits and had his account permanently suspended for "repeated violation of reddit's spam policy." One community that fits beats ten that don't.
• "I'll just pretend to be a user." People check post histories. Getting caught costs you the thread and the community, and it breaks Reddit's Rule 5.
• "The download is the goal." The feedback is. A tester who sees you build what they asked for becomes the person recommending your app.

Where to start

Templates and prompts

Rules check (paste into ChatGPT or Claude):

I built [app], which [one line]. I want to post in r/[community] asking for beta testers. Here are the community's rules and sidebar: [paste]. Here's my draft: [paste].

1. Is a post like this allowed? Quote the rule that decides it.
2. Are links allowed in the post, in the comments, or not at all?
3. Is there a flair, day or thread I have to use?
4. Do the rules mention account age or karma?
5. Rewrite my draft so it follows these rules.

If the rules don't answer something, tell me to ask the moderators instead of guessing.

Tester post:

Title: I built [app] for [the people in this community] and I'm looking for a few testers

I kept running into [the problem, in this community's words], so I built [app]. It does [one thing].

[One screenshot of the app doing that one thing.]

It's free for testers right now. Message me and I'll send it.

What would make this most useful for you?

Reply to an existing thread:

I had the same problem, so I ended up building [app]. It does [the thing they asked about]. It's free while I'm testing it. Happy to send it if you want to try it.

DM to someone who commented:

Hey! Saw you commented about [the exact thing they said]. I built [app], which [one sentence on what it does, in their words]. Would love your feedback on it if you're up for testing it.

When they say yes:

Sweet! It's on [your site]. Let me know all your thoughts, and anything that would make it easier on your end.