Day 35 of sharing stats about my SaaS until I get 1000 users: I analyzed 988 subreddits for marketing risk and most of them are total landmines
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately digging into the risk scores my tool calculates for different communities. I wanted to see exactly how many subreddits actually tolerate marketing versus the ones that will ban you on sight. The numbers are honestly pretty depressing if you're trying to grow a business here. Out of 988 subreddits we scanned, 647 are explicitly hostile. That is almost two-thirds of the platform where even a helpful mention of your own product is basically a death sentence for your account.
The average risk score across the board is sitting at 73.7 out of 100. When I look at the distribution, 589 subreddits fall into that very high risk bucket. That is more than half. It explains why so many founders feel like they are walking on eggshells. You spend an hour writing a thoughtful response and it gets nuked in seconds because the moderation strictness is set to high or very high for 720 of these communities.
I did find a few bright spots though. There are about 114 subreddits that are actually friendly to marketers. Most of them are small, but a few like r/indiebiz or r/saasbuild have decent numbers. It's just a massive reality check. Most people think they can just spray and pray across Reddit, but the data shows you're literally fighting a losing battle in 79 percent of the places you'd think to post. I'm starting to think the only way to survive here is to find those 41 very low risk sandboxes and stay there.
Key stats:
- 73.7 average risk score across 988 analyzed subreddits
- 647 subreddits classified as explicitly hostile to marketers
- 79.0 percent of communities rated as high or very high risk
- 720 subreddits have high or very high moderation strictness
- Only 41 subreddits fall into the very low risk category
Currently at 277 / 1000 users. Still a long way to go.
Posted May 10, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC