Guide
89% of startups marketing on Reddit get banned within 30 days
That figure comes from an analysis of 340 startup marketing attempts. Another 7% were shadowbanned, which is worse in one specific way: you carry on posting for weeks before you work out that nobody has seen any of it. Reddit also removed roughly 70% of automated posting accounts during its 2025 spam-detection changes.
Almost none of that is about finding the wrong thread. It happens at the reply.
What actually triggers it
Two systems can remove you and they behave differently. Subreddit moderators enforce their own rules by hand and ban immediately. Reddit's automated detection watches for patterns across your account and tends to shadowban rather than announce anything.
Breaking a subreddit's self-promotion rule
The single fastest ban, and the most avoidable. Rules vary wildly: some communities ban links outright, some allow them only in comments, some allow them only if you have participated for weeks first. Moderators enforce their own rules manually and they do not owe you a warning.
Posting the same message in several places
Reddit's automated detection is built for this. Near-identical text across threads or subreddits is the clearest signal of a promotional account, and it is exactly what happens when a tool drafts your reply and you paste it into the five threads it surfaced.
Replying faster than a person could read
Several comments in a few minutes across unrelated threads reads as automation regardless of what the text says. Human engagement has gaps in it.
Writing that reads as machine-generated
Reddit users are unusually good at spotting it and they report it. The tells are consistent: em-dashes, symmetrical constructions like 'it's not X, it's Y', tidy three-item lists, and an evenness of tone that real comments don't have.
A brand-new account that only promotes
Account age and karma are the first things a moderator checks, and many subreddits enforce minimums automatically. An account whose entire history is links to one domain gets read as what it is.
Too much activity in one community
Even good comments draw attention when they arrive several times a day in the same subreddit. Moderators notice frequency before they notice quality.
Why the tooling makes it worse
Most Reddit lead-generation tools find threads and then draft your reply. Read their own documentation and you will usually find the same line: use the output as a starting point, then personalise heavily. That advice is sound. The problem is that it asks the user to undo the feature they are paying for, at the exact moment they are trying to move quickly through a list of threads.
So the tool produces the pattern Reddit's detection is built to catch, and the safety instruction lives in a docs page. The 89% figure is what that arrangement looks like at scale.
The checks worth running before you reply
None of these need a tool. You can do all four by hand, and if you only ever do them by hand you will still be ahead of most people posting in these communities.
- 01
Read the subreddit's actual promo rule
Open the sidebar and the wiki. Look specifically for whether links are allowed, whether comments are treated differently to posts, and whether there is a participation requirement before you promote.
- 02
Check your account against the community's minimums
Karma and account age thresholds are commonly enforced automatically. A removal for failing one looks identical to being ignored, so it is worth knowing the number in advance.
- 03
Reread your draft for the generated tells
Em-dashes, 'it's not X, it's Y' constructions, tidy three-item lists, and a tone that never varies. If it reads like documentation rather than a person answering a question, rewrite it.
- 04
Count what you have already posted there today
Frequency in a single subreddit draws moderator attention faster than anything you write. Knowing your own count is the cheapest protection on this list.
We run all four checks for you. We still don't write the reply.
FindEvo reports each subreddit's promo rules as a red, amber or green verdict, matches your account's karma and age against that community's thresholds, checks a draft you wrote for the patterns that read as generated, and tracks what you've already posted there today. All four are open on every plan including Free, because a safety layer you have to pay for is not a safety layer.
Frequently asked questions
How many marketers actually get banned on Reddit?
In an analysis of 340 startup marketing attempts, 89% were banned within 30 days and a further 7% were shadowbanned. Separately, Reddit's 2025 spam-detection changes removed roughly 70% of automated posting accounts. Those numbers describe promotional accounts specifically, not ordinary Reddit use.
What is a shadowban and how do I check for one?
A shadowban makes your posts and comments invisible to everyone else while looking completely normal to you. You post, you see it, nobody else does. The quickest check is to open one of your recent comments in a logged-out browser window or private tab. If it isn't there, you're shadowbanned in that community or site-wide.
Does using an AI tool to write my Reddit replies get me banned?
Not automatically, but it's the most common route there. Reddit's spam detection reacts to patterns: near-identical comments across threads, replies posted faster than a human reads, and text with the tells of generated writing. A tool that drafts your reply produces exactly those patterns at scale, which is why the safe use of one is heavy rewriting rather than posting what it gives you.
What's the safest way to promote on Reddit?
Read the subreddit's rules before you post, because self-promotion limits vary enormously between communities and breaking one is the fastest ban there is. Comment in threads where someone actually asked. Write in your own voice. Keep your own daily count low in any single subreddit. None of that is a trick, and that's rather the point.
Does FindEvo write my replies?
No, and it never will. It finds the threads, reads each subreddit's rules and reports what they allow, checks a draft you wrote for the patterns that read as generated, and tracks how much you have already posted in a community today. You write every word. That constraint is the product, not a missing feature.
Rules by community
Self-promotion rules are per-subreddit and they are not similar to each other. These are the ones founders ask about most.