r/GrowthHacking: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

Posts use terms like CAC, ICP, attribution, deliverability and top of funnel without explaining them, and the best threads compare real reply rates and monthly tool costs. Basic questions still get friendly answers, usually along the lines of pick one channel and stick with it. The rules say the community is not for crowdsourcing ideas for your product, so a bare "how do I grow this" is officially out of bounds even though many stay up.

• Solo founders and indie builders trying to get first users with no budget.
• In-house growth and marketing leads at B2B SaaS companies, often reporting to a boss who wants a metric.
• Cold outreach operators comparing email, LinkedIn and DM tactics and what they cost.
• SEO and content people working out how to show up in AI search answers.
• Tool vendors and agencies, both posting launches and answering threads with their product in the reply.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/GrowthHacking.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 200.

• Stayed up74%
• Removed by Reddit's filters26%
• Removed by moderators1%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

97%

Removed by Reddit's filters

0%

Removed by moderators

3%

Period

September 2025 to June 2026

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   Don't Share Gated Content

   Please don't block content behind a paywall or an opt-in.

2. 2

   No Self-Promotion

   If you are sharing your blog post, product, podcast or video, make sure you have at least 100 Community Karma by engaging in the community. Low-value or low-effort posts will be deleted. Write unique summaries while sharing your blog, podcast or videos.

3. 3

   SaaS Products and Tools

   If you're a founder or employee or marketer of a SaaS product looking to promote your tools, seek permission from the mod.

4. 4

   Seek Permission for Survey / Feedback / Beta Testing / Review

   If you're asking members to participate in any Surveys / Feedback / Reviews / Beta Testing, ask permission of the moderator if you're collecting contact details of our members or asking them to DM. Also promoting your private groups / communities in the subreddit is not encouraged.

5. 5

   Link love for original and exclusive content

   If you share a piece of original content, then you can link to your website or social media profile at the end of the post (one link only). This is allowed after you have 100 Community Karma.

6. 6

   We Discourage Black-hat Tactics

   Inappropriate content is automatically filtered by Reddit. We don't endorse black-hat marketing tools or tactics, if found, they will be deleted.

7. 7

   Stay Topical

   If posts are not oriented towards growth marketing/hacking, they will be removed.

8. 8

   No Crowdsourcing Ideas

   Hire a consultant if you want someone to think of ways to grow your startup. This community is about sharing what experiments you have already run and the results. It is not for getting free ideas, consultation or suggestions for your product.

9. 9

   Publish job posts under the jobs thread

   Here's the link to the job thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/GrowthHacking/comments/ozqyvn/growth_marketing_job_thread_august_2021/

10. 10

    Avoid links from banned sites

    Links from TikTok and ProductHunt are banned unless approved by the mod team. Do not post anything related to any business that is offering Growth Hacking courses, training, mentorship, job boards, events, communities, etc.

11. 11

    Always be kind and respectful

    Unlike other subreddits, at r/GrowthHacking we strongly encourage members to always be kind and respectful. If you try to throw shade and negativity, you will be banned.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/GrowthHacking describes itself as a place to share experiments you have already run and what happened. At its best it is that: someone lays out a channel, the numbers and what they would do differently. About 95% of posts are text, the median post is roughly 125 words, and close to half of titles are questions. There is no flair system.

Engagement is modest. The median post gets 4 comments and the top post in our sample had 40 upvotes. A lot of the feed is founders announcing a product in a "so we built" format, and those posts mostly sit with little response. Comments are longer than on most subreddits, around 40 words, and many read like mini consulting answers. Some end with the commenter's own tool.

The topic of the moment is AI search. Several of the most discussed recent posts ask how to measure whether a brand shows up in AI answers, how to get cited in AI overviews, and whether paying for visibility tracking is worth it. Cold email stacks, LinkedIn tactics and the "boring channel beats viral" argument fill most of the rest.

What lands

• A case study with real numbers in the title: starting traffic, ending traffic, time taken and spend. The top recent post was this shape.
• A cost breakdown. One well received post simply listed what each part of a cold email setup costs per month.
• A measurement problem told from the inside, like being asked for an AI visibility report without knowing what the baseline should be. These drew 30 to 40 comments.
• A data dump with no link, where the poster says up front that there is nothing to sign up for.
• An honest admission that a tool stack or tactic created more work than it saved.

What gets removed or ignored

• Posts from accounts with 1 karma or less. This was AutoModerator's only removal message in the sample, and it fired often.
• A fake-sounding testimonial for a Reddit marketing tool, posted twice. It is the only thing moderators removed in the sample.
• Posts caught by Reddit's own spam filters, which account for about a quarter of all posts.
• By rule: job posts outside the jobs thread, black-hat tactics, off-topic posts, and anything promoting growth hacking courses, mentorship or paid communities.

The unwritten rules

• Product pitches staying up does not mean they work. Most get a handful of comments or none. A post with your own numbers and no pitch gets far more attention.
• Say your stage and context: team size, B2B or consumer, budget. Answers are generic without it.
• If you mention your own tool in a comment, disclose it. Some commenters do, and it reads far better than a name dropped as if by a happy user.
• Give your own take before asking a question. Posters who do this sometimes say outright that they are avoiding lazy crowdsourcing, which is a rule here.
• Stay polite. The rules single out negativity as a ban reason, and the tone in the comments is noticeably softer than in other marketing subreddits.

Self-promotion

On paper the rules are tight. The rule is titled No Self-Promotion, sharing your own content needs 100 Community Karma, SaaS founders and marketers are told to ask the moderators before promoting a tool, and original content gets one link at the end of the post. In practice enforcement is thin. Moderators removed about 1% of posts in our sample, and plain product announcements were still up when we looked. Reddit's filters do most of the removing, and they catch around a quarter of posts. The upshot is that you can often get a pitch through, but it will be ignored. The posts people answer are the ones that share an experiment and leave the product as a footnote.

How people write here

Typical post length

124 words

Typical title length

12 words

Titles phrased as a question

45%

Typical comment length

40 words

Comments that include a link

3%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/GrowthHacking.

• growth 36 posts
• tool 41 posts
• channel 23 posts
• product 39 posts
• signups 15 posts
• marketing 29 posts
• traffic 21 posts
• content 26 posts
• users 23 posts
• actual 25 posts
• product hunt 10 posts
• launched 15 posts
• tactic 9 posts
• conversion 14 posts
• instead 29 posts
• page generator 5 posts
• hunt curious 5 posts
• ai landing 5 posts
• pages 17 posts
• ones 20 posts
• tools 25 posts
• specific 22 posts
• acquisition 11 posts
• lesson 11 posts
• launched today 6 posts
• saas 18 posts
• linkedin 15 posts
• numbers 17 posts
• search 19 posts
• campaign 13 posts
• b2b 14 posts
• roughly 15 posts
• generator 9 posts
• spend 18 posts
• growth tactic 4 posts
• growth folks 4 posts
• leads 14 posts
• support 21 posts
• problem 25 posts
• funnel 8 posts

Posts that did well

• $0 ad spend, ~22k → ~790k monthly organic visits in 6 months. The three arbitrages that actually did it.40 upvotes · 24 comments
• boss wants an ai visibility report and i dont even know the baseline metrics yet27 upvotes · 30 comments
• we track social mentions fine but ai answers feel invisible.. how are you measuring that22 upvotes · 40 comments
• Our growth stack started creating more work than it removed19 upvotes · 23 comments
• What my cold email stack actually costs each month19 upvotes · 8 comments
• Are you or do you know someone who is running end to end marketing using AI?14 upvotes · 10 comments
• the underrated growth channel that everyone ignores because it doesn't scale13 upvotes · 14 comments
• social media automation platform that does more than queue posts, need recycling and rules per client13 upvotes · 22 comments

Common questions