Reddit will shift to a primarily logged-in experience. Its homepage will remain accessible to logged-out visitors. Participation features like commenting will stay gated behind login. The change aims to improve user engagement and ad targeting. It also seeks to protect data from unauthorized scraping. Logged-in users spend about five times longer on the platform. The shift follows a 54% year-over-year rise in ad revenue. Search referral traffic fell meaningfully in Q3. Daily users may drop by a low-double-digit percentage in Q4 if trends persist. The company will test the change outside the U.S. this quarter. Incognito browsing mode will return but will be read-only. Reddit will still license content to third parties under set terms. It has sued Anthropic and Perplexity for unauthorized scraping.
What changed
Reddit allowed full access to most content and features without an account.
What it unlocks
Tailored content feeds and recommended communities based on user activity and interests.
- 54% year-over-year ads revenue growth
- $847M Q3 2026 ad revenue
- 94.7% of revenue from ads
- 27B+ posts and comments
What you need to act on it
- a Reddit account
- logging in
Sources