Most lists of "subreddits for startups" are just the ten biggest business communities, half of which will remove your post on sight. This list is sorted by what you are actually allowed to do in each one, because on Reddit the promo policy matters more than the subscriber count.
One warning before the list: none of these work from a fresh account. If your account is new or has never commented in a community, read our guide on promoting your startup on Reddit without getting banned first. Warm up, then come back.
Where can you openly share your startup?
A handful of communities exist specifically for founders to show what they built. These are the safest places for a launch-style post, and also the most crowded, so the bar for an interesting write-up is high.
| Subreddit | What works there | Promo policy |
|---|---|---|
| r/SideProject | Show-and-tell posts with a story: what you built, why, what happened | Self-promo welcome, low-effort link drops still sink |
| r/indiehackers | Build-in-public updates, revenue and lessons-learned posts | Sharing your project is the point, be specific with numbers |
| r/EntrepreneurRideAlong | Journey posts: the grind, the numbers, what you changed | Promo allowed inside a genuine story |
| r/IMadeThis | Anything you made, shipped, and are proud of | Open self-promo, keep it human |
| r/AlphaAndBetaUsers | Early product looking for first testers | Built for exactly this, follow the post format |
| r/RoastMyStartup | Landing page and idea feedback, delivered bluntly | Promo framed as a feedback request |
Treat these as launch venues, not growth channels. A good post here gets you a spike of visitors, some feedback, and a few early users. It does not compound. The compounding happens in the next two groups.
Which big communities allow promotion with limits?
The large founder communities allow product mentions inside valuable content, or in dedicated threads, and remove everything else. Read the current rules in each sidebar before posting, policies change and mods enforce them unevenly.
- r/startups removes direct promotion but runs a recurring "Share Your Startup" thread. Discussion posts that teach something from your experience do very well, with your product mentioned in passing.
- r/Entrepreneur is strict on self-promo and quick to remove links. Story posts with real numbers and no link are the format that survives and often outperforms everything else on this list.
- r/SaaS tolerates founders talking about their product when the post is a lesson, a question, or a breakdown, not an ad.
- r/smallbusiness and r/sweatystartup are effectively no-promo. Go there to answer questions in your domain of expertise, which is where trust and profile clicks come from anyway.
- r/growmybusiness and r/Startup_Ideas allow feedback-framed posts about your own product.
In all of these, the pattern from the main Reddit guide holds: lead with the useful part, disclose that the product is yours, and let people ask for the link.
The subreddits that actually matter: where your users are
Everything above is founders talking to founders. Unless founders are your customers, your best subreddits are not on any list, they are the niche communities where your users describe the problem you solve in their own words.
How to find them in about 20 minutes:
- Search the complaint, not the category. Take three phrases a customer would type in frustration and search them on Reddit. The communities where those threads keep appearing are your real list.
- Prefer 10k to 500k member subs. Big enough to have daily activity, small enough that a helpful regular gets recognized. Engagement per reader is far higher than in multi-million member defaults.
- Check the rules and the mood. Read the sidebar, then read the top posts of the month. Some niche subs love tool recommendations, others treat any product mention as an invasion. The top posts tell you which one you are in.
- Pick 3 to 5 and stay. A rotating presence across twenty subs reads as spam. A steady presence in four reads as a member.
One good comment in a niche thread that ranks on Google will quietly outperform a front-page launch post, because the people finding it are searching for the exact problem you solve.
How to work the list without getting banned
- Warm up the account first, then add communities gradually. Volume that appears overnight looks automated.
- One launch post per community, rewritten in that community's voice. Never cross-post the same text the same day.
- Comment daily, post weekly. The daily comments are what make the weekly post land.
- Track it like a channel. Pick your subs, set a daily comment target, and review after 30 days. This is exactly the kind of cadence we plan for you inside Control Output, with a warm-up ramp so a new account grows into its pace safely. You do the posting, we keep the receipts.
Start with two promo-friendly subs for the launch story, two niche subs where your users live, and one big community you genuinely enjoy. That is enough Reddit for one founder, and it is more than most of your competitors will sustain.