The short answer
Reddit charges for the action your campaign objective bills on, in a live auction, so the price per click or per thousand views depends on your bid, targeting and creative. What Reddit does publish is how much to budget. Its Learning Hub article on costs (published February 10, 2026) says to set a budget of at least 3 times your target cost per acquisition and to consider $100 or more a day for at least one week and up to two. Its help center adds that an ad group may overspend its budget by up to 20% on a day, and that it doesn't guarantee you will spend the full budget.
So the real question is your target cost per result. At a $25 target, Reddit's 3x rule means a $75 daily budget, and its test advice lifts that to $100 a day: $700 for a 7-day test or $1,400 for 14 days. Our Reddit Ads cost calculator does this math with your numbers.
Quick picks: what are you doing?
- Sizing a first paid test: use the Reddit Ads cost calculator with your target cost per result.
- Spending $10,000 or more a quarter, or in a sensitive category such as finance, health or gambling: Reddit says you're eligible for its managed sales team.
- Testing with under $100 a day: expect a slower read. Reddit's own setup page notes that advertisers at $100 a day see over 3 times the conversions of those at $50.
- Wanting your brand in the threads people and AI answers read, not in ad slots: compare Reddit ads and organic Reddit marketing.
- Wanting both priced side by side: see what Reddit marketing costs per month across 16 services.
What sets the price you pay
Reddit's help center lists three things, read November 12, 2026.
| Factor | What Reddit says | What it means for your budget |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign objective | The objective decides what you're billed for. In a traffic campaign you pay per impression (oCPM) on lowest cost bidding, or per click (CPC) with a cost cap. | Pick the objective for the action you want; it changes the unit you pay for. |
| Bidding strategy | Lowest cost is the default. Cost cap and target cost (beta) limit what you pay per result but may leave budget unspent. Target cost needs 200 events in the past 28 days for sales and lead objectives, 120 for app promotion. | A new account usually starts on lowest cost because it has no event history. |
| Auction performance | Your bid, targeting and creative decide how often you win. | Two advertisers with the same budget can pay very different prices per click. |
| Budget type | Daily or lifetime budget, plus an optional campaign spend cap the campaign is never billed past. | The spend cap is your hard ceiling; the daily budget can run up to 20% over on a given day. |
A worked example: a $25 cost per lead
Take a B2B software company that is happy to pay $25 for a lead. These are Reddit's published rules applied to that number; the lead count assumes you hit the $25 target, which nobody can promise in an auction.
| Step | Rule (Reddit's) | Result at a $25 target |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum daily budget | At least 3x your target cost per result | $75 a day |
| Test daily budget | $100 or more a day | $100 a day |
| Test length | At least one week, up to two | 7 to 14 days |
| Test cost | Daily budget times days | $700 to $1,400 |
| Leads if the $25 target holds | Test cost divided by $25 | 28 to 56 leads |
| Learning phase before judging | 2 to 3 weeks after launch | $1,400 to $2,100 at $100 a day |
| Worst day | Up to 20% over the daily budget | $120 on a $100 budget |
What outside estimates say about clicks and views
Reddit doesn't publish average click or impression prices. Published 2026 estimates collected by Quimby Digital, a Reddit agency, put Reddit cost per click at $0.50 to $4 and cost per thousand impressions at $3 to $15, depending on targeting and category (read November 12, 2026). Quimby notes that none of the publishers give a sample size, so treat these as planning ranges. Your own first week is a better number than any of them.
Rule changes to plan around
- Starting February 10, 2027, Reddit says cost cap bidding will no longer be available for lower funnel objectives: sales, app promotion and lead generation. If you plan around a cost cap for leads, plan for lowest cost or target cost instead.
- Target cost is in beta and needs event history (200 events in 28 days for sales and leads), so it is rarely open to a brand-new account.
- Ads go through review before they run, normally up to 48 business hours, and ads sent over a weekend are reviewed the following Monday, per Reddit's setup page.
What the organic route costs instead
Ads buy placements in ad slots; the other way onto Reddit is comments in the threads themselves, which is what AI answers and Google tend to surface. CommunityMentions does that for $1,000 a month, month to month, after a free sample and a $1 setup charge, with monthly billing only after you approve in Slack. In our delivery database for the 30 days to November 5, 2026 (read November 6), the median client brand had 49 verified placements across Reddit, YouTube, Medium, LinkedIn and X, about $20 each, and 9 of those were on Reddit. That spread is wide: the 25th percentile was 2 and the 75th was 123. A placement and an ad click are not the same thing, so this is a different purchase, not a cheaper version of the same one. The side-by-side is on Reddit ads vs organic Reddit marketing.
Limits to know
- Every dollar figure from Reddit on this page is a budgeting rule, not a price. Reddit's article says plainly that cost depends on what you want.
- Reddit's "3x conversions at $100 a day" note comes from its catalog sales setup advice; it is an average across advertisers, not a promise for yours.
- The outside click and impression ranges have no stated sample size.
- Our placement numbers are counts of verified comments for our clients, not ad results.
Sources
- Reddit Ads Help, Budgets and Bidding: objectives and billing, budget types, 20% overspend, bidding strategies, target cost eligibility, the February 10, 2027 cost cap change; read November 12, 2026.
- Reddit Ads Help, Standard Campaigns: $100 a day for catalog purchase events, 3x conversions at $100 vs $50 a day, ad review times; read November 12, 2026.
- Reddit Ads Help, Purchase a Reddit Ad: managed sales team for $10,000 or more a quarter or sensitive categories; read November 12, 2026.
- Reddit Learning Hub, Reddit Advertising Costs and How to Maximize Results, published February 10, 2026: the 3x CPA budget rule, $100+/day for one to two weeks, 2 to 3 week learning phase; read November 12, 2026.
- Quimby Digital, Reddit Ads Cost 2026: collected CPC and CPM estimates; read November 12, 2026.
- CommunityMentions delivery database, verified placements October 7 to November 5, 2026, read November 6, 2026. Our price and terms: pricing section and company facts.