By Andreea Chirila, founder of Thredly. Data collected through Reddit's official API on Oct. 30, 2026. Method pre-registered publicly on r/TheoryOfReddit before any data was pulled.
"Comment early or don't bother" is one of the oldest rules on Reddit. The research behind it is from 2013–2017, before Reddit redesigned its feeds, before "best" became the default sort everywhere, and before half the internet started reading Reddit through Google and AI answers. So I checked whether it still holds. It does, in every subreddit we looked at.
Top-level comments posted in the first 2 hours of a post reached 10+ upvotes 3–6x more often than later ones, in all 9 subreddits. Thredly, Oct. 2026.
In short: Thredly pulled 2,700 Reddit posts and their full comment trees, 235,997 comments in total, from 9 subreddits in October 2026. Top-level comments posted in the first 2 hours of a post reached 10+ upvotes 23.5% of the time. Comments posted after that: 6.5%. The gap showed up in every subreddit, from r/books (45% vs 12%) to r/Cooking (13% vs 2%). Most of the advantage is gone by hour 3. And it isn't only about being one of the first comments in the thread: at the same level of crowding, early comments still did about twice as well.
In this article
- Why test this again in 2026?
- How we ran the study
- Do early comments still get more upvotes?
- How long does the early window last?
- Is it the clock, or just how crowded the thread is?
- What this study can't tell you
- What this means for brands on Reddit
- Download the data and scripts
- Frequently asked questions
Why test this again in 2026?
Every Reddit marketing guide, including ours, says to get into threads early. The evidence usually cited is a handful of studies and blog analyses from 2013 to 2017. Reddit has changed a lot since then: new feeds, new default sorts, a much bigger audience arriving from search, and a lot more comments per thread in the big subreddits.
At Thredly we plan client work around this rule, so I wanted to know whether it still holds before telling anyone else to rely on it.
To keep myself honest, I posted the full method on r/TheoryOfReddit before pulling any data: which subreddits, how many posts, which comments get excluded, and exactly what would count as "early comments win." If the result had gone the other way, I'd be publishing that instead.
How we ran the study
- 9 subreddits, chosen to mix big and small, discussion and advice: r/books, r/gardening, r/personalfinance, r/HomeImprovement, r/Cooking, r/travel, r/technology, r/movies and r/unpopularopinion.
- 300 posts per subreddit, 2,700 in total. Each post had to be 7 to 90 days old, so its scores had settled, and have at least 3 comments.
- Full comment trees, including every "load more comments" link: 235,997 comments.
- What we left out: deleted and removed comments (their scores aren't real), replies by the original poster, comments posted more than a week after the post, and 16 posts where moderators had forced a non-default comment sort such as "new" or "Q&A."
- What we measured: for each top-level comment, how long after the post it was written and what score it ended with. The pre-registered test compared comments posted in the first 2 hours with everything after.
That leaves 83,327 top-level comments in the main analysis.
Do early comments still get more upvotes?
Yes. Across all 9 subreddits, top-level comments posted in the first 2 hours reached 10+ upvotes 23.5% of the time. Later comments did so 6.5% of the time.
| Subreddit | Reached 10+ upvotes: first 2 hours | Reached 10+ upvotes: after 2 hours | Median score (early vs later) |
|---|---|---|---|
| All 9 subreddits | 23.5% | 6.5% | 2 vs 1 |
| r/books | 44.8% | 11.5% | 7 vs 2 |
| r/technology | 36.0% | 11.4% | 4 vs 1 |
| r/movies | 26.0% | 6.9% | 2 vs 1 |
| r/travel | 21.2% | 6.4% | 3 vs 1 |
| r/personalfinance | 20.2% | 4.1% | 2 vs 1 |
| r/gardening | 19.3% | 4.2% | 3 vs 1 |
| r/unpopularopinion | 17.5% | 4.2% | 2 vs 1 |
| r/HomeImprovement | 15.1% | 4.2% | 2 vs 1 |
| r/Cooking | 12.6% | 2.2% | 2 vs 1 |
The smallest gap, r/Cooking, is still close to 6x in relative terms. Every group in the table has more than 1,000 comments.
Look at the median column too. The typical comment scores 1 or 2 points whether it's early or late. What early timing changes is the chance that a comment takes off.
How long does the early window last?
Not long. In the first hour, 26.7% of top-level comments reached 10+ upvotes. Comments posted in hours 1–3 managed 13.3%, half as many. By the end of the first day it was under 5%.
| Comment posted | Reached 10+ upvotes (all 9 subreddits) |
|---|---|
| First hour | 26.7% |
| 1–3 hours | 13.3% |
| 3–6 hours | 9.0% |
| 6–12 hours | 7.7% |
| 12–24 hours | 4.7% |
| After 24 hours | 2.2% |
In most subreddits the advantage was already cut in half by hours 1–3. r/books and r/travel were the slow ones, holding on until hours 3–6. Those are communities where people come back to a thread later and read further down.
Is it the clock, or just how crowded the thread is?
When I posted the method, a commenter on r/TheoryOfReddit made a good point: maybe it isn't the clock at all. Maybe early comments do well simply because there are fewer comments competing with them. So before pulling any data, we added a second measure: how many comments were already in the thread when each comment arrived.
They were partly right. Being one of the first comments matters a lot:
| Comments already in the thread | Reached 10+ upvotes |
|---|---|
| 0–9 | 30.1% |
| 10–49 | 16.6% |
| 50–99 | 12.1% |
| 100 or more | 5.8% |
But crowding doesn't explain the whole effect. When we compare comments that arrived into equally crowded threads, the ones posted in the first 2 hours still reached 10+ upvotes about twice as often:
| Comments already in the thread | First 2 hours | After 2 hours |
|---|---|---|
| 0–9 | 33.9% | 12.4% |
| 10–49 | 21.1% | 9.7% |
| 50–99 | 17.0% | 8.8% |
| 100 or more | 10.5% | 5.1% |
So the clock matters on its own. Which matters more depends on the community. In the big, busy subreddits (r/movies, r/technology, r/unpopularopinion, r/books), how crowded the thread is was slightly more strongly linked to score. In the smaller advice communities (r/HomeImprovement, r/gardening, r/personalfinance, r/travel, r/Cooking), the time since the post mattered slightly more. They were close everywhere.
What this study can't tell you
Things that didn't go perfectly, so you can judge the result for yourself:
- It's a correlation. People who comment early may differ in other ways, for example by being more engaged regulars. The crowding check rules out one explanation, not all of them.
- Reddit rate-limited the pull near the end. 22 posts in r/movies, r/technology, r/Cooking and r/books couldn't be fetched, and the script took the next eligible post instead. That's under 1% of the sample.
- Some comments can't be downloaded. We got 90–98% of the comments Reddit reports in most subreddits, but 83% in r/personalfinance, where more comments are removed.
- Scores are fuzzed by Reddit, and leaving out deleted comments probably favours safer ones.
- This measures the outcome of Reddit's "best" sort, which shows well-voted comments to more people, who then vote on them. It tells you about visibility, not about comment quality.
- Posts with a forced sort were excluded. In those 16 posts (12 in r/books and 1 in r/personalfinance sorted by new, 3 in r/movies sorted by Q&A), early comments still did slightly better, but scores were much lower overall, which is what you'd expect when readers see the newest comments first.
What this means for brands on Reddit
If your brand or your agency is answering questions on Reddit, the work that matters most is knowing when a relevant thread goes up, not spending two hours polishing a reply. In our data, a top-level comment posted in the first hour was about 12 times as likely to reach 10+ upvotes as one posted a day later (26.7% vs 2.2%).
Three practical things:
- Watch the subreddits where your buyers ask questions, and get alerts on new posts, so you can answer while the thread is still young.
- Know your community's window. In fast subreddits it's about an hour. In slower ones like r/books and r/travel you have until around hour 6.
- Don't treat timing as a substitute for a useful answer. Most early comments still get 1–3 upvotes. Early timing gives a good answer its chance; it doesn't rescue a bad one.
This is exactly how we plan thread monitoring for Thredly clients. If you'd like to see which threads in your category you're missing, get a free Reddit audit.
We'll re-run the same pull in late January 2027 and publish what changed.
Download the data and scripts
Everything behind this article is free to download and reuse. If you find a mistake, tell me.
Download the full dataset and scripts (ZIP, 4.4 MB)
It contains:
posts.csv: the 2,700 posts (IDs, subreddit, score, comment counts, sort)comments.csv: all 235,997 comments (IDs, timing, score, depth). No usernames and no comment text.pull_comments.py: the collection script (Python, Reddit's official API)analyze_timing.py: the analysis scriptmake_chart.py: the chartresults_*.csv: every results table in this article, and moreRESULTS_SUMMARY.md: the full results write-up
Frequently asked questions
Does comment timing still matter on Reddit in 2026?
Yes. In Thredly's pre-registered study of 2,700 posts and about 83,000 top-level comments across 9 subreddits, collected in October 2026, comments posted in the first 2 hours of a post reached 10+ upvotes 23.5% of the time, against 6.5% for comments posted later. The early advantage held in every subreddit checked.
What is the best time to comment on a Reddit post?
As early as possible, ideally in the first hour. In the study, 26.7% of top-level comments posted in the first hour reached 10+ upvotes. That fell to 13.3% for comments posted in hours 1–3 and kept falling after that. In r/books and r/travel the advantage lasted a little longer, until hours 3–6.
Is it the clock, or just being one of the first comments?
Both. Being among the first 10 comments in a thread matters a lot (30% of those reached 10+ upvotes, against 6% once there were 100+ comments). But when comparing comments that arrived into equally crowded threads, the ones posted in the first 2 hours still reached 10+ upvotes about twice as often as later ones. So timing matters on its own.
Does posting early guarantee upvotes on Reddit?
No. The typical comment got 1–3 upvotes whether it was early or late. Posting early changes the odds that a good comment gets seen and takes off. It doesn't make an average comment good.
Can I see the data behind the study?
Yes. The full dataset (2,700 posts and 235,997 comments, no usernames or comment text), the collection and analysis scripts, and all results tables are free to download from the article.