How does Reddit make money as a company?

Reddit generates revenue through three primary channels: digital advertising, data licensing, and subscriptions and user economy products. Advertising is by far the dominant stream, accounting for approximately 94% of total revenue as of 2025. Reddit earned $2.06 billion in advertising revenue in 2025, representing dramatic growth from $804 million in total revenue for 2023. The advertising business is built on the platform's unique value proposition to marketers: Reddit users engage with the platform in a research and discovery mindset, and internal Reddit data indicates that 90% of users trust the platform when learning about new products, with 74% saying Reddit influences their purchase decisions. This intent-rich context commands premium ad rates compared to passive social browsing environments. Data licensing has emerged as a rapidly growing second revenue stream. Reddit entered its first significant data licensing agreements in January 2024, selling access to its corpus of human-written content — over 22 billion comments — to AI companies training large language models. A $60 million annual agreement with Google for real-time data access was among the most notable early deals, and Reddit also signed a partnership with OpenAI. Licensing the "human corpus" carries very high margins because the content itself was created for free by users. Reddit Premium, the platform's paid subscription tier priced at around $5 to $9 per month, provides an ad-free experience and other benefits. Contributor Program payouts to creators represent a cost rather than a revenue stream, but the program drives engagement with Reddit Gold purchases, which generates revenue. Reddit went public on the NYSE in March 2024, trading under the ticker symbol RDDT, and reached a market capitalization of approximately $18 billion by mid-2025.