The honest answer is that Reddit Ads cost less per impression than almost any comparable platform, and that this is the least useful fact about them. Cheap traffic that never converts is expensive. What follows is what you will actually pay, what you should budget, and how to tell whether the number you are seeing is good.
The short version
For most advertisers in 2026, Reddit sits in these ranges:
| Metric | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) | $3 to $12 | Broad targeting sits low, narrow subreddit stacks sit high |
| CPC (cost per click) | $0.40 to $2.50 | Highly dependent on creative quality |
| CPV (cost per view, video) | $0.02 to $0.10 | Cheapest awareness inventory on the platform |
| Conversion (lead or signup) | $15 to $120 | Category dependent, see benchmarks below |
| Practical monthly minimum | $3,000 | Below this you are buying noise, not data |
Those are the numbers we see across accounts we manage. Your mileage will vary with category, geography, and above all with how native your creative feels.
What actually drives your cost
Reddit runs a second-price auction, so you are not simply paying what you bid. Four things move your effective cost more than your bid does.
Targeting width. A campaign aimed at a handful of niche subreddits will clear at a much higher CPM than one running across an interest category. Scarcity of inventory, not quality of audience, is doing most of that work.
Creative quality. This matters more on Reddit than on Meta. An ad that reads like a banner gets scrolled past, which pushes your effective CPC up even though your CPM stayed flat. The same budget with genuinely native copy routinely halves cost per click. If you want the mechanics, our post on Reddit ad formats covers which creative fits which objective.
Objective. Awareness and video view objectives buy the cheapest inventory. Conversion objectives cost more per impression because you are asking Reddit’s model to find a narrower slice of people.
Competition in your category. Categories with deep-pocketed advertisers (finance, crypto, SaaS, gaming launches) clear higher. Categories nobody thinks to advertise in stay cheap for years.
Minimum spend, and the number nobody tells you
Reddit’s own platform minimums are low. You can start a campaign with a daily budget in the single or low double digits, and the ads manager will happily let you.
That is not the number that matters. The number that matters is the one where you get enough conversions per week to make an optimisation decision that is not superstition. In practice:
- Below $1,000 a month: you are running a curiosity test. Fine for learning the interface, useless for judging the channel.
- $1,000 to $3,000 a month: enough to validate whether a message lands. Not enough to optimise a funnel.
- $3,000 to $10,000 a month: the range where Reddit Ads becomes a real channel with real feedback loops. This is where we set our own floor.
- $10,000 and up: scaling territory, where account structure and automation start to matter more than individual ads.
Anyone who tells you Reddit works on $500 a month is selling you a setup fee. We will say the same on the first call.
Benchmarks by vertical
Rough cost per acquisition ranges we consider healthy after the learning phase:
| Vertical | Typical CPA | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Gaming and entertainment | $8 to $30 | Reddit’s native home turf, cheapest wins |
| Consumer subscription | $25 to $70 | Works well when there is an existing community |
| B2B SaaS (self-serve) | $40 to $120 | Strong when the tool has technical users |
| B2B SaaS (sales-led) | $120 to $400 per MQL | Long cycle, judge on pipeline not CPA |
| Crypto and fintech | $30 to $150 | High competition, heavy compliance friction |
| Ecommerce (considered purchase) | $20 to $80 | Works for research-heavy products |
| Ecommerce (impulse) | Often unviable | Reddit is a research platform, not a impulse one |
Treat these as sanity checks, not targets. A CPA at the top of the range on a product with strong retention beats a cheap CPA on churn.
Reddit versus Meta and LinkedIn
The comparison people want, with the caveat that these are different jobs.
| Meta | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical CPM | $3 to $12 | $8 to $25 | $25 to $90 |
| Typical CPC | $0.40 to $2.50 | $0.70 to $3.00 | $5 to $12 |
| Audience intent | Researching, discussing | Browsing | Professional context |
| Creative tolerance | Low, punishes ads that feel like ads | High | Medium |
| Public comments on your ad | Yes, always | Yes | Yes |
| B2B targeting precision | Interest and community based | Weak | Strongest |
The structural advantage is that Reddit users are frequently mid-research: reading a thread about which tool to buy, which product held up, which service was a mistake. That is a better moment than a passive scroll, and it is why a $6 CPM on Reddit can outperform a $15 CPM elsewhere.
The structural risk is the comment section. Your ad ships with a public forum attached. That is an asset when the product is good and a liability when it is not, and it is the single biggest reason we turn down some accounts.
How to build your budget
A workable first quarter looks like this.
Month one, testing. Allocate roughly 60 percent to two or three audience stacks and 40 percent to creative variation within them. Expect your cost per result to be bad. The goal is signal, not efficiency. Keep at least four to six creatives live so the auction has something to choose between.
Month two, consolidation. Cut everything below median performance. Move budget into the one or two audience and creative pairings that survived. This is usually where cost per result drops sharply, often by half.
Month three, scaling. Increase budget on winners in increments of 20 to 30 percent every few days rather than doubling overnight, which resets learning. Start testing a second format against your winner, using advanced targeting to expand rather than replace.
A rule of thumb we use: your monthly test budget should be at least 20 times your target CPA. If you want $50 leads, budget $1,000 a month minimum just for the testing phase, on top of what you plan to spend once it works.
What is not in the ad cost
Three costs get forgotten in every budget conversation.
- Creative production. Reddit creative burns out faster than Meta creative because the audience is smaller and more attentive. Plan for a refresh every four to six weeks.
- Landing page work. Reddit traffic is sceptical and will bounce off a page that oversells. Often the cheapest CPA improvement available is not in the ad account at all.
- Management. Whether that is your time or an agency fee. Our own management sits on top of spend and never marks it up, which is the only arrangement we think is defensible.
If you are weighing the channel as a whole rather than just its price, we wrote a separate honest breakdown on whether Reddit ads are worth it.
The Takeaway
Reddit Ads are cheap to buy and expensive to buy badly. Budget $3,000 a month before you judge the channel, expect four to six weeks before the numbers mean anything, and put more effort into creative than into bid strategy, because on this platform creative is the bid.
If you want someone to run the numbers against your category before you commit, that is what our Reddit Ads agency work looks like, and the first audit is free. Tell us what you are selling and we will give you a realistic budget rather than an optimistic one.