Most advice about Reddit post formats is recycled folklore, so we went and measured it ourselves. In July 2026 we crawled 34,095 posts across 50 subreddits from Reddit's public listings and broke down scores and comments by post format and community size. Across the 34,095 Reddit posts we analyzed, community size predicted upvotes more strongly than any post format: the median text post scored 12 points in small subreddits and 1,320 points in mega subreddits, a 110x gap. The format findings below are the parts almost everyone gets wrong.
Key takeaways
- Community size is the strongest single factor we measured. The median text post scores 12 in small subs and 1,320 in mega subs, a 110x difference.
- What people post is not what wins. In mid-size subs, text is 60.3% of posts but only 0.7% of the top 10% of posts by score.
- Galleries are the most over-represented winners in mid and large subs. In mid subs they are 19.1% of posts and 61.4% of the top decile.
- In mega subs, links are 49.3% of posts but just 2.2% of the biggest winners. Images and video take 92.8% of the top decile there.
- Text posts lose on score but win on comments in three of four tiers. In mega subs the median text post drew 698 comments on a median score of 1,320.
- The comment gap between tiers (about 37x) is much smaller than the score gap (110x). Small subs punch above their weight for discussion.
How did we run this study?
We collected 34,095 posts from 50 subreddits in July 2026, pulled from Reddit's public listings: top of the year (14,807 posts), top of the month (10,756), hot (8,147), and new (385). The posts span July 2023 to July 2026. We grouped the 50 subreddits into four size tiers and compared post scores and comment counts by format within each tier.
The tiers, by subscriber count at collection time:
- Small: 14 subreddits, 7,528 posts, roughly 24,000 to 3.3 million subscribers
- Mid: 13 subreddits, 9,234 posts, roughly 273,000 to 4.5 million subscribers
- Large: 13 subreddits, 9,298 posts, roughly 3.3 million to 21.8 million subscribers
- Mega: 10 subreddits, 8,035 posts, roughly 16.6 million to 67.5 million subscribers
The tier boundaries overlap at the edges because tiering was done per subreddit, not by hard cutoffs. The format-level breakdowns below cover the 25,563 posts that classified cleanly into one of five formats: text, image, gallery, link, or video. Medians on even-sized samples are interpolated, so we round all values to whole numbers.
Three honest limitations before the findings. First, public listings skew toward posts that already succeeded (hot and top listings by definition), so this is a study of what wins among visible posts, not a study of every submission ever made. Second, format availability depends on subreddit rules: many communities only allow certain post types, so format performance partly reflects which subreddits permit which formats. Third, some cells are too small to conclude anything, and we flag those instead of hiding them. This is observational data, not a controlled experiment.
What are the 10 findings at a glance?
- Community size is the strongest predictor we measured: the median text post scores 12 in small subs and 1,320 in mega subs, a 110x gap.
- The comment gap is far smaller than the score gap: median text-post comments go from 19 to 698 across the same tiers, about 37x.
- What gets posted is not what wins: in mid-size subs, text is 60.3% of posts but 0.7% of the top decile by score.
- Galleries are the most over-represented winners: 61.4% of the mid-tier top decile from 19.1% of posts, and 42.8% of the large-tier top decile from 7.5% of posts.
- In mega subs, link posts are 49.3% of everything posted but only 2.2% of top-decile winners.
- Video has the highest median score of any format in mega subs (40,589) but was too rare elsewhere to judge: our large tier contained just 7 video posts.
- Text still wins where discussion is the point: it holds 49.5% of the large-tier top decile and 93.2% of the small-tier top decile.
- Text posts are comment machines: in mega subs the median text post drew 698 comments on a median score of 1,320, while the median image post drew 494 comments on a median score of 21,658.
- The spread inside one format is enormous: in large subs, the 90th percentile text post scores 228x the 10th percentile (1,825 vs 8 points).
- In small subs, format barely matters: text is 96% of what gets posted and 93.2% of what wins.
Does subreddit size matter more than post format?
In our data, yes, and it is not close. Holding format constant at text posts, the median score climbs from 12 points in small subreddits to 42 in mid, 146 in large, and 1,320 in mega subreddits. That is a 110x difference driven purely by where the post was published, before content quality enters the picture.
The same format, four community sizes: the median text post scores 12 in small subreddits and 1,320 in mega subreddits — a 110x gap before content quality enters the picture.
Comments tell a gentler version of the same story. Median comments on text posts go from 19 (small) to 45 (mid) to 111 (large) to 698 (mega), roughly a 37x spread. Discussion scales with community size much more slowly than score does, which means small and mid subs deliver disproportionate conversation per upvote. If your goal is visible discussion around a topic rather than a big score, smaller communities are a better deal than the raw subscriber numbers suggest.
The practical move: before posting, check where a community actually sits. Subscriber counts are public but stale communities inflate them, so run the community through our free subreddit stats checker to see its real posting rules and activity, and browse communities by size on our subreddit list when you are picking targets.
Which post format gets the highest scores in each tier?
There is no single winning format. The best-scoring format flips depending on community size, which is why generic "images beat text" advice keeps failing people.
Median post score by format and tier
| Tier | Text | Image | Gallery | Link | Video |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 12 | 20 | 12* | 3 | 7* |
| Mid | 42 | 593 | 1,123 | 155 | 1,108* |
| Large | 146 | 889 | 3,459 | 418 | 140* |
| Mega | 1,320 | 21,658 | 10,076 | 13,416 | 40,589 |
*Small samples, treat with caution: small gallery n=11, small video n=18, mid video n=96, large video n=7.
Three patterns stand out. In mid subs, the median gallery post outscored the median text post 1,123 to 42, roughly 27x. In large subs the gallery advantage held at 3,459 vs 146, about 24x. And in mega subs, video is the top format by median score at 40,589, ahead of images at 21,658, with text a distant last at 1,320.
The honest caveat: outside the mega tier we simply did not capture enough video posts to judge the format. Seven video posts in the entire large tier is not a finding, it is a sample-size warning, and we would rather tell you that than manufacture a conclusion.
What separates what gets posted from what wins?
The format mix of everything posted looks nothing like the format mix of the biggest winners. We compared each format's share of all posts in a tier against its share of that tier's top decile (the top 10% of posts by score).
Share of all posts vs share of the top decile, by tier
| Tier | Format | % of all posts | % of top decile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mid | Text | 60.3% | 0.7% |
| Mid | Gallery | 19.1% | 61.4% |
| Mid | Image | 17.6% | 34.4% |
| Large | Text | 78.9% | 49.5% |
| Large | Gallery | 7.5% | 42.8% |
| Mega | Link | 49.3% | 2.2% |
| Mega | Image | 33.8% | 64.3% |
| Mega | Video | 12.7% | 28.5% |
| Small | Text | 96.0% | 93.2% |
A few cells in our data registered no measurable top-decile share at all (video in the small and large tiers, links in the mid tier, text in the mega tier), which is consistent with how rare or weak those formats were in those tiers.
Read the mid tier row again, because it is the most extreme result in the whole study: text posts are 60.3% of what people submit and 0.7% of what reaches the top 10%. Meanwhile galleries are over-represented among winners by about 3.2x their posting share, and in large subs by about 5.7x. In mega subs, half of all submissions are link posts, yet links take just 2.2% of the top decile while images and video combine for 92.8% of it.
The most extreme result in the study: text is 60.3% of what gets posted in mid-size subreddits and 0.7% of what reaches the top 10%, while galleries win 61.4% of the top decile from a 19.1% posting share.
The pattern we take from this: the average submitter defaults to the easiest format, and the easiest format is rarely the one the community rewards at the top end. Before you post, scrape the community's actual top titles and formats with our free subreddit title scraper and copy what the winners do, not what the crowd does.
Do text posts still win anywhere?
Yes, in two places: large discussion-driven subreddits and small communities. In our large tier, text posts still held 49.5% of the top decile, so a strong text post absolutely can be a top performer there. And in small subs, text is effectively the whole game: 96% of posts and 93.2% of top-decile winners.
That small-tier result deserves emphasis. In communities under a few hundred thousand subscribers, format is close to irrelevant because nearly everything is text. What separates the median post (12 points) from the 90th percentile (65 points) and the 99th (274 points) there is topic choice, title, and timing, not media type. If you are working small subs, put your effort into the question you ask, and check the community's active hours with our free best time to post tool instead of agonizing over format.
Which format earns the most comments?
Text posts. They lose the score race in every tier, but they win or nearly win the comment race in three of the four tiers, which makes them the best format per point of score for generating discussion.
Median comments per post by format and tier
| Tier | Text | Image | Gallery | Link | Video |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 19 | 21 | 12* | 2 | 5* |
| Mid | 45 | 70 | 65 | 51 | 72* |
| Large | 111 | 95 | 98 | 62 | 27* |
| Mega | 698 | 494 | 543 | 603 | 578 |
*Same small-sample flags as the score table.
The mega tier is the clearest illustration. The median text post there earned 698 comments on a median score of 1,320. The median image post earned 494 comments on a median score of 21,658. Comparing medians to medians, text generated more discussion than images despite scoring 16x lower. For marketers this matters because Reddit's persuasion happens in comment sections, where researching buyers read the arguments, and the comment section is what gets quoted by AI answer engines. If discussion is the asset you are building, text posts are underrated by every score-only analysis, and our guide to building active discussion on your posts covers how to work that comment section once it starts.
How big is the gap between a typical post and a top post?
Enormous, even within a single format in a single tier. In large subreddits, the 10th percentile text post scored 8 points, the median 146, the 90th percentile 1,825, and the 99th 6,232. That is a 228x gap between the 10th and 90th percentile of the same format in the same tier. In mega subs, image posts ran from 1,782 points at the 10th percentile to 88,056 at the 90th and 166,202 at the 99th.
The pack of numbers cannot tell us why one post lands in the top tail and another does not, because we did not track posts minute by minute. But our operating experience running engagement at scale points the same direction as Reddit's public ranking mechanics: early momentum compounds, and posts that stall early rarely migrate into the top percentiles later. We break down those mechanics in our Reddit algorithm guide, and if you want a sense of what the extreme right tail looks like, see our analysis of the most upvoted Reddit posts of all time.
What should you change about your next post?
Pick the format by community size, not by generic best practice. Based on our 34,095-post crawl, the playbook looks like this:
- Small subs (under ~1M): post text, compete on the question and the title. Format is a rounding error here.
- Mid subs (roughly 300K to 4.5M): galleries and images are the top-decile formats. A text post in these communities is fighting uphill: 60.3% of submissions, 0.7% of big winners.
- Large subs (3M to 22M): galleries have the highest median score (3,459), but strong text posts still take about half the top decile, so both lanes are open.
- Mega subs (17M+): images and video dominate the winners. Avoid bare link posts, which are half the submissions and 2.2% of the top decile.
- Optimizing for discussion instead of score: text posts in mid and large subs give you the most comments per point of score, and smaller communities give you far more conversation per subscriber.
One more piece of context on why the stakes keep rising: Reddit reported 126.8 million daily active uniques in Q1 2026, 74.8 million of them logged out, per its April 2026 SEC filing. Those logged-out readers arrive from Google and AI answers and mostly see the posts that already won.
Whichever format you choose, the spread data shows the same brutal truth: the median post goes nowhere, and the gap between median and top decile is 100x or more. Earning that early separation organically is covered step by step in our guide on how to get upvotes on Reddit. If you would rather not leave the first hour to chance, our Reddit upvote service delivers the early momentum that decides which side of the percentile gap your post lands on.
FAQ
How many Reddit posts were analyzed in this study?
We analyzed 34,095 posts from 50 subreddits, collected in July 2026 from Reddit's public listings (top of year, top of month, hot, and new). The posts span July 2023 to July 2026, and format-level breakdowns cover the 25,563 posts that classified cleanly into text, image, gallery, link, or video.
What post format gets the most upvotes on Reddit?
It depends on community size. In our crawl, galleries had the highest median score in mid and large subreddits (1,123 and 3,459 points), video led mega subreddits (40,589), and in small subreddits nearly everything is text, so format barely mattered there.
Do text posts get upvotes on Reddit?
Yes, but mostly in specific places. Text posts held 49.5% of the top decile in large subreddits and 93.2% in small ones in our data. In mid-size subs they were 60.3% of submissions but only 0.7% of top-decile winners, so format choice matters most there.
Does subreddit size affect upvotes more than content?
Size was the strongest single factor we measured. The median text post scored 12 points in small subreddits and 1,320 in mega subreddits, a 110x gap, while median comments grew only about 37x across the same tiers. Smaller subs deliver more discussion per point of score.
Where does this data come from?
From our own crawl of Reddit's public listings in July 2026, not from third-party datasets. Because hot and top listings skew toward posts that already succeeded, the study describes what wins among visible posts rather than the outcome of every submission ever made.