What is Reddit used for?

Reddit is a social network of topic-based communities where people post, comment and vote on links, discussions and media. It is a good fit for community discussion on niche topics and software project user communities.

Is Reddit open source?

No. Reddit is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Reddit include Discourse, Lobsters and NodeBB.

What are some alternatives to Reddit?

Reddit competes with Quora, X (Twitter) and Tumblr. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Reddit alternatives.

Reddit: features, pricing and alternatives

About Reddit

Reddit is a social platform organized into thousands of communities, called subreddits, each focused on a topic. Members submit links, text posts, images and video, discuss them in threaded comments, and vote content up or down so that popular items rise.

It is a proprietary service run by its owner and cannot be self-hosted. The site's robots.txt blocked automated access when this entry was prepared, so current features, apps and any paid tiers should be confirmed on the official site. It is a consumer social site rather than a workplace collaboration tool, though many software projects use their subreddits for community support.

Key features

Topic-based communities called subreddits
Threaded comments and discussion
Voting to rank posts
Web and mobile apps

Good fit for

→Community discussion on niche topics
→Software project user communities

Tags: social-media; forums; communities; discussion; voting

Reddit: questions and answers

What is Reddit used for?: Reddit is a social network of topic-based communities where people post, comment and vote on links, discussions and media. It is a good fit for community discussion on niche topics and software project user communities.
Is Reddit open source?: No. Reddit is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Reddit include Discourse, Lobsters and NodeBB.
What are some alternatives to Reddit?: Reddit competes with Quora, X (Twitter) and Tumblr. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Reddit alternatives.