Reddit is moving to a logged-in-only experience, and it will begin fully testing the change in select markets outside the US during the fourth quarter. The results of those tests will shape an optimized logged-in-only Reddit worldwide.
CEO Steve Huffman set out the plan in the company’s third-quarter letter to shareholders, published on October 29 with its results. “It’s a big one for us, and it’s a big one for me,” he wrote.
What Changes for People Who Browse Without an Account
Most of the people who visit Reddit on a given day are not signed in. Reddit counted 76.8 million logged-out daily active uniques in the third quarter, against 53.5 million who were logged in. Those logged-out visitors are the ones a logged-in-only Reddit would ask to sign in.
Old Reddit already works this way. Visitors who are not signed in now get a page that says accounts are required to access old Reddit, with an option to continue without an account on reddit.com.
The letter gives no date for a wider rollout, and it does not say which parts of the site, if any, would stay visible without an account.
Reddit also wants more mobile web visitors in its app. Only about 13% of eligible mobile web users currently see the prompt to switch to the app, which leaves room to show it more widely. The company also pointed to an improved incognito mode in the app as a way to cut down on people deleting and reinstalling it.
Why Reddit Wants Everyone Signed In
Huffman wrote that signed-in users get content and communities that are more relevant to them, and that logins give Reddit more signals for ad targeting and lead to higher engagement. He added that the change helps Reddit protect access to its “extremely valuable corpus of data” and adapt to new regulations around the world.
“Pretty much all of the major ad-based platforms have gone through this transition,” he wrote.
The plan comes as visits from search fall. Reddit’s search referral traffic dropped meaningfully in the third quarter, and the decline sped up late in the quarter, hitting logged-out and web traffic hardest. In October, search traffic fell by more than 1 million referrals a week on average. If that pace holds, Reddit said its daily active uniques could fall in the fourth quarter by a low double-digit percentage from about 130 million.
The company is offsetting the drop mainly through user marketing, along with product improvements. So far, app users who arrive through marketing are staying at rates similar to those who find the app on their own, and Reddit plans to keep investing there.
The Numbers Behind the Plan
Daily active uniques averaged 130.3 million in the third quarter, up 12% from a year earlier. US daily actives fell 2% to 50.7 million, while international daily actives grew 24% to 79.6 million.
Revenue rose 53% to $895 million, and net income rose 74% to $283 million. For the fourth quarter, Reddit expects revenue of $1 billion to $1.03 billion.
