Home feed
Also called: reddit home, front page, home timeline, best feed
Definition
The home feed is the default Reddit feed for logged-in users. It shows posts from communities you have joined, ranked and mixed with recommendations from communities you have not joined, based on your activity, votes, account age and settings.
The home feed is what you see when you open Reddit logged in. Reddit Help calls it "the main, default feed on Reddit for logged-in users," made up of content from communities you have joined plus, by default, recommendations from ones you have not.
How the home feed decides
Reddit's help page on content recommendations describes four steps: build a list of candidate posts, filter out things like spam, posts you have seen and content you blocked, predict what you will like, then sort while keeping some variety so you do not see many similar posts in a row.
The signals it lists include:
- About the content: upvotes and downvotes, the community, the comment history on the post, post type, post age and post flair.
- About you: what you have engaged with, your votes, time spent in communities, recent visits, subscriptions, the topics you picked at signup, and posts you asked to see less of.
- Account age: for newer accounts or those with few subscriptions, Reddit says its models "may emphasize recommendations over subscriptions."
- Location setting.
A few mechanics worth knowing:
- On any visit, the home feed shows posts from around 250 of your communities and refreshes every 30 minutes, according to Reddit Help.
- The default sort is [Best](/glossary/best-sort/), Reddit's personalized ranking. Recommendations appear under Best.
- You can turn recommendations off with the Show recommendations in home feed toggle (in preferences on reddit.com, under Privacy in the apps).
- The apps also have a Latest feed that shows your communities sorted by new.
- Logged-out visitors get [Popular](/glossary/r-popular/) instead.
Why it matters for marketers
There is no single front page anymore. Each user's home feed is different, so "getting to the front page" mostly means doing well in a specific subreddit, which then feeds into the home feeds of its members and, through recommendations, of people with similar interests.
What that means in practice:
- Community fit beats broad reach. A post that earns votes and comments from the right subreddit gets recommended to people like its members.
- Comments count. Reddit lists a post's comment history as a ranking input, so posts that start real discussions travel further.
- Do not try to engineer it. Vote solicitation or coordinated activity to push posts is vote manipulation.
Example
A cooking-gadget brand's post in a niche cast-iron subreddit gets strong engagement. Over the next day, users who are subscribed to general cooking communities but not the cast-iron one start seeing it as a recommendation in their home feeds, labeled with why it is being shown.
Frequently asked questions
Why am I seeing posts from subreddits I didn't join?
Those are home feed recommendations. You can turn them off with the Show recommendations in home feed setting.
Is the Reddit home feed chronological?
Not by default. The Best sort is personalized. The Latest feed in the apps, or sorting by New, gets you closer to chronological.
What is the difference between Home and Popular?
Home is personalized to your communities and activity. Popular shows the most popular recent posts across Reddit and is the default for logged-out users.