Reddit Plans to Require Everyone to Log In
The US social platform Reddit has announced it will start requiring users to log in to view content. The change will first be tested in select markets outside the United States.
Reddit, the US social network and discussion forum platform, has announced that it will begin requiring users to log in. Until now, most of the site's content could be viewed without an account. Chief executive Steve Huffman revealed the plan alongside the company's third-quarter 2026 financial results.
How the rollout will work
There is no firm date for when the requirement will apply to all users, and it is unclear what a logged-out person will see when opening a link to a thread. To begin with, Reddit will test the requirement in "select markets outside the US" over the "coming months." Huffman said the company will assess the effect on user experience, its business and the wider Reddit ecosystem, then decide where the right boundaries lie. Reddit has also rebuilt and is relaunching the incognito mode in its app.
The reasoning
Huffman argues the login requirement will improve the user experience and the advertising business, and better protect Reddit's data. According to him, the "vast majority" of unauthorized access happens through logged-out experiences. The site's openness has made it a target for scraping and automated traffic, and the company has filed lawsuits over alleged unauthorized access to its data. At the same time, Reddit will continue to sign data licensing deals with companies, as it did with OpenAI and Google in 2024.
Huffman stressed that Reddit does not need to know a logged-in user's identity, only that the person is logged in. More logged-in users, he said, allows the company to show more relevant ads.
Quarterly figures
In the shareholder letter, Huffman acknowledged that search traffic was "down meaningfully" in the third quarter, with logged-out and web traffic hit hardest. In October, search referrals fell by more than 1 million per week on average. However, app users and logged-in daily active unique users account for over 80% of Reddit's monetization.
