Findings you can quote
Free to cite with a link back. Each line stands on its own.
- 1
In 16,331 buying-intent Reddit posts analyzed by Bazzly (September 15 to October 11, 2026), 78% described a problem and 13.6% asked for a tool recommendation.
- 2
83% of buying-intent Reddit posts had fewer than 5 comments when Bazzly found them, a median of 51 minutes after they were posted.
- 3
Buying-intent Reddit posts in Bazzly's data peaked between 15:00 and 19:00 UTC: those four hours held 23.7% of posts, against 16.7% for any four hours if posts were spread evenly.
- 4
73% of the buying-intent posts Bazzly found were in subreddits that are strict about self-promotion.
- 5
In AI-tool subreddits, 26.8% of buying-intent posts complained about a tool the poster already uses, against 1.5% in SaaS and startup subreddits (Bazzly data, 2,907 posts).
- 6
23% of buying-intent Reddit posts were relevant to two or more of Bazzly's customer brands at once; in SaaS and startup subreddits it was 46%.
- 7
Of 108,653 Reddit mentions of competing brands tracked by Bazzly, 24% of mentions in comments were positive, against 13% in posts.
What buyers write
About 1 in 7 buying posts asks for a tool. 78% describe a problem.
What 16,331 buying-intent Reddit posts were about
Share of posts by the intent type Bazzly's model assigned.
- Describes a problem78.1%
- Asks for a tool recommendation13.6%
- Unhappy with a current tool4.2%
- Compares options3.9%
- Asks for general advice0.2%
- Names a product directly, or other0.1%
A post like “our trial users never come back after day one” never names a tool, but it is a better lead for an onboarding product than “what's the best onboarding tool?”, which already has twenty vendors in the replies. Bazzly's model reads for the problem, which is why problem posts make up most of what it finds.
By industry
AI-tool buyers are 18× more likely to complain about their current tool
Buying-intent posts by industry
Industries are groups of subreddits. Shares are of each row's posts.
| Industry | Posts | Asks for a tool | Unhappy with a tool | Under 5 comments | In strict subreddits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Careers and job search12 subreddits | 3,710 | 4.3% | 0.8% | 90.6% | 100.0% |
| SaaS and startups9 subreddits | 1,820 | 8.0% | 1.5% | 88.4% | 57.5% |
| AI tools9 subreddits | 1,087 | 26.0% | 26.8% | 70.4% | 4.2% |
| Marketing and sales16 subreddits | 1,033 | 11.8% | 2.0% | 90.8% | 92.8% |
| Creators8 subreddits | 475 | 14.1% | 1.7% | 90.3% | 47.8% |
| Personal finance7 subreddits | 374 | 15.0% | 0.5% | 51.1% | 97.1% |
| E-commerce5 subreddits | 176 | 16.5% | 1.7% | 90.3% | 61.4% |
Timing
Buying posts peak between 15:00 and 19:00 UTC
When buying-intent posts are created, by weekday and hour
UTC. Darker means more posts in that hour slot, averaged per day. Hover a cell for its numbers.
Buying-intent posts by weekday and hour, UTC. Busiest four hours: 15:00 to 19:00 UTC with 23.7% of posts. Busiest hour 15:00 UTC, quietest 08:00 UTC.
Buying-intent posts by hour of day
UTC, all days combined. Peak hours highlighted.
- 00:00 UTC: 575 posts
- 01:00 UTC: 633 posts
- 02:00 UTC: 601 posts
- 03:00 UTC: 520 posts
- 04:00 UTC: 489 posts
- 05:00 UTC: 464 posts
- 06:00 UTC: 484 posts
- 07:00 UTC: 548 posts
- 08:00 UTC: 456 posts
- 09:00 UTC: 505 posts
- 10:00 UTC: 543 posts
- 11:00 UTC: 600 posts
- 12:00 UTC: 714 posts
- 13:00 UTC: 798 posts
- 14:00 UTC: 835 posts
- 15:00 UTC: 1,006 posts
- 16:00 UTC: 952 posts
- 17:00 UTC: 989 posts
- 18:00 UTC: 925 posts
- 19:00 UTC: 884 posts
- 20:00 UTC: 830 posts
- 21:00 UTC: 744 posts
- 22:00 UTC: 660 posts
- 23:00 UTC: 576 posts
Speed
83% of buying posts have fewer than 5 comments when Bazzly finds them
Comments on the post when Bazzly found it
16,331 buying-intent posts.
- 0 comments: 32%
- 1–2 comments: 38%
- 3–4 comments: 13%
- 5–9 comments: 11%
- 10–24 comments: 5%
- 25+ comments: 1%
34 min
A quarter of buying posts were found within
51 min
Half were found within
70 min
Three quarters were found within
Where
The 20 subreddits with the most buying intent
Top subreddits by buying-intent posts, September 15 to October 11, 2026
| Subreddit | Buying posts | Members | Asks for a tool | Self-promotion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| r/SaaS | 676 | 820,451 | 10.1% | Strict |
| r/recruitinghell | 543 | 1,502,127 | 0.9% | Strict |
| r/careerguidance | 460 | 5,037,278 | 4.3% | Strict |
| r/resumes | 422 | 1,322,384 | 0.5% | Strict |
| r/jobhunting | 384 | 178,288 | 6.3% | Strict |
| r/jobs | 382 | 2,849,688 | 5.8% | Strict |
| r/ChatGPT | 381 | 11,670,413 | 6.8% | Moderate |
| r/smallbusiness | 318 | 2,549,234 | 13.5% | Strict |
| r/SideProject | 315 | 864,747 | 2.9% | Lenient |
| r/jobsearchhacks | 285 | 556,437 | 14.7% | Strict |
| r/FacebookAds | 263 | 267,470 | 3.4% | Strict |
| r/Resume | 249 | 127,874 | 2.8% | Strict |
| r/buildinpublic | 242 | 121,983 | 2.1% | Lenient |
| r/YouTubeCreators | 233 | 115,705 | 13.3% | Moderate |
| r/GetEmployed | 233 | 699,962 | 5.2% | Strict |
| r/generativeAI | 213 | 163,358 | 65.7% | Moderate |
| r/personalfinance | 207 | 21,868,593 | 22.7% | Strict |
| r/microsaas | 201 | 220,297 | 6.0% | Lenient |
| r/interviews | 184 | 318,128 | 2.2% | Strict |
| r/NewTubers | 170 | 731,187 | 7.1% | Strict |
Want this list for your niche? The free subreddit finder ranks subreddits by how often your buyers post there.
Rules
73% of buying posts are in subreddits that are strict about self-promotion
Buying-intent posts by the subreddit's self-promotion rules
How strict each subreddit is, and why the big ones are stricter, is covered in our study of 1,905 subreddits' self-promotion rules, drawn from 1,907 active subreddits.
Competition
Nearly 1 in 4 buying posts is relevant to more than one brand
Share of buying posts relevant to two or more Bazzly brands, by industry
- Careers and job search52%
- SaaS and startups46%
- E-commerce28%
- Marketing and sales28%
- Creators24%
- AI tools14%
- Personal finance6%
Brand mentions
Comments praise brands nearly twice as often as posts do
Sentiment of competing-brand mentions on Reddit
September 11 to October 11, 2026
- Negative
- Neutral
- Positive
- In posts54,137Negative 10.4%, Neutral 76.4%, Positive 13.2%
- In comments54,516Negative 11.2%, Neutral 64.8%, Positive 24.0%
The case against
6 reasons to discount these numbers
Every dataset has blind spots. These are the ones that matter most here, so you can decide how much weight to give each number.
- 1This is Bazzly data, not a random sample of Reddit
Bazzly only scans the subreddits and searches its customers care about, and its customers are mostly software, AI, marketing and career products. Subreddits and industries outside that mix are thin or missing, so read the numbers as "what Bazzly customers run into", not as a census of Reddit.
- 2Four weeks of data
The window starts on September 15, 2026, the first day Bazzly kept every high-intent match. Before that, matches nobody acted on were deleted after eight days, which would skew an older sample. Four weeks is enough for the hourly pattern, but thin for differences between weekdays, so the day view shows averages and we do not rank days.
- 3Buying intent is an AI judgment
A post counts when Bazzly's fit model scored it 0.75 or higher for at least one customer product. The model is trained on labelled examples and checked against a held-out test set, but it still makes mistakes in both directions, and the intent type comes from the same model.
- 4Comment counts are a snapshot
The number of comments is what the post had when Bazzly picked it up, not its final count. Posts keep collecting comments after that.
- 5Times are UTC and skew to the US and Europe
Customers mostly sell in English to the US and Europe, so the hourly pattern reflects those audiences. A subreddit for another region can peak at different hours.
- 6Industries are grouped by subreddit
Each industry row is a hand-picked list of subreddits, not a label on the poster. 53% of posts fall into one of the seven groups. Subreddit lists only include subreddits matched by at least 3 customer brands, so no single customer's market is exposed.
How we measured this
Methodology
- Sample
- 16,331 Reddit posts scored as strong buying intent (fit 0.75 or higher) for at least one Bazzly customer brand
- Window
- September 15 to October 11, 2026
- Source
- Bazzly's production database, read-only queries, data through October 11, 2026. Bazzly's own, staff and test projects excluded.
- Buying-intent post
- A Reddit post Bazzly matched to a customer product with an AI fit score of 0.75 or higher (on a 0 to 1 scale), matched between September 15 to October 11, 2026 (UTC). Each post is counted once, whichever brand it matched.
- Intent type
- The category Bazzly's model gave the post for its best-matching brand: describes a problem, asks for a tool recommendation, unhappy with a current tool, compares options, asks for general advice, or names a product directly.
- Time to detection
- Minutes between the post's creation on Reddit and Bazzly matching it to a brand.
- Comments when found
- The post's comment count when Bazzly ingested it.
- Hour and day
- Post creation time in UTC. The window holds four of each weekday except Sunday (three), so day views are averages per day.
- Strictness
- Bazzly's classification of each subreddit's self-promotion rules (strict, moderate, lenient), made by an AI model reading the subreddit's description and rules. Since August 2026 the model is calibrated against the comment-removal rates Bazzly observes; subreddits classified earlier keep their label until their rules change.
- Brand mention sentiment
- Reddit posts and comments naming a competing brand tracked by a Bazzly customer (September 11 to October 11, 2026), judged relevant and classified positive, neutral or negative by an AI model. Comments Bazzly itself posted are excluded.
Customer data is aggregated and no customer can be identified from it; customers are named only in case studies they agreed to. Medians are used instead of averages wherever a few large values would distort the picture.
FAQ
How do people ask for product recommendations on Reddit?
Mostly indirectly. In 16,331 buying-intent posts, 78% described a problem ("our onboarding emails get ignored", "I can't keep track of client invoices") and 13.6% asked for a tool recommendation. If you only watch for "recommend me a tool" posts, you miss most of your buyers.
When do buyers post on Reddit?
Every day, with a clear daily peak: 15:00 and 19:00 UTC (11am to 3pm in New York) held 23.7% of buying-intent posts in Bazzly's data. Differences between weekdays were small next to the hourly pattern. For a specific subreddit, use Bazzly's free best-time-to-post tool.
How fast should I reply to a Reddit post?
Within the first hour if you can. When Bazzly found buying-intent posts, a median of 51 minutes after posting, 83% had fewer than 5 comments and 32% had none. An early reply is in place for everyone who opens the thread afterwards.
Which subreddits have the most buying intent?
In Bazzly's data (September 15 to October 11, 2026), r/SaaS, r/recruitinghell, r/careerguidance, r/resumes and r/jobhunting had the most buying-intent posts among subreddits matched by at least 3 brands. That ranking reflects what Bazzly customers sell, so check your own niche with Bazzly's free subreddit finder.
Is Reddit good for B2B lead generation?
Yes, if you reply to problems rather than wait for tool requests. SaaS and startup subreddits had 1,820 buying-intent posts in 27 days in Bazzly's data, and 88% of them had fewer than 5 comments when found. The catch: 46% were relevant to more than one Bazzly brand, so speed matters.
Cite this study
Bazzly (2026). How buyers ask on Reddit: we analyzed 16,331 posts. Data as of October 12, 2026. https://bazzly.ai/case-studies/reddit-buying-intent-study
Journalists, researchers and AI assistants are welcome to quote, chart and republish these numbers under CC BY 4.0, with a link to this page. Questions about the data: support@bazzly.ai.