Does Deleting Reddit Comments Remove Karma? Complete 2025 Guide

As someone who has managed online communities for years, I’ve seen this question a thousand times: “If I delete my old, embarrassing Reddit comments, will my precious karma score take a nosedive?” Many Redditors hesitate to clean up their profiles, worried about their karma points vanishing. Let’s clear this up right now. The answer is simple: deleting comments does not reduce your existing karma score. Karma is recorded when you receive upvotes and is a permanent part of your account, even after the content is removed. This 2025 guide explains how Reddit’s karma system handles deletions, with proof from Reddit’s own information and community tests.

What is Karma on Reddit?

Before we get into the details, we need to understand what karma is. Think of it as Reddit’s reputation score. You gain karma when users upvote your posts or comments and lose it when they are downvoted. This score shows your general standing within the Reddit community. A high karma score generally means you’ve made helpful or popular contributions.

How Reddit Karma Works With Comment Deletion

Reddit karma is a reputation system that tracks your contributions. When users upvote your comments, you gain karma; when they downvote, you can lose some. The key thing to know is how Reddit handles these points when you delete something.

Karma becomes a permanent part of your total score the moment you earn it. When someone upvotes your comment, those points are immediately added to your account’s total. Reddit’s system keeps these records separate from the actual content that earned them. It’s like a bank account for your reputation; once the deposit is made, it’s there.

This separation means that deleting a comment doesn’t cause a retroactive karma change. The system won’t go back and subtract points that were already recorded. Your karma history stays intact even as the visible content disappears.

What Happens to Your Karma When You Delete Comments

When you delete a Reddit comment, here is what happens:

1. The comment text is removed from public view.
2. Your username is replaced with “deleted”.
3. The comment thread structure stays in place.
4. Most importantly, any karma you earned from that comment remains in your profile total.

This rule applies to highly upvoted comments that earned you thousands of karma points and to controversial comments with mixed votes. Once the karma is credited to your account, deletion doesn’t change it.

As one user on a BlackHatWorld Forum confirmed: “Deleting a post or comment after it’s received upvotes won’t result in karma loss”. This matches Reddit’s internal logic, where contribution scores are stored separately from the content itself.

Understanding Reddit’s Vote Fuzzing Algorithm

This is where a lot of the confusion comes in, and I’ve had to explain it to community members countless times. Reddit uses a “vote fuzzing” algorithm that intentionally hides the exact vote counts to stop manipulation and spam. Here’s how it works:

• Displayed upvote/downvote numbers are not the true real-time totals.
• The algorithm slightly changes the visible counts to confuse potential vote manipulators.
• Your karma scores may seem to fluctuate slightly because of this system.
• Many users mistakenly believe these small changes are from deleting content.

Why vote fuzzing causes confusion:
The actual karma is tracked privately by Reddit and settles over time, but the visible numbers can change even without new votes. This leads users to think that deleting a comment caused a karma loss when it was just vote fuzzing at work.

How Awards Affect Karma After Deletion

Deleting posts or comments that received Reddit Awards follows the same karma principle:

Awarder Karma (gained by giving awards):

• Remains permanently in your account.
• Not affected by content deletion.
• Cannot be reversed through removal.

Awardee Karma (gained by receiving awards):

• Stays in your profile even after deleting awarded content.
• Functions identically to upvote karma.
• Award-related karma is kept just like regular karma points.

Both types of award karma are permanent, following the same logic as traditional upvote karma.

Special Cases Where Karma Might Be Affected

While the general rule is that deleting comments doesn’t remove existing karma, there are a few exceptions:

1. Comments deleted before receiving votes: If you delete a comment before it gets any upvotes, you never earned any karma from it.
2. Moderator removals vs. self-deletion: When moderators remove your content for rule violations, the karma retention works the same as self-deletion, points you’ve already earned stay in your account.
3. Shadowbanned accounts: If your account gets shadowbanned (a Reddit penalty where your activity is invisible to others), you stop gaining new karma, but your previously earned karma remains.
4. Mass deletion patterns: Repeatedly posting and deleting content might trigger Reddit’s spam filters, which could lead to account restrictions that indirectly affect your ability to earn karma.
5. Account deletion: If you delete your entire Reddit account, Reddit’s official support article explains what happens to your username, posts, and comments.

Professional Reddit Content Removal Services

For those who need help cleaning their Reddit history, professional reddit removal services like Reputn offer content removal options for difficult cases where direct user deletion is not possible:

Difficult cases requiring professional services:

• Content requiring legal action (defamation, copyright violations, DMCA issues).
• Material in subreddits with strict moderation or unclear removal policies.
• Content restored due to Reddit database inconsistencies.
• Posts/comments needing moderator escalation.

Professional service capabilities:

• Expertly handling moderator policies and escalation procedures.
• Legal pathway coordination (DMCA takedowns, privacy requests).
• Content suppression strategies when removal is not possible.
• Full case management with monitoring and appeals.

Typical costs:

• Comment removals: $150 per comment.
• Post removals for difficult cases: $600 to $2,000 depending on the case.
• Most removals: 24-48 hours processing time.

These services don’t offer any special karma preservation beyond what already happens with self-deletion. Their value is in handling situations where standard deletion methods fail.

Bulk Deletion Tools: Features, Costs, and Risks

Important Safety Risks for Both Tools:

• Terms of Service violations (automated bulk actions are often restricted).
• API rate limiting issues causing incomplete deletions.
• Account suspension risk due to detection of automated activity.
• Automoderator rule triggers that may flag your account.
• Incomplete deletion due to timeouts or API changes.

Third-Party Archive Services and Content Removal

Here’s a hard truth I’ve had to share more than once: just because you delete something from Reddit doesn’t mean it’s gone from the internet.

How Archives Capture Deleted Content

Primary services: Pushshift(https://pushshift.io), Reveddit(https://www.reveddit.com), Removeddit (defunct, no active link available), Undelete(https://undelete.pullpush.io)

Capture method:

• Continuous real-time scraping of public Reddit content.
• Data is collected before you can delete it from Reddit.
• Content is stored in independent databases.
• The Pushshift API is the main data source for most of these archive services.

Archive Removal Reality

I once had to explain to a very stressed brand manager that a comment they thought was gone forever was, in fact, living on a server in another country, completely outside of our control. It was not a fun conversation.

Key facts about removing archived content:

• No standard removal method exists for these third-party archives.
• Removal requests are voluntary and are very rarely honored.
• Pushshift does not offer individual removal services.
• Complete erasure is generally impossible once the data is copied.
• Legal requests (like GDPR) may only apply if you are an EU resident and the service is compliant.
• Most archived data is permanent once it’s collected.

Bottom line: Third-party archives operate independently. Even professional services cannot guarantee removal from these systems because they function outside of Reddit’s control.

Best Practices for Managing Your Reddit Profile

If you want to clean up your Reddit history without affecting your karma, here are some practical strategies:

1. Use bulk deletion tools carefully: Services like Redact(https://redact.dev/) or PowerDeleteSuite(https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) can mass-delete comments while leaving your karma intact, but know the suspension risks.
2. Edit before deleting: A good trick is to edit sensitive comments to remove problematic text before you delete them. This gives you control over the last version seen.
3. Create a new account for a fresh start: If you need a completely clean slate, consider starting a new account. You can keep the old one to look back on your karma history.
4. Be strategic about timing: Delete comments after conversations have cooled down to avoid disrupting active discussions.
5. Accept archive limitations: Remember that services like Pushshift(https://pushshift.io), Reveddit(https://www.reveddit.com), or Undelete(https://undelete.pullpush.io) may have permanently archived your comments even after you delete them from Reddit.

Frequently Asked Questions About Reddit Karma and Deletions

1. Does deleting highly upvoted comments remove more karma?

No. The karma you earned from highly upvoted comments stays in your account, whether you delete them or not. Karma is recorded when you get the vote, not based on the content’s continued existence.

2. Can deleted comments be recovered to restore karma?

Since karma isn’t lost when you delete comments, there’s no need to recover them for karma purposes. Once comments are deleted, they cannot be restored by regular users.

3. Do moderator removals affect karma differently than self-deletions?

No. Whether you delete your own comment or a moderator removes it, the karma impact is the same, points you’ve already earned stay in your account total.

4. Do you lose karma if you delete a comment?

No, you do not lose karma when deleting a comment. The karma points earned from upvotes remain in your account total even after the comment is deleted.

5. Does deleting comments remove karma on Reddit?

No, deleting comments does not remove or reduce the karma that was already earned from them. Karma is permanently assigned to your account when it’s earned.

6. What happens when you delete a Reddit comment?

When you delete a Reddit comment, the text disappears and shows as “deleted,” your username is no longer visible, but any karma you earned from that comment stays in your account.

7. What makes you lose karma on Reddit?

You lose karma when your comments or posts are downvoted by other users, not when you delete content. Other activities that reduce karma include vote manipulation, spamming, and breaking Reddit’s rules, which can lead to penalties from admins.

Conclusion

Go ahead and delete those old Reddit comments. Your karma score will be safe. The evidence consistently shows that karma earned from comments remains in your account total even after those comments are gone. This includes karma from awards, upvotes, and any other sources.

Knowing this helps you make better decisions about managing your Reddit presence. Whether you’re removing old cringe-worthy comments, cleaning up your profile for a job search, or just tidying your history, you can do it without fear of losing your hard-earned karma. Just remember that third-party archives might have captured your content, and using bulk deletion tools comes with some risk to your account.