Reddit reported its third-quarter 2026 results on Thursday, with revenue rising 53% from a year earlier to $895 million. The company also announced plans to move toward a mainly logged-in experience as traffic from search engines falls.
Revenue beat Wall Street estimates of about $875 million. Net income rose 74% to $283 million, and diluted earnings per share came in at $1.40, up 75%.
Advertising revenue grew 54% to $847 million. Other revenue, which includes the company’s AI data licensing business, rose 35% to $48 million.
Adjusted EBITDA reached $402 million, up 70% from last year. Operating cash flow nearly doubled to $364 million.
The company ended the quarter with $3.03 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. It bought back about 670,000 shares for $100 million, at an average price of $149.81 per share.
Reddit said it has passed $3 billion in revenue over the last 12 months. The company was also recently added to the S&P 500 index.
Search Traffic Drop Hits U.S. Users
Global daily active users rose 12% from a year ago to 130.3 million. However, that figure was flat compared with the second quarter.
In the U.S., daily active users fell to 50.7 million from 53.2 million in the second quarter. That is a 2% drop from a year earlier.
Reddit said search referrals fell by more than 1 million per week on average in October. AI-powered search tools now answer many questions without sending people to websites.
The company warned that if the trend continues, daily active users could fall by a low double-digit percentage next quarter.
Even with fewer U.S. users, Reddit is earning more from each one. U.S. average revenue per user rose 53% to $13.82, while the global figure rose 36% to $6.87.
Logged-in users, which Reddit calls its most engaged and monetizable group, grew from the prior quarter in both the U.S. and international markets.
Reddit Moves Toward a Logged-In Experience
The shift to a logged-in experience is meant to protect Reddit’s data from AI scraping. It could also help the company sign licensing deals with AI model providers.
Logged-in users give more signals about their interests. This helps Reddit target ads and personalize feeds, including its new “For You” feed announced this week.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the right decision for our platform and the right decision for our business,” CEO Steve Huffman wrote in a post on Reddit.
Huffman said users will not have to give up anonymity. Reddit is also rebuilding its “incognito mode” for anonymous browsing.
For the fourth quarter, Reddit expects revenue of $1 billion to $1.03 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $480 million to $510 million.
The logged-in change will begin with tests in select markets outside the U.S. in the fourth quarter. Reddit has not given a timeline for a worldwide rollout.
