A shadowban hides your posts and comments from everyone but you. No notice, no message, no way to know from inside the account. The only real test is opening your profile on reddit.com in a private browser window, logged out. This tool reads your public history, then walks you through that test and tells you what it means.
How to use it
Type a username, with or without "u/", and this tool does two things.
It reads your public history through a licensed data provider's archive, the same source the account checker uses. You get karma, post and comment counts, or a note that nothing was found.
It explains the test that settles a shadowban question, gives you a button to open the profile at reddit.com in a new tab, and tells you to open it in a private or incognito window. Then it asks what you saw:
- The profile loaded. Karma, posts, comments, all visible.
- Page not found. Reddit could not find that profile.
- This account has been suspended. Reddit's own suspension notice.
Each result maps to a conclusion:
- Profile visible means not shadowbanned. If posts get no replies or upvotes, that's usually a subreddit problem, not a sitewide one. See below.
- Suspended means suspended, not a shadowban, with a real appeal path.
- Page not found plus public history in the archive looks like a shadowban. Reddit shows nothing to strangers while the owner sees everything fine.
- Page not found plus no archive history means no baseline to check against. Could be a misspelled name, an account that never posted, or a new one.
What a shadowban is, and what it is not
A shadowban is Reddit hiding an account's posts and comments from everyone but that account holder, without notification. Log in and everything looks normal: posts in your history, comments under threads, karma updates like always. Log out or view the account as someone else, and nothing exists.
Reddit's help center describes this under a different name: an account "flagged for spam or inauthentic activity," where posts, comments, and the profile stop showing up the way they should. Reddit's page on flagged accounts has the details. Reddit stopped using the word "shadowban" years ago in favor of "suspensions" and "spam flags," but the mechanic, content invisible except to its author, still runs in Reddit's anti-spam systems. TechCrunch covered the switch in 2015.
A suspension is different. It's public. Reddit's account status overview describes suspensions as visible: the account gets a message explaining what happened, the profile shows a suspended notice to anyone who visits, and there's a formal appeal path. A shadowban gives none of that. Nobody is told, nothing is explained, no appeal exists because officially nothing happened.
A subreddit-level removal is narrower still. AutoModerator, a rule-based bot every subreddit can configure, checks posts and comments against that community's rules and removes or holds them automatically. Reddit's AutoModerator docs describe it as a per-community tool moderators set up themselves. A post AutoMod removes disappears from one subreddit. The account works everywhere else, the profile loads fine for strangers, and it has nothing to do with a sitewide shadowban. A moderator can also mute an account from their subreddit or ban it from posting there. Both are subreddit-only actions a mod controls directly, not something Reddit's spam systems decided. If a post vanishes but the profile loads fine for a stranger, the cause is almost always one of these, not a shadowban. Check the subreddit's rules before assuming Reddit itself did something to the account.
Why no tool can check this from a server and be honest
Every tool that claims to check for a shadowban without you doing anything has a flaw: Reddit does not let servers read profile pages the way a logged-out browser does. Send an automated request to a Reddit profile from a data center and Reddit returns HTTP 403. Same with the server this tool runs on, every time. A tool that still returns an instant verdict is either routing requests through a residential proxy to look like an ordinary home connection (the exact kind of access Reddit's systems catch), or guessing from existing data and calling it a check.
The data this tool has, a licensed archive of public Reddit content, has the same blind spot. The archive cannot distinguish a hidden shadowbanned profile from one that's simply empty: a misspelled username, an account that never posted, a brand new account. Both look identical from outside. Zero content either way. Calling that a shadowban would be right by chance as often as it's wrong, with no way to know which.
The only observer that sees what Reddit shows a stranger is a logged-out browser pointed at the real profile. That's not a workaround this tool invented. It's the only method that works because Reddit cannot tell it apart from an ordinary visitor.
The private window test, step by step
Open a private or incognito window. In Chrome, Ctrl+Shift+N. On a Mac, Cmd+Shift+N. In Firefox and Safari, the File menu or app menu has private window. The point is a session with no Reddit login and no cached session cookie.
Go to reddit.com/user/ plus the exact username, no "u/" in the address bar. This tool's button does that and opens it in a new tab.
Three things can happen.
The profile loads normally. You see karma, posts, an empty history, whatever a stranger would see. Not shadowbanned.
The page says it can't find the profile, sometimes with a graphic, sometimes plain text. That's the shadowban signature: Reddit shows nothing to a stranger, even though the account itself posts with no idea anything is wrong.
The page shows Reddit's own suspended notice. That's a different, public status. See below.
If the page is slow to load, wait before concluding anything. Reddit's profile pages lag sometimes, and a slow "not found" that resolves into a normal profile a few seconds later is not the same as a permanent one. If Reddit asks you to log in before showing anything, that's a login wall, not a verdict. Close the tab, open a fresh private window, and try again. Or try the mobile site at reddit.com in a phone browser instead of the app, since the app usually requires login.
Reading the verdict
Profile shown. The account is visible to strangers and not shadowbanned. If specific posts get no upvotes or replies, that's usually a content problem (wrong subreddit, bad timing) or a subreddit-level one: AutoMod filtered the post, or a moderator removed it under community rules. Check that subreddit's rules before assuming the account is the problem.
Suspended. Not a shadowban. It's Reddit's most visible penalty: a notice on the profile, a message in the inbox explaining what triggered it, a real appeal path. Read the message Reddit sent before writing an appeal. It usually names the rule.
Not found, with public history in this tool's archive. The account has posted or commented before, the data provider can see it, and now a stranger gets nothing. Real history plus zero visibility is what a shadowban looks like. No in-app fix. The path is the appeal process below, since Reddit's spam and inauthentic-activity systems, not a moderator, made this call.
Not found, with no history either. Nothing to compare. Most often this means a misspelled username, an account that never posted publicly, or one new enough that the data provider hasn't indexed anything yet. A private profile produces this exact result too, and that's a choice the owner made, not a penalty.
How founders get shadowbanned
The accounts that trip Reddit's spam systems share a pattern, not one mistake. A brand-new account posting fast, several comments or posts within the first hour or day, reads like automation even when a person types every word. Comments that repeat the same sentence or link across many threads read as spam because they match Reddit's published definition: repeated or unsolicited actions that negatively affect others, including mass-posting repetitive content. Vote manipulation, asking friends to upvote a post, is a separate rule Reddit enforces against the account, not just the post. Posting the same pitch to a dozen subreddits in a short window looks, to an automated system, exactly like what it exists to catch.
None of that happened to me as a shadowban. I've been banned from two subreddits: a 28-day ban from r/SaaS and a permanent ban from r/startups on 4 September 2026, both for replies I thought were helpful that still broke a rule I hadn't read closely enough. Both were subreddit-level bans. My account worked everywhere else. Neither was Reddit's sitewide spam system.
That gap, a bad reply in one community versus a sitewide flag on the account, is why Radar has guardrails. It allows one product mention per subreddit, then waits 7 days before another. Founder disclosure ("Full disclosure, I built X") is required wherever the community's rules ask for it. In communities where the rules mean the product cannot be named at all, Radar won't draft a reply that names it. It stays help-only. Nothing posts automatically. Every reply gets read, edited, and pasted by hand under your own username. Roughly half of what Radar drafts never mentions the product, because the honest answer to the thread doesn't need one. More on why in my post about Radar.
How to appeal
If you saw a suspended notice or the account looks shadowbanned, Reddit's own account status pages are the starting point, not a third party. The account status overview explains the different account states and links to the one that matches. If the cause is spam or inauthentic activity rather than a rule violation you can name, Reddit's page on flagged accounts covers what that means and how to contest it. Reddit's page on accounts banned for spam or ban evasion covers the harder version.
An appeal works better short than long. State the account, what happened, and why you believe it's wrong, in a few sentences. Not a defense of your entire history. If a specific post or comment triggered it, name it and add context an automated system couldn't see: that you're the person behind a product you disclosed, that the account isn't shared or automated, whatever is true. Reddit reviews appeals against its own logs, not this tool's verdict or any other checker. Don't cite this page as evidence.
Don't expect a fast answer or a guaranteed reversal. Reddit doesn't publish a turnaround time, and many appeals don't change the outcome, especially for accounts with a real pattern of mass-posting or vote manipulation. The strongest appeal is true, specific, short, sent once through Reddit's channel rather than repeated across new accounts, which reads as ban evasion and makes things worse.
FAQ
Does this tool check Reddit for me?
No. It reads the account's public history through a data provider, then hands you a button that opens the real profile on reddit.com so you can see what a stranger sees. No server, including the one this tool runs on, gets a clean read of a live Reddit profile; Reddit returns an HTTP 403 to that kind of automated request. The verdict comes from what you report back, not from an automated read of Reddit's pages.
What's the difference between a shadowban and a suspension?
A shadowban hides an account without telling anyone, including the account holder. A suspension is public: Reddit sends a message explaining what happened, shows a suspended notice on the profile, and gives a real path to appeal. If the profile says "suspended," that's not a shadowban, even though people use the word loosely for both.
Can a subreddit ban look like a shadowban?
No, and this is a common mix-up. A subreddit ban or AutoMod removal only affects one community. The account still works everywhere else, and the profile still loads normally for a stranger. A shadowban hides the whole account across all of Reddit. If a profile loads fine but one subreddit keeps removing posts, check that subreddit's own rules, not the account's status.
Why do new accounts get shadowbanned more often?
A brand-new account posting several times in its first hour or day looks like automation to Reddit's spam systems, even when a real person is behind it. Building ordinary comment history before ever mentioning a product is the simplest way to avoid tripping that pattern.
I can see my own posts. Doesn't that mean I'm fine?
No, and this is the exact trap a shadowban sets. A shadowbanned account sees its own posts and comments normally when logged in; that's what makes it invisible from the inside. The only way to know what a stranger sees is to check from outside the account, logged out, in a private window.
Will appealing make things worse?
A single honest appeal through Reddit's own channel doesn't make things worse. Filing several appeals for the same account, or creating a new account to get around a suspension, reads as ban evasion and typically does. Send one clear appeal and wait for a reply before trying anything else.
To see where your product fits before you post anything, Scan my site free runs Radar's real scan: it reads your site, finds the communities that fit, and shows three days of live threads with a reply ready to copy. Before posting a draft anywhere, the reply checker runs the same checks Radar's own validator runs on every draft it writes.