About r/Shoestring
In its own words:
A community to discuss frugal travelling, last-minute travel deals, cheap destinations, and cheap means of travel. Whether couchsurfing, camping, or staying in hostels, whether hitchhiking or staying on Airbnb, let's discuss and share the best budget travel ideas and deals!
Community guide
r/Shoestring is budget-travel discussion: cheap destinations, deals, hostels, couchsurfing, hitchhiking, and similar low-cost approaches. Rank #170 (about 5.2 million subscribers). Rules keep talk on shoestring budget travel, ban ads/self-promo, and disallow facetious non-answers (e.g., telling people to swim).
Fit
Frugal travel ideas and deals. Activity samples are low-volume text.
Versus TravelHacks and travel
TravelHacks emphasises tactics/tips; r/travel is general. Shoestring’s brand is the budget constraint itself—including modes like hitchhiking/hostels named in the description.
Practical pointers
Stay civil; stay on budget-travel topic; no spam; no joke non-advice.
SubMouse Editorial
The community was created on Dec 23, 2012, which makes it 13 years old. Since Oct 26, 2026, it has gained 344 subscribers (+0.01%). It sits just behind r/Daytrading (#169) and ahead of r/Outdoors (#171) in our ranking.
What sets r/Shoestring apart
Relative to its huge audience, posting is calm — around 0.4 new posts a day per million members, which puts it in the quietest fifth of the Top 100. A good post has less competition here.
Subscriber growth
Between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026, r/Shoestring grew from 5,201,823 to 5,203,853 subscribers (+2K, +0.04%). That is about 46 new members per day. The chart uses our weekly snapshots (9 so far), so it gets longer every week.
Top posts on r/Shoestring this week
This week’s highest-ranked posts, in Reddit’s own order (collected Nov 2, 2026).
- Teacher holidays: three weeks off, but every flight costs a month’s wages.u/goldy-000 · Oct 29 · text post
- How do you keep food spending down without missing out on local food?u/Creative-Mall-7025 · Oct 27 · text post
- Work trade advice (helpx, woofing, etc)u/adamantsun · Oct 28 · text post
- First solo trip to Hong Kong Looking for recommendations!u/WorthRelationship341 · Oct 31 · text post
- Travel trips ideas for newyear weekend preferably 8 to 9 daysu/TechnicalTumbleweed8 · Oct 28 · text post
- Where to book vacation rentals without all the hidden costs?u/GhafooriRosael-31 · Nov 1 · text post
What r/Shoestring talks about
Looking at the titles of 14 recent posts (Oct 25–Oct 30), the words that come up most are “advice”, “europe”, “help”, “ideas” and “food”.
Popular post flairs: AskShoestring (1), camping (1).
Activity and best time to post
r/Shoestring gets about 2.3 new posts a day. The public archive holds 25,293 posts and 256,445 comments in total, about 10.1 comments per post. Last week the busiest day was Sunday (5 posts) and the quietest was Saturday (0).
Rules of r/Shoestring
The moderators of r/Shoestring list 4 rules. In short:
- No advertising/spam/self promotion
- Be civil
- All discussion must be related to Shoestring budget travel
- No facetious responses (e.g. telling people to swim)
How to join
Open reddit.com/r/Shoestring and press “Join”. Read the community rules in the sidebar before you post: every subreddit is run by its own volunteer moderators.
Frequently asked questions
How many members does r/Shoestring have?
r/Shoestring has 5,203,853 subscribers (Nov 2, 2026), which makes it the #170 safe-for-work subreddit in the SubMouse ranking. It added 2,030 members between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026.
How old is r/Shoestring?
r/Shoestring was created on Dec 23, 2012, so it has been around for 13 years.
How active is r/Shoestring?
Moderately: r/Shoestring gets about 2.3 new posts a day (average of the last four weeks). Over its lifetime the archive counts 25,293 posts and 256,445 comments.
When is r/Shoestring most active?
Based on post counts from Oct 24, 2026 to Oct 30, 2026, the busiest day was Sunday and the quietest Saturday. More posts also means more competition, so a quieter hour can help a post get noticed.
What is r/Shoestring about?
The community describes itself as: “A community to discuss frugal travelling, last-minute travel deals, cheap destinations, and cheap means of travel. Whether couchsurfing, camping, or staying in hostels, whether hitchhiking or staying on Airbnb, let's di…” Recent post titles often mention advice, europe, help, ideas and food.
Is r/Shoestring safe for work?
Yes. Reddit does not mark r/Shoestring as an 18+ (NSFW) community. SubMouse lists safe-for-work subreddits only.
How do I post on r/Shoestring?
Join the community on Reddit first, then use “Create post”. r/Shoestring accepts both text and link posts, with polls enabled. It has 4 posted rules, starting with: “No advertising/spam/self promotion”; “Be civil”; “All discussion must be related to Shoestring budget travel”. Moderators remove posts that break the rules, so read them in the sidebar before posting.
Which communities are like r/Shoestring?
Communities with similar topics include r/EatCheapAndHealthy (11.5M), r/TravelHacks (5.8M), r/travel (14.5M), r/JapanTravel (3.5M) and r/frugalmalefashion (3.2M).
Stats from public data (data updated Nov 2, 2026; activity, rules and archive totals via the Arctic Shift archive, Nov 2, 2026; top posts from Reddit’s public feeds). Point and comment counts are archive snapshots and can be lower than on Reddit today. SubMouse is an independent directory and is not affiliated with Reddit or the moderators of r/Shoestring.