About r/howto
In its own words:
Welcome to r/HowTo! Where you can learn how to do anything and everything yourself! Need advice on how to start a podcast or how to fix your rocket ship? Ask away!
Community guide
r/howto (#293, about 3.5 million) is for learning how to do things yourself. Rules ban spam/porn, piracy requests, help evading parental/school/work firewalls, food recipes, polls/surveys/memes/image macros/plain-text images, and Amazon links. Image/Gallery (~18.8 ppd).
DIY how-tos, not recipes or cracks
Practical how-to asks fit; food recipes and piracy/filter-evasion requests do not.
No meme/macros; no Amazon
Skip polls, memes, and Amazon links; prefer clear instructional posts.
Practical pointers
Image/gallery/text mix; Serious Answers/DIY/[Solved] flairs appear.
SubMouse Editorial
The community was created on Jan 25, 2008, which makes it 18 years old. Since Oct 26, 2026, it has gained 870 subscribers (+0.03%). It sits just behind r/investing (#292) and ahead of r/youtube (#294) in our ranking.
What sets r/howto apart
r/howto is far more image-driven than most big subreddits: 40% of its recent posts are images, against a median of 17% across the Top 100. Its rhythm is strongly tied to time zones: the busiest hour (23:00 UTC) sees about 12.0× as many posts as the quietest (03:00 UTC).
Subscriber growth
Between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026, r/howto climbed from 3,471,466 to 3,478,154 subscribers (+6.7K, +0.19%). That is about 152 new members per day. The chart uses our weekly snapshots (9 so far), so it gets longer every week.
What r/howto talks about
Looking at the titles of 125 recent posts (Oct 29–Nov 5), the words that come up most are “fix”, “remove”, “door”, “clean” and “stain”. Other frequent themes are chair, shower, help, replace, repair and screw. Recurring phrases include “dining room”, “oil stain”, “cups separated” and “separated caveat”. By format, 40% are images, 33% are galleries and 21% are text posts.
Popular post flairs: Serious Answers Only (38), DIY (15), [Solved] (4), Removed: Use Search (2), NOT POSSIBLE (1), NO (1).
Activity and best time to post
r/howto gets about 19 new posts a day. The public archive holds 183,891 posts and 1,490,887 comments in total, about 8.1 comments per post. Last week the busiest day was Saturday (22 posts) and the quietest was Monday (13). Posting peaks around 23:00 UTC and is lowest around 03:00 UTC.
Rules of r/howto
The moderators of r/howto list 6 rules. In short:
- No Spam/Porn
- No requests for pirated software, videos etc
- No requests for help evading parental/school/workplace firewalls and filters
- No food recipes
- No polls, surveys, memes, image macros, plain-text image posts
- No amazon links
How to join
Open reddit.com/r/howto 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/howto have?
r/howto has 3,478,154 subscribers (Nov 2, 2026), which makes it the #293 safe-for-work subreddit in the SubMouse ranking. It added 6,688 members between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026.
How old is r/howto?
r/howto was created on Jan 25, 2008, so it has been around for 18 years. The oldest post in the public archive is from Jan 29, 2008.
How active is r/howto?
Moderately: r/howto gets about 19 new posts a day (average of the last four weeks). Over its lifetime the archive counts 183,891 posts and 1,490,887 comments. In a sample of 125 recent posts we counted 123 different authors.
When is r/howto most active?
Based on post counts from Oct 29, 2026 to Nov 4, 2026, the busiest day was Saturday and the quietest Monday, and most posts arrive around 23:00 UTC, with the fewest around 03:00 UTC. More posts also means more competition, so a quieter hour can help a post get noticed.
What is r/howto about?
The community describes itself as: “Welcome to r/HowTo! Where you can learn how to do anything and everything yourself! Need advice on how to start a podcast or how to fix your rocket ship? Ask away!” Recent post titles often mention fix, remove, door, clean and stain. Most posts are images (40%).
Is r/howto safe for work?
Yes. Reddit does not mark r/howto as an 18+ (NSFW) community. SubMouse lists safe-for-work subreddits only.
How do I post on r/howto?
Join the community on Reddit first, then use “Create post”. r/howto accepts both text and link posts, with images, videos and galleries enabled. It has 6 posted rules, starting with: “No Spam/Porn”; “No requests for pirated software, videos etc”; “No requests for help evading parental/school/workplace firewalls and filters”. Moderators remove posts that break the rules, so read them in the sidebar before posting.
Which communities are like r/howto?
Communities with similar topics include r/podcasts (3.9M), r/Advice (3.2M), r/NoStupidQuestions (7.6M), r/buildapc (8.5M) and r/Awwducational (6M).
Stats from public data (data updated Nov 2, 2026; activity, rules and archive totals via the Arctic Shift archive, Nov 6, 2026). 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/howto.