Where can I promote my Chrome extension on Reddit?

Realistically: r/SideProject and r/microsaas, both of which welcome side projects and small-revenue stories, plus r/coolgithubprojects if it is open source. r/chrome_extensions is the only dedicated community and it is strict — it wants a genuine explanation of what you built and why, not a listing. Reddit has no large, promotion-friendly extension audience, and any guide claiming otherwise is padding.

Why does my Chrome extension post keep getting removed?

Almost always the store link. Every community here reads a Web Store URL as the promotional payload no matter how the post is written, and in both r/webdev and r/chrome_extensions it is the clearest removal trigger there is. Remove the link, put the substance in the body, and let people ask.

Is Reddit good for getting Chrome extension users?

Not directly, and it is worth being honest about that. The Chrome Web Store is where extension discovery actually happens. What Reddit gives you is a technically literate audience for the problems behind the extension — permissions, Manifest V3, review rejections — and the credibility that comes from writing about them well. Installs follow as a side effect rather than as the goal.

Can I post my extension in r/webdev?

Only as a technical share, and build posts belong in the weekly Showoff Saturday thread rather than the main feed. What does work in the main feed is a genuine technical question or an open-source release that is useful on its own merits, with the extension mentioned as the context in which you hit the problem.

Should I ask people on Reddit to review my extension?

No. Soliciting Chrome Web Store reviews breaks Google's own program policies, on top of being the exact post pattern extension communities are defending against. Ask for a critique of one specific decision instead — a permission you are unsure about, or an onboarding step people abandon.

How to promote a Chrome extension on Reddit without getting banned

Start with the part most guides will not tell you: Reddit is a thin channel for Chrome extensions. There are two communities dedicated to them, both are strict about promotion, and neither is large. If you are looking for a room full of people waiting to install your extension, it does not exist here.

What Reddit is good for is the build. Extension developers hit a specific, well-known set of walls — Manifest V3 migrations, permission warnings that scare users off at the install prompt, review rejections with no useful explanation, the Web Store's indifference to anything without reviews. Posts about those problems do extremely well, and they do it in general developer and side-project communities rather than the extension subs.

So the strategy is different from every other niche in this matrix. You are not promoting the extension. You are documenting the thing you learned building it, in rooms where that is welcome, and letting the extension be the reason you know it.

Where Chrome extensions can actually be promoted

Each of these is a real community with its own rule. The rule is the part that matters — a good post in the wrong thread is still a removed post.

r/SideProjectPromo tolerated
The most reliable audience for an extension, because it is judged as a side project rather than as software seeking distribution.
The rule here: Lead with raw, in-progress screenshots and a genuine ask for feedback. A polished store listing posted as a "project" is what gets flagged here.
r/coolgithubprojectsPromo tolerated
If your extension is open source, this is the one community where sharing your own repo directly is the expected post rather than a violation.
The rule here: Share the repo itself, ideally with real traction to point at. Closed-source extensions have nothing to post here.
r/microsaasPromo tolerated
The right room once the extension charges money — small-revenue posts with real tactics are the native content.
The rule here: Bring specific tactics and stack details alongside any revenue number. A bare launch announcement with a store link reads as an ad and is removed.
r/chrome_extensionsStrict
The only dedicated community for the format. Small and strict, but the audience understands exactly what you built.
The rule here: A genuine "I built this extension, here is what it does and why" post. The why is not optional — a description with a link and no reasoning is the removal case.
r/webdevStrict
Where the technical problems behind an extension get an audience, if you write about the problem rather than the product.
The rule here: Technical questions and open-source shares outside Showoff Saturday; build posts belong in the weekly thread, not the main feed.

Rules change and moderators enforce their own reading of them. Check the sidebar before you post, every time, and see the full directory of 104 communities for the rest.

What this audience actually upvotes

The permission problem. Every extension developer has watched installs die at the permission prompt, and almost nobody writes about it honestly. A post explaining which permissions you dropped, what you lost by dropping them, and what it did to your install rate is genuinely rare and gets saved.

Manifest V3 migration detail. The migration broke real things for real people and the official documentation skips the awkward parts. Writing down what actually broke, with the workaround, is the most reliably upvoted extension content on Reddit.

Review-process reality. Rejection reasons are famously vague. A concrete account of a rejection, the guess you made, and what finally passed helps every reader who ships an extension.

The two ratios that decide whether you get removed

Enforcement on Reddit is account-level, not post-level. A moderator opens your profile after one post trips their attention and skims what fraction of the account is about its product. That is why a reasonable post attached to a promotional profile still goes.

9:1 — comments to posts. Reddit's self-promotion guidance implies about nine contributions that have nothing to do with your product for every one that does. It comes from Reddit's 2014 moderator clarification and its current small-business guide restates it as “be a user first”.

3:1 — value posts to promotional posts. Among your submissions, at most one in four should promote anything. Clearing 9:1 while every post you make is a plug still reads as a marketing account.

The mention-deletion test. Delete your product name from the post and reread it. If nothing of value is left, it was an advertisement with context attached and it will be removed. If it still teaches something, the mention is a footnote on a real contribution.

New accounts have a further problem: most large subreddits silently filter posts from accounts under a karma or age threshold, so the post looks live to you and is invisible to everyone else. Check yours with the karma and warmup calculator before you post at all.

What gets Chrome extensions removed

Treating Reddit as the discovery channel
The Chrome Web Store is where extension discovery happens, and Reddit is a poor substitute for it. Posting as though a subreddit is a distribution list produces low-effort announcements that get removed and teaches you nothing about why nobody installed it.
Instead: Use Reddit for the build story and the technical problems, where extension developers genuinely congregate. Treat any installs it produces as a side effect of a good post rather than the objective.
Posting the Web Store link as the submission
A store link is a purchase page, and every community here reads it as the promotional payload regardless of the text wrapped around it. In both extension subs and r/webdev it is the clearest removal trigger available.
Instead: Put the substance in the post body and leave the store out of it entirely. Someone who wants the extension will ask, and answering a direct question is not the same object as a link in the submission.
Asking for reviews or install numbers
Soliciting Web Store reviews violates Google's own program policies as well as Reddit norms, and "please install and rate" posts are the archetype of what extension communities are defending against.
Instead: Ask for a specific critique of one decision — a permission you are unsure about, an onboarding step people abandon. That is a question a developer can actually answer.

A post that would survive

Written for r/chrome_extensions. Adapt the specifics; keep the shape.

Dropping one permission cut my install drop-off from 41% to 12%

I had been blaming my store listing for months. It was the permission prompt. The extension needed to read the page to work, so I had requested host permissions for all sites at install. That produces the scariest version of Chrome's warning: "Read and change all your data on all websites." 41% of people who clicked Install never completed it. What I changed: 1. Switched to activeTab plus optional host permissions. The extension now asks for site access the first time you actually click it on a page, not before you have seen it do anything. 2. Moved the one background feature that genuinely needed broad access behind a toggle that is off by default. About 8% of users turn it on, and they are the ones who understand why it exists. 3. Rewrote the first-run screen to say, in one sentence, what the extension reads and what it never sends anywhere. Install drop-off went from 41% to 12% over the next three weeks. Weekly active users went up 60% even though total installs only rose about 20%, because the people who install now actually reach the point where it works. The thing I got wrong for a year: I treated permissions as a technical decision made once at build time. They are the second thing a user reads about you, right after the name. If anyone has managed to keep broad host permissions without the drop-off, I would genuinely like to know how you frame it — I could not make it work.

Why it survives: It contains no product name, no store link and no ask to install, yet any extension developer would read it to the end. The numbers are specific and one of them is unflattering, the mechanism is explained well enough to copy, and it closes with a real question rather than a call to action. That is what earns the right to answer "what is it called?" in the comments.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I promote my Chrome extension on Reddit?: Realistically: r/SideProject and r/microsaas, both of which welcome side projects and small-revenue stories, plus r/coolgithubprojects if it is open source. r/chrome_extensions is the only dedicated community and it is strict — it wants a genuine explanation of what you built and why, not a listing. Reddit has no large, promotion-friendly extension audience, and any guide claiming otherwise is padding.
Why does my Chrome extension post keep getting removed?: Almost always the store link. Every community here reads a Web Store URL as the promotional payload no matter how the post is written, and in both r/webdev and r/chrome_extensions it is the clearest removal trigger there is. Remove the link, put the substance in the body, and let people ask.
Is Reddit good for getting Chrome extension users?: Not directly, and it is worth being honest about that. The Chrome Web Store is where extension discovery actually happens. What Reddit gives you is a technically literate audience for the problems behind the extension — permissions, Manifest V3, review rejections — and the credibility that comes from writing about them well. Installs follow as a side effect rather than as the goal.
Can I post my extension in r/webdev?: Only as a technical share, and build posts belong in the weekly Showoff Saturday thread rather than the main feed. What does work in the main feed is a genuine technical question or an open-source release that is useful on its own merits, with the extension mentioned as the context in which you hit the problem.
Should I ask people on Reddit to review my extension?: No. Soliciting Chrome Web Store reviews breaks Google's own program policies, on top of being the exact post pattern extension communities are defending against. Ask for a critique of one specific decision instead — a permission you are unsure about, or an onboarding step people abandon.

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Last reviewed: July 2026