How Reddit Rising Surfaces Threads Before They Reach Hot

The reddit rising sort is a post listing that Reddit describes as one that "prioritizes posts with the most recent views," which in our 11 October 2026 test meant posts from the previous 16 hours that were drawing readers. It sits between New, which ignores engagement, and Hot, which a post reaches only after the votes arrive. If you watch a subreddit for questions about your product, open Rising to catch a thread while a reply still reaches the people reading it.

What does the Rising sort rank?

The Rising sort ranks posts by the views they have drawn most recently, and Reddit publishes no formula beyond that. Reddit's Content Recommendations article gives it one line: "This sort prioritizes posts with the most recent views. Rising can be filtered by time as well." That is the whole of Reddit's current public description.

The time-filter half of that line does not match Reddit's API. The API reference gives /r/{subreddit}/rising no t parameter, which the Reddit hot vs new vs top breakdown covers in detail. The API offers no week or month window on Rising to pick.

The last published formula comes from Reddit's open-source code, which the company stopped updating in 2017. In r2/lib/rising.py in the reddit-archive/reddit repository, each post scored its upvotes divided by a per-post count, and posts with one upvote or fewer were left out. The public repository ships that count as a stub that returns zero, so the real counter lived in Reddit's private code. The example config set rising_period = 12 hours, commented as "how long to consider links eligible for the rising page." Reddit's production ranking today is closed source, so treat both numbers as history.

Where does Rising show on Reddit?

Rising shows in four places: the subreddit sort menu, the site-wide r/popular/rising page, the reddit.com home feed sort, and the API.

Place	URL or path	Notes
Subreddit sort menu	reddit.com/r/{subreddit}/rising/	Listed after Best, Hot, New and Top on 11 October 2026
Site-wide	reddit.com/r/popular/rising/	Mixes posts from many communities
Home feed on reddit.com	Sort menu on the home feed	Reddit's help article lists Rising among the reddit.com home feed sorts
Data API listing	GET [/r/{subreddit}]/rising	OAuth scope read, marked "rss support"
RSS	reddit.com/r/{subreddit}/rising/.rss	Atom XML, 25 entries by default

Search is the one place Rising is missing. Reddit's What filters and sorts are available? article lists five search sorts: Relevance, Hot, Top, New and Comment Count. To find a fresh thread by keyword, use Reddit search sorted by New, then check the subreddit's Rising page for the threads that are taking off.

The brackets in the API path mean the subreddit is optional. GET /rising with no subreddit returns a site-wide listing.

How is Rising different from Hot and New?

Rising differs from New because it weighs attention, and from Hot because it looks at views instead of upvotes. New orders posts by submission time and nothing else. Hot, in Reddit's words, "prioritizes recent posts that have been getting upvotes." Rising looks at recent views, so a post can climb Rising before it has the votes to reach Hot.

Sort	What Reddit says it ranks	Time window
New	"the newest posts, regardless of upvotes and comments"	None, strictly by time
Rising	"posts with the most recent views"	No published age cutoff, no t parameter
Hot	"recent posts that have been getting upvotes"	No t parameter, prioritizes recent posts
Top	"all-time high upvote numbers and comments"	t = hour, day, week, month, year, all

We checked how far Rising and New overlap. At 22:44 UTC on 11 October 2026, we pulled the r/SaaS Rising and New feeds one minute apart, without logging in:

• All 25 Rising posts were less than 16 hours old. The oldest was posted at 07:06 UTC.
• The Rising list was not in time order. A post from 10:49 sat at the top, above posts from the previous hour.
• 16 of the 25 Rising posts were also on the first page of New.
• The other 9 were older than the 25th newest post, so someone skimming New had already scrolled past them.

That last group is the reason to check Rising. Those 9 threads had fallen off the first page of New but were still drawing readers. One minute later, r/popular/rising returned 25 posts from 25 different subreddits, all submitted in the previous 3.5 hours.

The archived code shows how Reddit once mixed communities. Its get_rising_tuples and normalized_rising functions divided each subreddit's scores by that subreddit's top Rising score before merging, so a small community's best post could compete with a large one's. Whether today's code still does this is not public.

Where the 25 r/SaaS Rising posts sat on 11 October 2026

Posted less than 16 hours ago 25

Also on the first page of New 16

Already off the first page of New 9

How do you read Rising with .json or RSS?

You read Rising as data by adding .json or /.rss to the listing URL, but in our test only RSS answered without credentials. The two formats behave differently:

1. RSS. Request https://www.reddit.com/r/{subreddit}/rising/.rss. Our unauthenticated request on 11 October 2026 returned 200 with an Atom feed of 25 entries, each with title, author, link and publish time.
2. Throttling. In the same test, a second RSS request inside the same clock minute returned 429, and the response headers showed x-ratelimit-remaining: 0.0. Reddit publishes no rate limit for RSS feeds, so that is one observation, not a quota.
3. JSON without a token. Our unauthenticated request to https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/rising.json returned an HTML 403. Reddit's Data API Wiki says "Traffic not using OAuth or login credentials will be blocked."
4. JSON with OAuth. Call https://oauth.reddit.com/r/{subreddit}/rising with a bearer token that has the read scope. The listing takes after, before, count, limit, show and sr_detail, and limit defaults to 25 with a maximum of 100.

Authenticated calls count against Reddit's 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id, averaged over ten minutes. The full budget math is in Reddit API rate limits.

Why does Rising help you catch a thread early?

Rising helps because it lists threads that are young and already gathering readers, which is the window where a new comment still gets read. A post on New has no proof anyone cares yet. A post on Hot has proof, but its comment section is full and a new reply lands near the bottom.

Rising has three limits worth knowing. It is a 25-post page per subreddit by default, so a quiet community's Rising page and its New page look almost the same. It is per community, so watching 30 subreddits means 30 pages or 30 feeds. And it ranks posts, not comments, so a question buried in a comment thread never shows up there. Timing still matters on top of the sort, which is the subject of the best time to post on Reddit.

A routine that works by hand:

1. Pick the five or six communities where your buyers ask questions.
2. Open each one's Rising page twice a day and scan titles for problems your product solves.
3. Open any match, read the top comments, and skip it if the question is already answered.
4. Reply with an answer that stands on its own before you mention a product.

How does RedReplier fit next to the Rising sort?

RedReplier replaces the page-by-page check with keyword matching across Reddit, X, Bluesky, Facebook and Hacker News, and it ranks every match by buyer intent instead of by Reddit's sort order. Matches land on your RedReplier dashboard within minutes of a post or comment going live, which covers the comments Rising never lists. Email alerts go out as digests on a cadence you set per keyword, from hourly to daily. RedReplier drafts a reply for each match and never posts it, so you review, edit and post every reply yourself. The Reddit keyword monitoring page shows the setup.

Frequently asked questions

What does rising mean on Reddit?

Rising is a sort that Reddit says "prioritizes posts with the most recent views." A post can show on Rising before it has the votes to reach Hot, which Reddit describes as ranking recent posts that are getting upvotes.

Where do I find the Rising sort?

Open any subreddit and pick Rising from the sort menu, next to Best, Hot, New and Top. For a site-wide view, go to reddit.com/r/popular/rising. Reddit search does not offer Rising as a sort.

Can I filter Rising by time?

No. Reddit's help article says Rising "can be filtered by time as well," but the API reference gives the rising listing no t parameter. Only Top and Controversial take a time window.

How old are the posts on Rising?

Reddit does not publish a cutoff. The archived open-source config made posts eligible for 12 hours, and in our 11 October 2026 test the oldest r/SaaS Rising post was 15 hours and 38 minutes old, past the archived 12-hour window.

Is there an RSS feed for Reddit Rising?

Yes. Add /.rss to the listing, as in reddit.com/r/SaaS/rising/.rss, and Reddit returns an Atom feed of 25 posts. Reddit publishes no rate limit for RSS feeds, and in our test a second request inside the same minute returned a 429.

Why does reddit.com/r/subreddit/rising.json return a 403?

Reddit blocks requests that carry no OAuth token. Its Data API Wiki says traffic without OAuth or login credentials will be blocked. Call the same listing on oauth.reddit.com with a token that has the read scope.

How is Rising different from Hot on Reddit?

Reddit says Hot "prioritizes recent posts that have been getting upvotes," while Rising prioritizes posts with the most recent views. A young post can climb Rising before it has the votes to reach Hot. Neither listing takes a t time parameter in Reddit's API.

Does the Rising sort show comments?

No. Rising ranks posts, not comments, so a question buried in a comment thread never shows up there. RedReplier matches keywords in comments as well as posts, which covers what Rising never lists.

How many requests can I make to the Reddit API per minute?

Authenticated calls count against 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id, averaged over ten minutes. A Rising listing returns 25 posts by default, and the limit parameter goes up to 100. Unauthenticated JSON requests are blocked, so you need a token with the read scope.

Is there a site-wide Rising page on Reddit?

Yes. Open reddit.com/r/popular/rising for a listing that mixes posts from many communities. In our test it returned 25 posts from 25 different subreddits, all submitted in the previous 3.5 hours. The API serves the same view at GET /rising with no subreddit.