About r/Frugal
In its own words:
Frugality is the mental approach we each take when considering our resource allocations. It includes time, money, convenience, and many other factors.
Community guide
r/Frugal is about frugality as a resource mindset—money, time, and convenience—not a coupon dump or “beer money” hustle board. Rank #113 (about 6.9 million subscribers). Rules we collected ban affiliate links, most commercial solicitation, theft/piracy talk, and a long list of get-rich adjacent topics (crypto schemes, lost-money posts, etc.), which keeps the tone closer to waste-less living than deal spam.
What good posts look like
Descriptive shares about wasting less or allocating resources thoughtfully. Hauls are steered to megathreads or Frugal Finds Friday. Image posts should come with captions that explain the frugal point.
Versus deal and zero-waste communities
ZeroWaste overlaps on reducing waste but centres environmental practice. Deal forums optimise for price alerts. Frugal’s moderation removes gatekeeping and material-aid requests, and blocks piracy/fraud discussion—so it is not a grey-market tips exchange.
Practical pointers
No medical advice; no surveys; stay civil. Expect removal if the post is only a product link without frugal reasoning.
SubMouse Editorial
The community was created on Mar 3, 2008, which makes it 18 years old. Since Oct 26, 2026, it has gained 2,881 subscribers (+0.04%). It sits just behind r/AnimalsBeingBros (#112) and ahead of r/Fauxmoi (#114) in our ranking.
What sets r/Frugal apart
Compared with other large communities, r/Frugal leans heavily on text posts (77% of recent posts; the typical Top 100 subreddit sits at 34%). Posts here spark a lot of conversation: the archive averages 32.7 comments per post, roughly 2.3× the typical big subreddit (14.0). Relative to its huge audience, posting is calm — around 1.6 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/Frugal grew from 6,873,958 to 6,890,593 subscribers (+16.6K, +0.24%). That is about 378 new members per day. The chart uses our weekly snapshots (9 so far), so it gets longer every week.
What r/Frugal talks about
Looking at the titles of 64 recent posts (Oct 29–Nov 4), the words that come up most are “money”, “ideas”, “shoes”, “tips” and “christmas”. Other frequent themes are keep, daily, cheap, small, food and help. Recurring phrases include “daily shoes”, “mean daily” and “black friday”. By format, 77% are text posts, 16% are images and 8% are galleries.
Popular post flairs: 🍎 Food (15), 💰 Finance & Bills (8), 🚿 Personal Care (7), 🏠 Home & Apartment (5), 📦 Secondhand (4), 🏆 Buy It For Life (4).
Activity and best time to post
r/Frugal gets about 11 new posts a day. The public archive holds 226,436 posts and 7,398,095 comments in total, about 32.7 comments per post.
Rules of r/Frugal
The moderators of r/Frugal list 15 rules. In short:
- Be civil and respectful.
- No low effort, off-topic, or overly specific content.
- No affiliate or referral links.
- No self-promotion, solicitation, or surveys.
- No commercial links or product requests.
- No promotion or discussion of fraud, theft, piracy, ULPTs, harassment, or illegal activity.
- Posts should be sufficiently descriptive. Follow up image/link posts with a caption or comment.
- Reserve hauls and finds for the megathread or Frugal Finds Friday.
- No dangerous content or medical advice.
- No requests for material aid or financial assistance.
How to join
Open reddit.com/r/Frugal 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/Frugal have?
r/Frugal has 6,890,593 subscribers (Nov 2, 2026), which makes it the #113 safe-for-work subreddit in the SubMouse ranking. It added 16,635 members between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026.
How old is r/Frugal?
r/Frugal was created on Mar 3, 2008, so it has been around for 18 years.
How active is r/Frugal?
Moderately: r/Frugal gets about 11 new posts a day (average of the last four weeks). Over its lifetime the archive counts 226,436 posts and 7,398,095 comments. In a sample of 64 recent posts we counted 60 different authors.
What is r/Frugal about?
The community describes itself as: “Frugality is the mental approach we each take when considering our resource allocations. It includes time, money, convenience, and many other factors.” Recent post titles often mention money, ideas, shoes, tips and christmas. Most posts are text posts (77%).
Is r/Frugal safe for work?
Yes. Reddit does not mark r/Frugal as an 18+ (NSFW) community. SubMouse lists safe-for-work subreddits only.
How do I post on r/Frugal?
Join the community on Reddit first, then use “Create post”. r/Frugal accepts both text and link posts, with images, videos and galleries enabled. It has 15 posted rules, starting with: “Be civil and respectful.”; “No low effort, off-topic, or overly specific content.”; “No affiliate or referral links.”. Moderators remove posts that break the rules, so read them in the sidebar before posting.
Which communities are like r/Frugal?
Communities with similar topics include r/Awwducational (6M), r/15minutefood (3.8M), r/Shoestring (5.2M), r/vandwellers (3M) and r/books (27.3M).
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/Frugal.