Pinterest vs Reddit: Revenue, Profit and Business Model
Pinterest reported $4.2B of revenue in FY2025 and $416.9M of net income. Reddit reported $2.2B of revenue in FY2025 and $529.7M of net income.
Latest financial snapshot
Financial summary
Pinterest grew revenue from $1.69 billion in 2020 to $4.22 billion in 2025. After losses in 2022 and 2023, it posted GAAP net income of $1.86 billion in 2024 (lifted by a one-time deferred tax benefit) and $417 million in 2025. Cash generation is strong: 2025 Adjusted EBITDA was $1.27 billion and free cash flow $1.25 billion. 2026 has been mixed. Q1 revenue rose 18% to $1.01 billion but it posted a $74 million GAAP net loss; Q2 revenue rose 18% to $1.18 billion with a $47 million GAAP loss and $311 million of Adjusted EBITDA. Management lifted its full-year 2026 Adjusted EBITDA margin outlook to about 30%, guided Q3 revenue to $1.19-$1.21 billion and repurchased more than $2 billion of stock in the first half.
Reddit's finances changed quickly after its 2024 IPO. Revenue rose from $804M in 2023 to $1.30B in 2024 and $2.203B in 2025, while results swung from a $484M net loss in 2024 (driven by IPO stock compensation) to $529.7M net income in 2025. In 2026, Q1 revenue was $663.4M with $204.0M net income, and Q2 revenue was $805M with $253M net income, 43% adjusted EBITDA margin, and $261M free cash flow. Reddit ended Q2 with $2.79B in cash and marketable securities, guided Q3 2026 revenue to $860M-$870M, and bought back $235M of stock during Q2 under a $1B repurchase program announced in February 2026.
Revenue and profit by year
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | $4.2B | $416.9M | 9.9% | +15.8% | Source |
| FY2024 | $3.6B | $1.9B | 51.1% | +19.3% | Source |
| FY2023 | $3.1B | -$35.6M | -1.2% | +9.0% | Source |
| FY2022 | $2.8B | -$96M | -3.4% | +8.7% | Source |
| FY2021 | $2.6B | $316.4M | 12.3% | +52.3% | Source |
| FY2020 | $1.7B | -$128.3M | -7.6% | +48.1% | Source |
| FY2019 | $1.1B | -$1.4B | -119.1% | +51.2% | Source |
| FY2018 | $755.9M | -$63M | -8.3% | +59.9% | Source |
| FY2017 | $472.9M | -$130M | -27.5% | — | Source |
Where the revenue comes from
- US & Canada Advertising75
About $880 million of Q2 2026 revenue; the most monetized region.
- Europe Advertising18
$213 million in Q2 2026, up 12% year over year.
- Rest of World Advertising7
$87 million in Q2 2026, up 38%, helped by third-party demand partners.
- advertising
- data licensing
- premium subscriptions
- commerce and product experiments
Business model and strategy
How it makes money
Pinterest makes money by selling ads. The app is free; brands and retailers pay to place Promoted Pins, video, carousel, collections and shopping ads in the home feed, search results and related Pins. Most spend is performance-oriented: merchants upload product catalogs, and Pinterest turns them into shoppable Product Pins billed when users click or convert.
Growth strategy
Under Bill Ready, Pinterest is pursuing three levers: make every Pin more shoppable, automate advertising with AI (Performance+ campaigns, generative creative tools and the Pinterest Assistant shopping agent), and raise revenue per user outside North America through direct sales and third-party demand from Amazon and Google.
Competitive advantage
Pinterest's edge is intent. Users come to plan a kitchen, an outfit or a wedding, and most searches are unbranded, so advertisers reach people before they have chosen a product. More than a decade of users sorting images into boards gives Pinterest a large human-labelled dataset for visual search and recommendations, and its positive, largely apolitical feed is attractive to brand-safety-conscious advertisers.
How it makes money
Reddit makes money mainly from advertising. In Q2 2026, ad revenue was $762M of $805M total (about 95%), sold as promoted posts, video, conversation and search placements, and catalog-based Dynamic Product Ads targeted by community and interest.
Growth strategy
Reddit's growth plan has three parts. First, deepen ad products for performance marketers: Dynamic Product Ads, conversation ads, better measurement and integrations with tools like Smartly. Second, grow outside the U.S. using machine translation of posts into languages such as French, Spanish, German and Portuguese; international revenue rose 84% to $167M in Q2 2026.
Competitive advantage
Reddit's advantage is a two-decade archive of community-ranked, pseudonymous discussion on almost any topic. People append 'reddit' to search queries because threads contain first-hand experience rather than brand copy. That archive gives Reddit high-intent ad inventory, strong placement in Google results, and data that AI companies pay to license.
Questions about Pinterest vs Reddit
Which company has higher revenue — Pinterest, Inc. or Reddit, Inc.?
Pinterest, Inc. reported $4.2B (FY2025), while Reddit, Inc. reported $2.2B (FY2025). By last reported revenue, Pinterest, Inc. is the larger business, with Reddit, Inc. reporting a smaller revenue base.
What is the market cap of Pinterest, Inc. vs Reddit, Inc.?
Pinterest, Inc.'s market capitalisation stands at $10.5B, while Reddit, Inc.'s is $28.8B. Reddit, Inc. carries the higher market valuation, reflecting investors' expectations of its future earnings power relative to Pinterest, Inc..
Which is more financially efficient — Pinterest, Inc. or Reddit, Inc.?
Pinterest, Inc. generates $802k / employee in revenue per employee, while Reddit, Inc. generates $1.00M / employee. Reddit, Inc. shows higher revenue efficiency per headcount, though this reflects business model differences — capital-light software companies routinely outperform labour-intensive manufacturers on this metric.
How do Pinterest, Inc. and Reddit, Inc. make money?
Pinterest, Inc. and Reddit, Inc. generate revenue in fundamentally different ways. Pinterest, Inc.: Pinterest makes money by selling ads. Reddit, Inc.: Reddit makes money mainly from advertising.
Which company is valued higher relative to revenue — Pinterest, Inc. or Reddit, Inc.?
On a price-to-sales (P/S) basis, Pinterest, Inc. trades at 2.5x P/S and Reddit, Inc. at 13.1x P/S. Reddit, Inc. commands a higher revenue multiple, typically indicating that investors expect faster growth or higher future margins compared to Pinterest, Inc.. A higher multiple is not inherently better — it may also signal that the stock is priced for perfection.
Is Pinterest, Inc. bigger than Reddit, Inc.?
By last reported revenue, Pinterest, Inc. ($4.2B (FY2025)) is the larger company compared to Reddit, Inc. ($2.2B (FY2025)). Revenue scale is one dimension of size — market capitalisation, employee count, and geographic reach are also relevant depending on the context.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Pinterest vs Reddit overview