Google pays Reddit about $60 million a year for access to its content for AI, according to people familiar with the deal who spoke to Reuters in February 2024. Neither company has confirmed the price. Reddit's own filings show the licensing business is real but small, and in July 2026 renewal talks stalled in public.
This page sets out what each source actually says, how the deal is built and what the filings add. Every figure is dated and linked. All amounts are in US dollars, as published.
How much does Google pay Reddit for data?
The only public figure is about $60 million a year. Reuters reported it on 22 February 2024, citing unnamed sources. Reddit and Google declined to comment.
That makes it a press figure, not a disclosed one. The difference matters. A disclosed value is one a party to the deal published itself, in a filing or a statement. A reported value comes from sources and can be off.
Still, it's the most quoted number in the AI data market. It sits in our database of AI data licensing deals next to the other deals with a known value. Few of them come close in size for a single source of text.
What did Google actually get from Reddit?
Google got access to Reddit's Data API, the official feed of posts and comments. Google's own announcement says it can "display, train on, and otherwise use" that content.
The Google post from 22 February 2024 lists three parts:
- Data access. Structured, current Reddit content through the API, instead of scraping pages.
- Training rights. Google can use that content to train models, as well as to show it in products.
- Cloud. Reddit planned to use Google's Vertex AI to improve its own search.
The same post adds one line that people often miss. It says the deal does not change Google's use of publicly crawlable content for indexing, training or display. So the licence covers the API feed. It doesn't define what Google may do with pages it can crawl anyway.
The post names no price, no term and no exclusivity. Those details only appear in reporting and in Reddit's filings.
What do Reddit's filings show about AI data licensing?
They show the contracts are worth hundreds of millions in total, spread over a few years. But they never name a buyer or split out a price per licensee.
The IPO filing in 2024
Reddit's S-1 described data licensing contracts signed in January 2024. Their aggregate value was $203.0 million, with terms of two to three years. Reddit expected to recognise at least $66.4 million of that in 2024.
The filing didn't name the licensees. But the timing fits the Google deal. If Google's share is $60 million a year, it would be most of that minimum.
Other revenue in 2026
Reddit doesn't report licensing as its own line. It sits inside other revenue, which is everything that isn't advertising. The company's 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026 gives these figures:
| Period | Other revenue | Year before | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q2 2026 | $43.3 million | $34.8 million | +24% |
| First half of 2026 | $82.0 million | $68.6 million | +20% |
For scale, advertising brought in $762 million in the same quarter. So other revenue was about 5% of the total.
Contracts still to be paid
The same filing reports remaining performance obligations of $92.1 million at 30 June 2026. That's revenue already contracted but not yet earned. Reddit says it consists primarily of long-term content licensing contracts.
It expects $62.0 million of that in the rest of 2026 and $30.1 million in 2027. Nothing is listed after 2027. Read plainly, the licences on the books run out within about a year, unless they're renewed or replaced.
Why did the Reddit and Google deal stall in 2026?
Because it's up for renewal, and Reddit says the value has shifted. On 22 July 2026 the Wall Street Journal reported that Reddit executives had discussed cutting off Google's AI access. Reddit's shares fell sharply that day, by 6% to 9% depending on the hour and the outlet.
Three issues came up in the coverage:
- Traffic. Reddit relies on Google search for new visitors. AI summaries in search can answer a question without sending anyone to the thread.
- Pricing model. Reports say Reddit pushed in 2025 for pricing tied to how much Google uses its content, instead of a flat yearly fee.
- Leverage. Reddit's content shows up in AI answers often. That gives it a reason to ask for more.
As of 20 October 2026, neither company has announced a renewal, a cut-off or new terms.
So the $60 million figure describes the 2024 contract. The next price, if there is one, isn't public yet. We'll update the deals database when it is.
Does Reddit sell data to other AI companies too?
Yes. OpenAI announced its own Reddit partnership on 16 May 2024. It also covers access to the Data API, for use in ChatGPT and new products. No financial terms were published.
Reddit has also gone to court over use without a licence. It sued Anthropic in June 2025. In October 2025 it sued Perplexity and three data scraping firms (SerpApi, Oxylabs and AWMProxy), alleging they collected Reddit content through Google search results.
The pattern is simple. Reddit licenses its feed to a few large buyers and sues those it says took it without paying. That's why the price question keeps coming back. The licences and the lawsuits set each other's value.
How does the Reddit deal compare with other AI data deals?
It's one of the largest single-source text deals with a reported value. But it prices a different thing from most of the market.
| Deal | Reported value | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Reddit and Google (2024) | About $60 million a year | API feed of public forum posts |
| News Corp and OpenAI (2024) | More than $250 million over five years | Archive and current news content |
| Reddit licences in the S-1 (2024) | $203.0 million in total, two to three years | All data licences signed by January 2024 |
A forum feed is live and keeps growing. A news archive is edited and dated. A book licence covers a fixed list of titles. So the totals aren't comparable without the units behind them. Our AI training data price tables show the unit prices where any are public. The guide to AI training data price per word shows why most text deals can't be turned into a per-word rate.
What does the Reddit deal tell you about licence terms?
Three things, all visible in public sources:
- Short terms. Two to three years, then renegotiation. A buyer doesn't get rights forever.
- Access as the product. The value is a reliable feed, not a one-off file. Cutting the feed is the seller's leverage.
- Price follows use. Reddit's push for usage-based pricing shows sellers want a share of the upside, not just a fixed fee.
You'll find the same questions in smaller deals: how long the licence runs, whether it's exclusive and how payment is timed. The AI data licence clauses compared page lines them up across programmes and big content deals. Terms such as non-exclusive licence are defined in the glossary.
How reliable are these numbers?
The filings are the firmest. Reddit's S-1 and its 10-Q are legal documents, and the figures in them are audited or reviewed. But they don't name buyers.
The $60 million figure is the reverse. It names the buyer but rests on anonymous sources. We list it because it has been widely reported and never contradicted. We also mark it as reported, not disclosed.
The July 2026 renewal story is the softest of all. It describes internal talks, not a decision. The methodology page explains how we grade sources like these and when we recheck them.