What’s the ideal moderator‑to‑member ratio at different sizes?

Kaustubh Katdare · 2025-04-28T02:49:06+00:00

This question came up during a discussion with the owners of a large community that is planning to switch from Discord to Jatra. I thought it would be a great topic to open up for everyone here.What do you think is the best moderator-to-member ratio based on the size of the community?The ideal ratios are as follows:1 moderator for every 1,000 registered members, and1 moderator for every 50 active members.It’s important to note the difference between total registered members and daily/weekly active members. A community might have 10,000 members on paper, but only 1,000 of them might be truly active - so your staffing needs should match the activity, not just the headcount.In the community world, the registered members is just a vanity metric. We explain this in an article that shows how Pareto’s Principle Applies to Community. Typically, 80% of your engagement will come from 20% of the members. I’d love to hear your experiences on this topic.

What’s the ideal moderator‑to‑member ratio at different sizes?

Kaustubh Katdare

Founder

Updated: Apr 28, 2025

Views: 18
This question came up during a discussion with the owners of a large community that is planning to switch from Discord to Jatra. I thought it would be a great topic to open up for everyone here.
What do you think is the best moderator-to-member ratio based on the size of the community?
The ideal ratios are as follows:
- 1 moderator for every 1,000 registered members, and
- 1 moderator for every 50 active members.
It’s important to note the difference between total registered members and daily/weekly active members.
A community might have 10,000 members on paper, but only 1,000 of them might be truly active - so your staffing needs should match the activity, not just the headcount.
In the community world, the registered members is just a vanity metric. We explain this in an article that shows how Pareto’s Principle Applies to Community. Typically, 80% of your engagement will come from 20% of the members.
I’d love to hear your experiences on this topic.
2

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Erin May

Member • 10h

I think the ratio of 1:1000 (moderator to member) ratio is perfect, which maps perfectly with the count of active members. A community with 1000 registered users can expect to have about 50 active members.

On our Discord powered community, we have about 2 moderators for 1800 registered members. But our active member count is way less (about 30).

Do you think the ratio holds as the community grows large, say 50000 members? Would you change the ratio?

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Kaustubh Katdare

Founder • 10h

Frankly speaking, the ratio holds good for communities with up to 20,000 members. It also depends on the type of community. Gamers community typically has a large number of active users; and they'd need more moderators every 50-100 active users.

I think with AI-enabled moderation, the ratio will change a lot. In near future, we'll have just one moderator actively managing a community of 100,000+ members and 5000 active users.

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