How the Bluesky Algorithm Works in 2026: Feeds, Discover and Reach

The Bluesky algorithm is not one ranking system. Your Following feed is chronological, Discover is a personalised feed Bluesky runs, and more than 100,000 custom feeds built by users each apply their own rules. Reach comes from being chosen by several of those feeds at once: relevant keywords, early replies from people close to you, and a clean moderation record.

That makes Bluesky the most transparent major network to grow on. You can read the code of many feeds, ask their builders how they work, and even build one yourself. This guide explains how the pieces fit together in late 2026, what each surface rewards, and a repeatable method for finding your own audience there, with worked examples and the parts you can hand to a scheduler.

Key findings

• Feeds are a marketplace, not a single ranker. Bluesky says users can choose from a marketplace of over 100k algorithms built by other users, alongside its own Discover feed.
• The network is still growing. Bluesky went from 25 million to 41 million users during 2025, and those users created 1.41 billion posts that year, 61% of every post ever made on the network.
• Replies are ranked by social proximity. Since October 2025, Bluesky prioritises replies from people closer to your neighbourhood and down-ranks toxic, spammy or off-topic replies in threads, search and notifications.
• Reply filtering changed behaviour. Bluesky reports that by October 2025 its reply filtering system had cut user reports of anti-social behaviour by 79%.
• Dislikes are a private signal. A dislike option now feeds personalisation in Discover and other feeds, and Bluesky says the signal is private and not global.
• Starter packs are a growth channel you control. Each pack can recommend up to 150 people and up to 3 custom feeds, and creators are notified when people join through it.
• Links are not demoted. Bluesky states plainly that it does not demote links, which is the biggest practical difference from X and Threads for publishers and brands.

What's changed in 2026

Most of the mechanics described in older guides still hold, but four shifts in the past twelve months matter for anyone planning a posting schedule.

Discover now has its own team and a roadmap

In its January post What's Next at Bluesky, the company wrote that the Discover feed "has come a long way, but there's more to do" and that it is building a dedicated team to improve it. The same post says Bluesky is exploring topic tags to help people find posts by interest, that custom feeds already power its trending topics system, and that feeds will get "first-class treatment" in the app. It also admits that "who to follow" suggestions need work. For creators, that means the Discover feed is likely to become more interest-driven over 2026 and 2027, and topical language in your posts will matter more, not less.

Reply quality became a ranking input

The October 2025 update moved reply ranking from simple engagement towards social distance and quality. Replies from people close to the reader rank higher, and replies the model flags as toxic or in bad faith sink. Bluesky's 2025 transparency report says the team reviewed 9.97 million user reports, applied 16.49 million labels and removed 2.45 million pieces of violating content during the year. If you grow by replying to bigger accounts, the quality of those replies now decides whether anyone sees them.

Clearer enforcement and community guidelines

Bluesky's updated community guidelines took effect on 15 October 2025 after more than 14,000 people commented on the draft, and the company said it would escalate enforcement towards account restrictions more quickly. A month later, its moderation process update expanded post-reporting options from 6 to 39 and introduced four severity levels, with account actions that escalate from temporary suspensions to permanent bans as violations accumulate. Brands rarely trip these rules, but automated reply bots and aggressive follow-for-follow tactics now carry more risk.

New leadership, new discovery features

Jay Graber stepped down as CEO in March 2026, when the network had over 40 million users, and in July Bluesky named Toni Schneider permanent CEO, noting that more than 2 million people had joined in the previous four months and that the team had shipped group chats and a new AI product. Earlier, Find Friends launched in December 2025 as an opt-in contact import in 13 countries, matching two people only when both have each other's numbers and both opt in. For growth, the practical effect is that real-world relationships now turn into follows more easily, which strengthens the social-graph signals Discover leans on.

How the Bluesky Algorithm Works Under the Hood

To understand reach on Bluesky you need about five minutes of architecture. Bluesky runs on the AT Protocol, which its engineers describe in their peer-reviewed paper on the protocol as a design meant "to give users agency over the content they see". Instead of one company-owned ranker sitting between you and your audience, ranking is split across independent services.

Every post you publish is written to your personal data repository and broadcast on the network's firehose. According to the AT Protocol feeds guide, the firehose "will send you every record that is published on the network", so any developer can watch it. A feed generator listens to that stream, keeps whatever posts it cares about, and when a reader opens the feed it returns a skeleton: a list of post addresses. The Bluesky app view then hydrates those addresses into full posts with names, images and like counts.

The official feed generator starter kit shows how simple the logic can be. A topical feed might pass post text through a keyword matcher or a language model, while a "What's Hot" style feed tallies likes and returns recent posts that pass a threshold. The atproto custom feed tutorial builds a feed that sorts the firehose by searching for posts that contain certain terms. That is the single most useful thing to know as a creator: a large share of Bluesky distribution is literally text matching.

Labelers deserve a note. Bluesky's stackable moderation lets anyone run a moderation service with the open-source Ozone tool, and readers layer those services on top of Bluesky's defaults. The initial functions of labelers are to hide, block or blur content. A label one community subscribes to can make your post invisible to that community while everyone else sees it normally. That is not a penalty in the X sense; it is readers choosing their own filters.

Breakdown 1: Every Surface Where Bluesky Picks Posts

Reach on Bluesky is the sum of several independent surfaces. Each one has different rules, so it helps to plan for them separately.

The Following feed

Following is chronological: posts from accounts you follow, newest first, plus reposts. It is the one surface where timing matters most, because a post published at 3am in your audience's time zone sits under hours of newer posts by breakfast. Readers can tune it. Bluesky changed the default in 2024 so the Following feed shows replies only in conversations involving at least two people you follow, according to its anti-toxicity update. That means your replies to strangers rarely appear in your own followers' Following feed, while replies inside conversations your followers already care about do.

Discover

Discover is Bluesky's own personalised feed and the closest thing to a For You page. When Bluesky introduced it in 2023, it described Discover as a more complex feed that you can expect to evolve over time, initially mixing in a global view of what is trending across the network. Today it blends who you follow, what people near you in the social graph engage with, and your own feedback. Readers can mark posts with "Show more like this" or "Show less like this", and since October 2025 they can dislike posts, which Bluesky says improves personalisation in Discover and other feeds. Feed builders can receive the same kind of feedback through an optional interactions endpoint described in the feeds guide.

Custom and topic feeds

Custom feeds are where most of Bluesky's long-tail discovery happens. In 2023 the Bluesky team provided six feeds and noted that the vast majority on the network were already built by independent developers. By September 2025 there were over 100,000. Some are pure keyword feeds (every post mentioning a programming language, a sport or a science field), some are curated by people, and some combine signals such as likes from members of a community. Being included is usually a matter of matching their rules, which builders often publish in the feed description.

Trending topics and live events

Bluesky says its trending topics system is powered by custom feeds, and its 2026 predictions post announced a live event feed: dedicated spaces for conversations about events as they happen. During the World Series alone, the company says users posted more than 600,000 times about baseball. If your brand has a natural tie to a live moment, a launch, a match or an awards night, posting while it is happening is the most reliable way to reach people who do not follow you yet.

Search

Search is underrated on Bluesky because it is keyword based and supports real operators. Bluesky's search tips confirm that phrase searches also match image alt text, that hashtags return tagged posts, and that you can filter with from:, mentions:, domain:, lang:, since: and until:. For accounts, people you follow are prioritised. Your post copy is therefore also your search metadata, and descriptive alt text on images doubles as findability.

Notifications and starter packs

Two surfaces sit outside feeds entirely. Activity notifications, introduced in July 2025, let readers tap a bell on your profile to get push and in-app alerts for your new posts, if you have the feature enabled. Starter packs bring whole groups of new users to a curated list of accounts and feeds. Neither depends on ranking, which is why accounts with loyal audiences grow steadily even when Discover ignores them.

Breakdown 2: The Signals That Decide Distribution

Because ranking is spread across services, it is more honest to talk about signals than a single formula. Here is what we know, and how confident we can be about each.

Social proximity

Bluesky has said directly that it prioritises replies from people closer to a reader's neighbourhood, and Discover uses the social graph in the same spirit. A like from someone your reader follows counts for more in their Discover feed than a like from a stranger. The practical rule: engagement from inside a tight community beats scattered engagement from a big one.

Early engagement

Engagement-threshold feeds, the style shown in the official starter kit, look at likes or reposts on recent posts. A post that picks up interaction in its first hour can clear the bar for several of these feeds at once. Late engagement still helps in Discover, but the window for hot feeds is short. This is why the best time to post on Bluesky matters more than on networks where distribution is slower.

Words, hashtags and language

Keyword feeds and search both read your text. Hashtags work, but they are one keyword among many; a post that names the topic in plain language often lands in more feeds than one that relies on a single tag. Language matters too, since many feeds and the lang: search filter are language-specific, so set your post language correctly when you write in more than one.

Reader feedback

Show more, show less and dislike all teach Discover what a reader wants. Bluesky says dislikes are private and not global, so one person's dislike does not sink your post for everyone. Repeated negative feedback from a specific community does mean that community sees less of you over time.

Reply quality and moderation

Replies flagged as toxic, spammy, off-topic or in bad faith are down-ranked in reply threads, search results and notifications. Labels from moderation services can hide or blur posts for subscribers. Neither is a mystery shadowban: they are documented systems, and both mostly affect behaviour you would not want associated with a brand anyway.

Account trust markers

Bluesky's verification system adds blue checks for notable accounts and scalloped badges from trusted verifiers, and more than 270,000 accounts had linked their username to their website when it launched. Bluesky has not said verification affects ranking. A domain handle is still worth setting up, because it tells readers and curators you are who you say you are, which makes it easier to get added to starter packs and curated feeds.

Breakdown 3: How Each Content Format Performs

Bluesky's formats are simpler than Instagram's or TikTok's, and that simplicity is part of the appeal. Here is how each one interacts with the surfaces above.

Text posts

Text is native to Bluesky, and posts are capped at 300 characters, which you can check with our Bluesky character counter. Text posts are also the easiest format for keyword feeds to classify, because there is nothing else to read. Strong text posts open with a specific claim, name the topic early and leave room for replies.

Link posts

Because Bluesky says it does not demote links, link posts are a legitimate distribution format, not a reach tax. In its engagement roundup, Bluesky quoted The Boston Globe saying traffic from Bluesky was already three times that of Threads, with four and a half times the conversions to paying digital subscribers. Those are anecdotes from late 2024, not a controlled study, but they match what many publishers see. Add UTM parameters with our UTM builder so you can see Bluesky traffic in your own analytics.

Images

Posts can carry up to four photos, a limit Bluesky's 2026 roadmap post calls out as one it wants to improve. Alt text is searchable, so describe what is in the image in words people would search for. Images help in Discover because they stop the scroll, but they do not help keyword feeds unless the text or alt text carries the topic.

Video

Video arrived in September 2024 with a 60-second limit and an upload cap of 25 videos or 10 GB per day, autoplaying by default. By January 2026 Bluesky described videos as capped at three minutes. Video is still a secondary format here; most top-performing posts in text-heavy communities are text, links or images.

Threads and quote posts

Threads give keyword feeds several chances to match, and each post in a thread can be liked and reposted on its own. Quote posts spread ideas but come with a social cost: authors can detach your quote from their post, and Bluesky made those detachments public data. Use quotes to add context, not to dunk.

Breakdown 4: What Works by Account Type

The same mechanics reward different strategies depending on who you are. These worked examples use realistic, composite accounts.

Newsrooms and publishers

Northfield Climate Desk, a regional newsroom, posts every story as a link post with a one-sentence takeaway, tags the beat (#climate, #energy) and names the place. Its stories land in three regional keyword feeds and two climate feeds, and readers who rang the activity bell get breaking stories instantly. Bluesky's own 2024 review says organisations reported between two and ten times more engagement than elsewhere; treat that as Bluesky's claim, and measure your own with UTMs.

B2B and SaaS brands

Kestrel Analytics, a small B2B data tool, does best with practical text posts (a chart description, a query tip, a short opinion) and one link to a blog post each week. It got into a data-engineering custom feed by asking the builder which keywords the feed uses, then naming those tools in plain words. Its founder replies inside a handful of developer conversations each day, which, under proximity ranking, keeps those replies visible.

Open-source and developer projects

Developer communities moved to Bluesky early. In Bluesky's engagement roundup, a Vite maintainer noted that the project had only 6% of the followers there compared with its 100k on X, yet the Vite 6.0 announcement on Bluesky had already drawn half the reposts and a third of the likes. Lantern Labs, a fictional open-source library, posts release notes as short threads, builds a starter pack of its core contributors and pins a feed of posts mentioning the project.

Creators and artists

Illustrators and photographers lean on image posts with careful alt text and art-specific feeds, many of which are curated by humans who add artists they like. Creators also use Live Now, a beta that adds a LIVE badge linking to Twitch or Streamplace, to pull Bluesky followers into streams.

Local businesses

Harbor and Pine Books, an independent bookshop, posts staff picks with the book title and author in plain text, which matches reader and genre feeds, and joins the live conversation around literary prizes. Find Friends helps here, because regular customers who have the shop's number in their contacts can match with it once both opt in.

Academics and scientists

Science communities run some of Bluesky's busiest topic feeds. Researchers who post a plain-language summary plus a paper link, with the field named in words and a field hashtag, get picked up by those feeds. Bluesky has said Altmetric now tracks Bluesky mentions of research, so those posts also count towards a paper's attention score.

Breakdown 5: What Changes With Account Size

New accounts (0 to 500 followers)

The Following feed does little for you yet, so the work is getting into feeds and packs. Pick two or three topic feeds in your niche, read their descriptions, and write posts that clearly match them. Reply thoughtfully in the conversations those feeds surface. Ask to be added to a relevant starter pack, and make your own once you know 20 or 30 good accounts. Our guide to getting more Bluesky followers covers the follow side in detail.

Growing accounts (500 to 5,000)

Now the Following feed and Discover start to carry you, so timing and consistency matter. Schedule posts in your audience's active hours, keep a steady rhythm, and turn on activity notifications so your most engaged readers can opt in. This is also the size where building or sponsoring a community feed pays off.

Established accounts (5,000 and up)

Reach is largely about what your followers do with your posts. Reposts from people with their own communities spread you into new graph neighbourhoods. Large accounts also attract more low-quality replies, so use thread controls and hidden replies to keep conversations useful, which in turn keeps your posts pleasant to engage with.

Bluesky vs X vs Threads: How the Algorithms Differ

If you are planning one calendar across several networks, it helps to see the differences side by side. Our Bluesky vs X comparison and the guide to how the Threads algorithm works go deeper on each.

The broader point, covered in our explainer on how social media algorithms work, is that Bluesky separates distribution from the platform. You cannot pay for reach, and no single team can change your reach overnight.

How Big Is the Audience, Really?

Bluesky's growth is real but it is still a mid-sized network. The AT Protocol paper counted over 10 million registered users by October 2024, Bluesky reported 41 million by the end of 2025, and over 40 million in March 2026. In the United States, Pew Research Center's 2025 survey of 5,022 adults grouped Bluesky with the platforms used by about one in ten or fewer adults. The audience is smaller than X or Threads, but it skews towards journalists, researchers, developers and engaged readers, which is why per-post engagement can feel unusually high. Plan Bluesky as a high-signal channel inside a wider calendar, not a replacement for every other network.

Step by Step: Find Your Own Bluesky Algorithm

Because every audience lives in a different mix of feeds, the most reliable method is to map yours and test against it. This takes about two hours to set up and fifteen minutes a week to maintain.

1. List your topics in plain words. Write the five to ten terms your audience would use for your niche, including tool names, places and jargon. These become your keyword checklist for every post.
2. Map the feeds. Search the feeds directory in the app for each term. Pin the five most active feeds in your niche and read each description to see whether it matches keywords, hashtags, likes or human curation.
3. Ask builders how inclusion works. Many feed builders list their rules or will tell you if you ask. Note any opt-in hashtag, required keyword or member list.
4. Find your packs. Look for starter packs in your niche by browsing the profiles of people you admire. Ask to be added where you genuinely fit, and draft your own pack of 30 to 150 accounts plus up to three feeds.
5. Set up trust basics. Use a domain handle if you have a website, write a bio that names your topic, enable activity notifications for your followers, and pin a post that tells newcomers what you post about.
6. Write a two-week test calendar. Plan ten posts, each tagged with the feed it targets. Mix formats: four text posts, three link posts, two image posts, one thread. Our guide on how often to post on social media helps set a sustainable cadence.
7. Schedule for your audience's hours. Put the posts on a calendar in the windows where your followers are active, and keep your mornings free to reply. Scheduling also stops you from posting everything in one late-night burst.
8. Reply with intent every day. Spend ten minutes replying in conversations from your target feeds, adding a specific fact or example each time. Proximity ranking rewards being part of the neighbourhood.
9. Measure what each feed sends you. Track likes, reposts, replies and new follows per post, and tag links with UTMs to see traffic. Note which feed each winning post appeared in.
10. Keep, cut, repeat. After two weeks, double down on the feeds and formats that worked, drop the ones that did nothing, and plan the next two weeks.

Doing this in Postprism

Postprism is a scheduler first: you plan the test calendar on one content calendar, drag posts into the windows that suit your audience, and Postprism publishes them on time. Bluesky publishing today is text only, up to 300 characters, and links, mentions and hashtags in your text become clickable when the post goes out; images, video and link preview cards are not sent to Bluesky yet, so post media-led content natively. If you post the same idea elsewhere, multi-platform posting lets you set a separate Bluesky version and time, and the optional AI adaptation can draft a shorter Bluesky cut that you edit before it is scheduled. For a month of posts at once, bulk scheduling imports a CSV, and the Bluesky platform docs list the exact limits. If you work from an AI assistant, our Claude setup guide shows how to draft and schedule Bluesky posts that land on the same calendar for review. Use Bluesky's own post counts and your UTM data for step 9.

Copy-Ready Post Templates for Bluesky Feeds

These templates are written to be easy for keyword feeds to classify and easy for people to reply to. Swap in your own topic words.

A sample week for a small B2B account might look like this: Monday a practical tip, Tuesday a reply-heavy question, Wednesday a link to a new article, Thursday a chart with alt text, Friday a short thread recapping the week. Five posts, two hours of writing, all scheduled on Sunday evening.

Common Mistakes on Bluesky (and How to Fix Them)

1. Treating Bluesky like X. Hunting for one algorithm to game wastes time. Fix: map the specific feeds your audience reads and write for them.
2. Posting without topic words. Clever but vague posts match no keyword feed. Fix: name the subject in plain language in the first line.
3. Over-tagging. A wall of hashtags looks like spam and can earn show-less feedback. Fix: one or two specific tags, plus the topic in words.
4. Burying links in replies. This habit from other networks only adds friction. Fix: put the link in the main post, since Bluesky says it does not demote links.
5. Skipping alt text. Alt text is searchable and helps readers using screen readers. Fix: describe every image in the words people would search.
6. Drive-by replies to big accounts. Generic replies are likely to be down-ranked under the quality model. Fix: reply where you have something specific to add, ideally within your own community.
7. Posting everything in one burst. Chronological feeds bury a batch of five posts at once. Fix: spread posts across your audience's active hours with a scheduler.
8. Ignoring starter packs. Packs are one of the few ways to reach brand-new users. Fix: get into one relevant pack and build your own.
9. Cross-posting X copy word for word. Copy written for another network often runs past 300 characters or references features Bluesky does not have. Fix: write a Bluesky version; see our piece on whether cross-posting hurts reach.
10. Automated engagement. Auto-replies and follow churn risk enforcement under the 2025 guidelines. Fix: automate publishing, never conversations.
11. Not labelling sensitive media. Unlabelled content can be labelled by moderation services and hidden from whole communities. Fix: self-label when a post needs a content warning.
12. Measuring only likes. Likes say little about whether Bluesky is worth your time. Fix: track replies, reposts, new follows and UTM traffic per post.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Bluesky have an algorithm?

It has many. The Following feed is chronological, Discover is a personalised feed run by Bluesky, and more than 100,000 custom feeds built by users each have their own rules. Readers choose which feeds to pin, so your reach is the sum of the feeds that pick up your posts.

Is the Bluesky Following feed chronological?

Yes. It shows posts from accounts you follow, newest first, along with reposts. Readers can filter replies, reposts and quote posts, and by default replies only appear when they are part of a conversation involving at least two people the reader follows.

How do I get on the Bluesky Discover feed?

There is no application. Discover leans on engagement from people near each reader in the social graph and on reader feedback, so the most reliable path is consistent posting inside one community, early replies and likes from that community, and content that earns show-more rather than show-less feedback.

Do hashtags work on Bluesky?

Yes. Searching a hashtag returns tagged posts, and many custom feeds match on hashtags or keywords. They work best alongside plain-language topic words, because keyword feeds and search read the full text of your post and the alt text on images.

Does Bluesky penalise posts with links?

Bluesky says it does not demote links, and publishers have reported strong referral traffic from the network. Put links in the main post with a clear reason to click, and tag them with UTM parameters so you can measure the traffic.

Does scheduling posts hurt reach on Bluesky?

Bluesky has not said that scheduled posts are treated differently, and the protocol records a post the same way whichever app publishes it. Scheduling usually helps, because it lets you publish in your audience's active hours, which matters for the chronological Following feed and engagement-based feeds.

How many followers do I need to grow on Bluesky?

None to start. Topic feeds and search do not depend on follower count, so a new account can reach people by matching the right feeds and replying well. Starter packs and activity notifications help turn that early reach into followers.

Can I build my own Bluesky feed?

Yes. Bluesky publishes an open-source feed generator starter kit, and the AT Protocol guides walk through building a feed that filters posts by keyword. Many brands and communities run a feed for their niche, which also makes them a natural hub for that audience.