The number of subscribers listed in the sidebar is only the number of users from YOUR instance that are subscribed. This might make you feel like a community is ‘small’ or ‘dead’ when it actually isn’t.

I also started to forget this till I was playing with the shields.io badges earlier and the numbers didn’t match up.

Here are some examples:

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[email protected]

• My instance will see 310 subscribers
• This instance will see 22.6K subscribers

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[email protected]

• My instance will see 6.03K subscribers
• This instance will see 1.49K subscribers

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Now my question is, what’s an accurate way to see the total number of subscribers? Is it in the home instance for a particular community?

If so, it might be worth adding the badges to the sidebars.

([email protected])

([email protected])

([email protected])

([email protected])

([email protected])

([email protected])

To do this quickly, go to https://shields.io/badges/lemmy and enter:

• myCommunity@example.com for community
• lemmy for logo
• Total Subscribers for label
• modify the colors and style as you like

You can also modify the community and instance here and paste it in:

![](https://img.shields.io/lemmy/fediverse%40lemmy.world?logo=lemmy&label=Total%20Subscribers)

swap the fediverse%40lemmy.world portion