Conventional wisdom suggests that reports of terrorism should be sparse in dictatorships, both because such violence is unlikely to result in policy change and because it is difficult to get reliable information on attacks. Yet, there is variance in the number of terrorist attacks reported in autocracies. Why? We argue that differences in the audience costs produced by dictatorships explain why some nondemocracies experience more terrorism than others. Terrorists are more likely to expect a response in dictatorships that generate high domestic audience costs. Using data from multiple terrorism databases, we find empirical evidence that dictatorships generating higher audience costsäóîmilitary dictatorships, single-party dictatorships, and dynastic monarchiesäóîexperience as much terrorism as democracies, while autocracies generating lower audience costsäóîpersonalist dictatorships and non-dynastic monarchiesäóîface fewer attacks than their democratic counterparts.