Lemmy Lookup: Communities and Post Search on Any Instance
Pricing
from $0.30 / 1,000 item returneds
Lemmy Lookup: Communities and Post Search on Any Instance
Look up Lemmy community metrics, subscribers, rules and posts, or search federated posts and discussions across any Lemmy instance. Built-in alert monitoring.
Pricing
from $0.30 / 1,000 item returneds
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Developer
Adriana Voss
Maintained by CommunityActor stats
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1
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2 days ago
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Look up Lemmy community metrics, subscribers, rules and posts, or search federated posts and discussions across any Lemmy instance without API keys. One row per community or matching search result. Switch between community inspection and keyword search with the Mode setting, and turn on delta monitoring on a schedule to receive only items that are new since your last run.
Who uses it: Fediverse community managers, social media researchers, open-web intelligence analysts, and brand monitors tracking discussions across federated Lemmy servers (lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, feddit.de, lemm.ee).
What it does not do: It accesses public federated APIs only. It does not log in, cannot access private communities or moderator actions requiring authentication, and requires no credentials. Missing fields return null, never empty strings or zeroes.
How to use
- In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the
communityfield is already pre-filled with a working example. Results land in the run's dataset as soon as each item is found. - Via the API. Call it directly with a POST request — no Console needed once you have an API token:
curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~lemmy-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \-X POST \-H "Content-Type: application/json" \-d '{"community":["technology"]}'
- On a schedule. Save this actor as an Apify Task with the input you want, then add a Schedule (hourly, daily, weekly) so it runs on its own — no server of your own required.
Input
In community mode: enter a community name (e.g. technology), federated handle (!technology@lemmy.world), or URL (https://lemmy.world/c/technology). In search mode: enter search keywords. Accepted formats: technology, !technology@lemmy.world, https://lemmy.world/c/technology, apify.
You can also pass {"mode": "community", "community": "technology", "instance": "lemmy.world"} or {"mode": "search", "query": "apify", "maxItems": 20} directly. The actor automatically routes each request to the right endpoint.
Output
One row per community in community mode, or one row per post in search mode:
| query | found | status | mode | instance | communityName | communityTitle | description | subscribers | postsCount | commentsCount | postsPerDay | usersActiveDay | usersActiveWeek | usersActiveMonth | nsfw | iconUrl | bannerUrl | postId | postTitle | postUrl | linkUrl | body | score | upvotes | downvotes | authorName | authorActorId | publishedAt | sourceUrl | monitorStatus | isNew | firstSeenAt | scrapedAt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| technology | true | OK | <active users (day)> | <active users (week)> | <active users (month)> | 1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z |
Sample community output:
Sample search post output:
A not-found input returns a row with "found": false and is never charged. In monitoring mode, a run with no new posts returns a quiet status row with monitorStatus: "NO_NEW_ITEMS" and is also never charged.
Pricing
- Item returned: $0.6 per 1,000 items
Plus a $0.0005 start fee per run. Each event above is billed independently, only when it actually returns data — misses (found:false) are never charged.
Price line: a $0.0005 start fee per run plus $0.60 per 1,000 community or post rows returned (less at higher plans). The start fee covers the fixed cost of a run, so even a one-row run is not a loss.
Runs against an instance with a crawl delay are slow by that instance's own request: the actor reads the instance's robots.txt, waits the stated Crawl-delay (up to 60 seconds) between requests, and logs the delay it uses. lemmy.world asks for 60 seconds, so with the default 120-second run timeout plan on about two communities or queries per run there, and raise the run timeout for a longer list. A default run is one request and finishes in seconds.
Example runs
Paste any of these into the Input tab and press Start. All three run keyless with no setup needed.
Community lookup (default mode). Fetches subscriber counts, active users, posts, and rules for a community.
Post keyword search. Searches public posts matching a topic across the instance.
Fediverse keyword alert. Schedule this on Apify to receive only new posts published since your last run.
Use it from Clay, n8n, Make, or an AI agent
This actor runs synchronously over plain HTTP — call it directly from a script, a workflow tool, or an AI agent, no Apify Console needed once you have an API token.
n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~lemmy-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"community":["technology"]} (swap in an expression from an earlier node for a real value).
Clay. Add an "HTTP API" column: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~lemmy-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"community":["{{community or search query}}"]}, mapping the row's community or search query into the community array.
MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "lemmy scraper for communities and posts" — the agent will find and run this actor.
