Reddit Search Scraper: New Posts Alerts by Keyword & Subreddit

Watch Reddit for a keyword or a subreddit, get only what's new. Give it reddit posts for a list of keywords, a list of subreddits, or both, and schedule it. Each run returns only the posts that appeared since the last one, charged per new post and free on quiet days. Send them to Slack, Discord, Google Sheets or n8n.

This actor reads Reddit's public post listings the way a logged-out visitor sees them: a site-wide search for each keyword, and the post feed of each subreddit, newest first (or hot, or top of the day, week or month). You get one clean row per post: title, subreddit, author handle, score, upvote ratio, comment count, posted time, the Reddit link, the link target, flair and the first 300 characters of the text. Turn on monitoring and it becomes new reddit posts alerts for brand mentions, product launches or a subreddit monitor to Slack, without login and without a Reddit API key.

Who it's for

• Brand and community managers who want reddit mentions of a brand the hour they happen: a watchlist on your product name and your competitors', posted to a Slack channel.
• Founders and indie hackers doing market research: every new post asking for "an alternative to" your category, or every new thread in r/SaaS, r/Entrepreneur or your niche subreddit.
• Resellers and deal hunters who follow r/Flipping, r/buildapcsales or a hobby subreddit and don't want to refresh it all day.
• Researchers and analysts who need a tidy post dataset for a list of keywords or subreddits, without writing and maintaining a Reddit client.

Why this one

• Keywords and subreddits in one run. Site-wide search lines and subreddit feeds side by side, each with its own cap (up to 500 posts per line), so one busy keyword can't crowd out the others.
• Monitoring built in, not bolted on. deltaMode remembers what each keyword and each subreddit has already returned. Only new posts come back; everything else is removed before billing. A quiet run returns one summary row per line and costs only the start fee.
• Filters that read the post, not the row. "Only keep posts mentioning" and "Skip posts mentioning" check the title and text only, never the subreddit or author name, and run before you are billed. Add a minimum score, and NSFW posts are skipped by default.
• Lean rows. A 300-character text excerpt instead of whole bodies, the public author handle and nothing else about the person. No comments, no profiles, no avatars.
• No setup. No Reddit account, no API key, no proxy settings.

Monitoring: new reddit posts alerts

1. Put your brand, product or topic in Search keywords (one per line) and/or the communities to watch in Subreddits. Leave Sort order on Newest first.
2. Tick Only return posts that are new since the last run. Optional: Seed silently so the first run remembers the current posts without sending them anywhere.
3. Save it as a Task and add a Schedule: every hour for brand mentions, once a day for a digest.
4. Each run returns only posts the watchlist has not returned before, each with isNew: true and firstSeenAt. When nothing is new you get one row per line with postCount: 0 and monitorStatus: NO_NEW_POSTS, and pay only the start fee.

Memory is kept per keyword and per subreddit, so adding a line to a scheduled list never re-sends the others. A post nobody has seen for 60 days is forgotten. If more new posts arrive between two runs than your maximum, the newest are delivered and the rest arrive on the next run, never lost and never billed twice.

Weekly top posts digest. Use Top with the time window Past week, monitoring on and a weekly schedule: each Monday you get the week's best posts in each subreddit that you haven't seen yet.

Price

• Post returned: $3 per 1,000 posts

Plus a $0.00005 start fee per run. Each event above is billed independently, only when it actually returns data — misses (found:false) are never charged.

• Posts: $3 per 1,000 posts returned, plus a $0.00005 start fee per run.
• A monitoring run with nothing new costs the start fee only. A keyword or subreddit that returns nothing, a misspelled or private subreddit, and posts removed by your filters are never billed.

A daily digest of 3 keywords that finds 20 new posts a day is about 600 posts a month, under $2 a month. An hourly brand watchlist averaging 3 new posts an hour is about 2,200 posts, about $6.50 a month.

How to use

1. In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the queries field is already pre-filled with a working example. Results land in the run's dataset as soon as each item is found.
2. 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~reddit-search-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"queries":["apify"]}'
   

3. 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.

Tips:

• Both lists are optional, but at least one needs a line. A subreddit can be written Flipping, r/Flipping or pasted as a link.
• Put a phrase in quotes ("notion alternative") for Reddit's exact-phrase search.
• Relevance works for keywords only; a subreddit set to Relevance uses Top over your time window instead.

Input

{
  "queries": [
    "apify"
  ]
}

One Reddit search per line, run across all of Reddit: a brand, a product, a topic or a phrase in quotes. Leave empty to watch only the subreddits below. No login required. Accepted formats: vinted, "apify actor", notion alternative.

A fuller example, a brand watchlist plus two subreddits, new posts only:

{
  "queries": ["vinted", "\"vinted scam\""],
  "subreddits": ["Flipping", "r/vinted"],
  "maxResults": 100,
  "excludeKeywords": ["giveaway"],
  "deltaMode": true
}

Output

One row per post, grouped under the keyword or subreddit that found it (sourceType, source):

Field	What it is
id, title, subreddit	Reddit's post id, the title, and the subreddit it was posted in
author	The poster's public Reddit handle, nothing else about them (null if deleted)
score, upvoteRatio, numComments	Votes, share of upvotes (0 to 1), comment count at the time of the run
createdAt	When it was posted (ISO 8601, UTC)
permalinkUrl, url	The Reddit discussion link, and the link target (same as the discussion for a text post)
isSelf, selftextExcerpt	Text post or link post; first 300 characters of the text
linkFlairText, isNsfw	The post's flair; whether Reddit marks it 18+
isNew, firstSeenAt	With monitoring or a named watchlist: new since the last run, and when it was first returned
postCount, monitorStatus, truncated	Per keyword or subreddit: posts returned, NEW_POSTS / NO_NEW_POSTS / SEEDED, and whether Reddit stopped the run early

query	found	status	sourceType	source	postCount	monitorStatus	truncated	posts	id	title	subreddit	author	score	upvoteRatio	numComments	createdAt	permalinkUrl	url	isSelf	selftextExcerpt	linkFlairText	isNsfw	isNew	firstSeenAt	scrapedAt
apify	true	OK						<all posts (full list)>			<subreddit>	<author (public handle)>	<score (upvotes)>						<text post?>	<text excerpt (first 300 characters)>		<nsfw?>	<is this post new?>		1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

A keyword or subreddit with no posts comes back as a row with "found": false and is never charged.

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.

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~reddit-search-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries":["apify"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~reddit-search-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"queries":["apify"]} (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~reddit-search-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"queries":["{{search or subreddit}}"]}, mapping the row's search or subreddit into the queries array.

MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "Reddit Search Scraper: New Post Alerts by Keyword" — the agent will find and run this actor.

Subreddit monitor to Slack without code. Schedule the monitoring Task, then in n8n or Make trigger on "Apify: run succeeded", read the run's dataset, skip rows where postCount is 0, and post title, subreddit, score and permalinkUrl to a Slack or Discord webhook. For a Google Sheets log, append the same rows to a sheet instead.

vs. alternatives

	What it costs	What you get	Trade-off
This actor	$3 per 1,000 posts, quiet monitoring runs free	Keyword search and subreddit feeds in one run, only-new-posts monitoring with per-line memory, title and text filters before billing	Posts only: no comments, no user profiles
Popular Reddit scrapers on the Apify Store	$1.15 to $4 per 1,000 results, some with a start fee up to $0.02	Posts and comments, often user pages too	You rebuild "what's new since yesterday" yourself, and pay again for the posts you already have
Social listening tools	Monthly subscription	Dashboards and sentiment	Their keywords and their limits; exporting the raw posts is usually a paid extra
Reddit's own API	Free tier, then paid	Everything, with an app and OAuth	Needs a registered app, token handling and rate-limit code; commercial use needs Reddit's approval

Store figures as of September 2026.

Data & privacy

Data & privacy. This actor reads public post listings that anyone can see without logging in. It doesn't log in, solve CAPTCHAs or read private, quarantined or age-gated communities. It collects no comments and no user data: the only thing it returns about a person is the public handle shown next to their post. No avatars, no profile pages, no post history. Text bodies are cut to a 300-character excerpt. Not affiliated with Reddit.

FAQ

Is this allowed? It collects the same public post listings your browser shows, for the keywords and subreddits you choose. Only public listings are read, and no comment or user data is collected. It's built for monitoring a search, not for copying Reddit. Reddit's robots.txt asks automated clients not to crawl the site, and Reddit's Public Content Policy restricts commercial use of its content, so check that your use fits Reddit's terms and your local law.

Why did my monitoring run return nothing? Nothing new appeared since the last run. You get one row per keyword or subreddit with monitorStatus: NO_NEW_POSTS and are charged only the start fee. On the very first run with "Seed silently" on, the status is SEEDED.

Does it respect Reddit's rate limits? Each request reads 100 posts, the most Reddit serves at once, so 1,000 posts is 10 requests. Requests go through Apify's Unblocker proxy, which spreads them over many connections, so a normal run never runs into Reddit's per-client limit and you don't have to manage delays or retries. A page Reddit refuses is retried once on a fresh connection; if it is refused again, that keyword or subreddit stops with truncated: true and you keep (and pay only for) what arrived.

Why the Unblocker proxy? Reddit refuses its public listings to cloud and data-center addresses: a plain request from a server gets a 403 block page, and old.reddit.com sends it to a login wall. Apify's Unblocker proxy is what gets the same public listing a browser gets. It is included in the post price; there is nothing to configure.

Why is truncated true? Reddit refused a later page twice, or the run reached its page or time budget (Reddit answers slowly, 20 to 40 seconds per page) before your maximum. The posts collected up to then are delivered.

How far back does it go? Reddit stops any listing at about 1,000 posts, so a busy subreddit's "new" feed covers days, a quiet one months. For older posts use Top with a time window of a month, a year or all time.

Can I get comments or a user's post history? No. This actor reads post listings only and never requests comments or user pages.

Why are NSFW posts missing? "Skip NSFW posts" is on by default. Turn it off to include them.

Can an AI agent call this? Yes, through the Apify MCP server or the API call shown above. Ask for "Reddit Search Scraper: New Post Alerts by Keyword".

Related actors

• Google News Lookup: the same keyword watchlist, for news articles instead of Reddit posts.
• X Profile Lookup: public X (Twitter) profile stats for a list of accounts.
• Vinted Scraper: New Listing & Price Drop Alerts: the same only-what's-new monitoring, for second-hand listings.