Reddit Search Scraper: Keywords & Mentions, $2/1K Posts

Search all of Reddit or one subreddit by keyword and get the matching posts as clean JSON: title, author, subreddit, score, comment count, permalink and UTC date. Turn on comment search to get matching comments too. Use only-new mode on a schedule to monitor mentions of a brand, a product or a topic and get just the new hits each time.

It reads the same public search pages Reddit serves to a logged-out visitor's browser, over plain HTTP with no page rendering, at a fixed pace that stays inside the request quota Reddit itself announces for these pages.

This is the search member of our Reddit family. It shares its code, its field names and its output format with the Reddit Data Scraper, the Reddit Subreddit Scraper and the Reddit Comments Scraper, so an input or a pipeline written for one works with the others.

What you get

One row per matching post:

{
  "type": "post",
  "id": "1x5yu7p",
  "subreddit": "webdev",
  "author": "some_redditor",
  "title": "Which headless browser do you use for scraping in 2026?",
  "score": 44,
  "numComments": 21,
  "permalink": "https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1x5yu7p/which_headless_browser_do_you_use_for_scraping/",
  "createdUtc": "2026-10-15T04:28:32.499Z",
  "nsfw": false,
  "spoiler": false,
  "stickied": false
}

Search results carry no post text and no external link: a result card shows the title, the author, the subreddit, the score, the comment count, the date and the permalink, and that is what a post row holds. For the body of a post, run the Reddit Comments Scraper on its permalink: the post comes back as an extra row with its text.

With Search comments too on, matching comments come as extra rows with type: "comment": id, postId, subreddit, author, score, body (plain text), createdUtc and permalink. depth is always 0 and there is no parentId: search results do not show where a comment sits in its thread. Deleted authors come through as [deleted], exactly as Reddit shows them.

Input

Field	Type	Description
searches	string[]	Search phrases, e.g. ["web scraping", "headless browser"]. Each phrase is a separate search. searchTerms is accepted as an alias.
searchCommunityName	string	Limit the search to one subreddit, name without r/. Empty searches all of Reddit. withinCommunity is accepted as an alias.
sort	string	new (default), relevance, hot, top or comments (most comments).
time	string	hour, day, week, month, year or all (default).
maxItems	integer	Max posts per phrase (default 100, hard cap 1,000). One request returns about 7 posts. With comment search on, the same limit applies separately to comments per phrase.
postedAfter / postedBefore	string	ISO date bounds (UTC). With sort: "new" the Actor stops paging at the first result older than postedAfter, so a narrow window costs fewer requests. With other sorts the bounds are applied after fetching.
searchComments	boolean	Default false. Also search comments for the same phrases and save them as comment rows, charged as comments.
includeNSFW	boolean	Default false. Results from posts marked NSFW are skipped unless you opt in.
onlyNew	boolean	Default false. Skip rows this Actor already gave you from the same searches in earlier runs. See Only new since last run.
proxyConfiguration	object	Defaults to Apify residential proxies with no country pin, which is the supported configuration.

Example:

{
  "searches": ["web scraping", "headless browser"],
  "searchCommunityName": "webdev",
  "sort": "new",
  "postedAfter": "2026-10-01",
  "maxItems": 200
}

How to use it

1. Click Try for free or Start on this page.
2. Enter one or more search phrases and, optionally, a subreddit.
3. Pick a sort order and a time window, set date bounds and Max posts per phrase if you need them, and turn on comment search if you need it.
4. Run it. Posts land in the dataset as one row each. Export them as JSON, CSV or Excel, or pull them over the API.

To monitor mentions on a schedule, use Apify Schedules with onlyNew: true. Pricing has no per-run start fee, so a scheduled check costs exactly the rows it delivers. To call it from code, use the Apify API or an official client. AI agents can call it through the Apify MCP server: the description and the input fields above are written to be read by an agent.

Only new since last run

Turn on Only new since last run (onlyNew: true) for monitoring. Here "new" means "not delivered to you before from the same search", not "newer by time": with relevance or top an older post you have not received yet still counts as new.

• Rows you already got from a search are not written to the dataset and not charged.
• maxItems counts new rows only. Paging stops at the first page where every result was already delivered to you, and never goes past 60 pages per search. A quiet search costs one request and no row charges.
• The list of delivered rows lives in a named key-value store in your own Apify account, called reddit-search-only-new- plus a code made from your searches (the run log shows the exact name). Each set of searches (phrases with their subreddit, sort and time window) gets its own store, so changing a phrase or the sort starts a fresh list for the set. Filters (dates, NSFW, maxItems) do not. The store does not expire. The latest 2,000 rows per search are remembered. This Actor keeps its own list, separate from our other Reddit Actors.
• The list is saved once, at the end of the run. If a run is aborted or times out, the list stays as it was, so the next run delivers again what that run had delivered. For the same reason, do not let two runs with the same input overlap.
• To start over, delete that store in Apify Console under Storage, Key-value stores.

Pricing

Pay-per-event, two events, nothing else:

Event	Rate
post-scraped	$2.00 per 1,000 ($0.002 each)
comment-scraped	$2.00 per 1,000 ($0.002 each), only with comment search on
Run start	free, there is no start event

What you get for $1: 500 posts. Platform usage (compute, proxy) is charged to us, not to you, so the per-row price is the whole bill. A daily check of two phrases that finds 15 new posts costs $0.03, every day, with no per-run surcharge. Rates are as of the last README update. The Store page stays authoritative.

Limits (honest)

• Reddit's search decides what matches. The Actor returns what Reddit's own search shows a logged-out visitor for your phrase, in the order Reddit ranks it. It is not an exhaustive scan of every post that contains the words. Reddit's search ends after a few hundred results per phrase, and the Actor pages at most 60 times per phrase, so maxItems above about 400 is rarely reached.
• No post text and no external link. A search result card carries title, author, subreddit, score, comment count, date and permalink, and that is what a post row holds. The body and the external link live on the post's page, which this Actor does not open. For them, run the Reddit Comments Scraper on the permalink (the post comes as an extra row with its text) or the Reddit Data Scraper.
• Searching inside a subreddit keeps only that subreddit. Reddit pads an in-subreddit search with posts from neighbouring communities; the Actor drops those, so a page can yield fewer than 7 posts.
• Date bounds reduce requests only with sort New. It is sorted by time, so the Actor can stop at the first result older than postedAfter. The other sorts are not sorted by time, so there the bounds filter results after fetching. When a date bound is set, a result whose timestamp cannot be read is dropped rather than guessed.
• Comment search returns flat comments. A comment from search has no thread position, so depth is 0 and there is no parentId. For a whole thread use the Reddit Comments Scraper.
• Text comes as plain text. Bodies keep their paragraphs, list items and code blocks, but not formatting such as bold, italics or link targets.
• A subreddit that does not exist gives an empty result. Reddit serves such searches as ordinary pages with no results, so that phrase ends with 0 rows and no charge, not with an error. Check the spelling if a search comes back empty.
• No login, no captcha solving. The Actor reads only what Reddit serves to any logged-out visitor. It opens a session the way a browser does, completes Reddit's lightweight automated visitor check (a short script every visitor's browser runs), and then reads public pages with that session. If Reddit refuses a session, the Actor opens a new one from a fresh address. It fails honestly rather than fabricate data.
• If more than 5% of requests in a run fail, the run log says so loudly. A run in which every fetch failed is marked failed, not "succeeded with 0 items". A run whose filters legitimately match nothing (say, a strict date window) still succeeds, with an empty dataset and an empty bill.

Rate-limit etiquette (built in, with numbers)

• At most 20 requests per minute, with a hard 3-second spacing between requests. Reddit announces a quota of 225 requests per 10 minutes for these pages in its x-ratelimit-* headers. A 3-second spacing means at most 200 requests per 10 minutes, so the Actor stays inside that quota by design.
• One search request carries about 7 posts, or 6 to 10 comments. A 100-post search is about 15 requests, under a minute.
• On an HTTP 429 the Actor waits 30 seconds, opens a fresh session and retries. On any other transient refusal it backs off (3 s, then 6 s, then 9 s), rotates to a fresh proxy session and retries, at most 3 times.
• If five requests in a row fail after all retries, the run stops instead of grinding through the rest of the plan.

FAQ

Do I need a Reddit account or an API key? No. The Actor reads only publicly available data as a logged-out visitor, never logs in, and does not use Reddit's developer API or anyone's credentials.

How is this different from the Reddit Data Scraper? Same code, same output rows, narrower job. This Actor searches only, adds the sort orders Reddit's search offers, stops early on new when you set a date, searches comments on request, and is priced per post. The Reddit Data Scraper also reads subreddit feeds, post pages with their first comments and user history.

Can I monitor mentions of my brand? Yes. Put the brand name in searches, set sort: "new" and onlyNew: true, and run the Actor on a schedule. Each run returns only the posts and comments that appeared since the previous run.

Why do I get fewer than 7 posts per page? Inside a subreddit, Reddit pads results with neighbouring communities, which the Actor drops. The NSFW filter and date bounds also remove results after fetching.

Does it use a browser? Not for the data. Pages are fetched over plain HTTP and read straight from the HTML Reddit serves, with no rendering. A real Chrome is kept on standby only as a last resort for opening a session, when no page gives one over plain HTTP.

Are NSFW results included? Only if you set includeNSFW: true. The default is off.

Where is my data stored? In your run's dataset on your Apify account, under your control. The Actor keeps no copy of scraped data outside your run and sends nothing to any third party. With Only new since last run on, it also keeps the ids of rows it already gave you in a key-value store in your account (see above), so you can delete them at any time.

Legal

This is an unofficial scraper. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Reddit, Inc. in any way, and it does not use Reddit's developer API. It reads only data that Reddit serves publicly to any logged-out visitor: no login, no credentials, no captcha solving. Website terms of service are a contractual matter between a website and its visitors, not criminal law. You are responsible for ensuring that your use of the collected data complies with the laws that apply to you and with Reddit's terms. Post and comment content belongs to its authors.

Personal data

Reddit is a pseudonymous platform: the author field contains the public username a person chose to publish under, not their real identity. This Actor collects no emails, no real names, no private messages, and performs no deanonymization. It stores exactly what any visitor sees on a public page. Scraped data lives only in your own Apify dataset and is not retained by us outside your run. If the data you collect contains personal data under the laws of your jurisdiction (for example the GDPR), you act as its controller: it is your responsibility to have a legal basis for processing and to honor data-subject requests, including deletion.

Rate this Actor

If this Actor saved you time, a short rating or review on its Store page helps other people find it. Missing a field, or did something break? Open the Issues tab on this page and tell us.

Need a custom scraper?

We can build a custom version of this Actor, for example with extra fields, other filters or another output format, or a new Actor for a site we do not cover yet. It runs on Apify like this one. Email actorforge.hq+orders@gmail.com with the site, the data you need and how often you need it.

Other Actors by ActorForge

• Reddit Data Scraper: subreddit feeds, posts with their first comments, keyword search and user history in one Actor.
• Reddit Subreddit Scraper: the hot, new, top and rising posts of any subreddit, with date bounds and only-new mode.
• Reddit Comments Scraper: the whole comment thread of a post, with "more replies" branches and deep reply chains.
• Reddit User Scraper: a user's public posts and comments, newest first, with the profile card.
• Lazada Reviews Scraper: product reviews, ratings and buyer media from all six Lazada marketplaces.
• Wildberries Scraper: products, prices and reviews from Wildberries as clean, schema-validated JSON.
• Avito Real Estate Scraper: full property inventory from Avito with freshness stamps.

Changelog

• 0.1 (October 2026): first release. Keyword search across Reddit or inside one subreddit, five sort orders, time window, date bounds with early stop on new, comment search on request, only-new mode, $2 per 1,000 posts and $2 per 1,000 comments, no start fee.