Reddit Scraper CHEAP — Posts, Comments, Users & Subreddits

Hook

Reddit is a goldmine of discussions, opinions, and trends — but manually collecting data from it is tedious. This Actor scrapes Reddit posts, comments, user profiles, and entire subreddits at the lowest per-result cost. Provide URLs or search keywords and get structured data back in seconds.

Use Cases

• Sentiment Analysis: Scrape Reddit discussions to gauge public opinion on brands, products, or events
• Market Research: Track trending topics and consumer opinions across subreddits
• Competitive Intelligence: Monitor competitor mentions and user feedback in relevant communities
• Content Curation: Aggregate top posts from niche subreddits for newsletters or dashboards
• Academic Research: Collect Reddit data for studies on online communities, language, or behavior
• Lead Generation: Find potential customers discussing problems your product solves

How It Works

1. Provide Input: Enter Reddit URLs (posts, subreddits, user profiles) or search keywords
2. Configure Options: Set max posts/comments, sort order, and what content types to scrape
3. Run the Actor: It fetches data from Reddit's public JSON endpoints, handling pagination
4. Get Results: Structured data is saved to a dataset exportable as JSON, CSV, or Excel

The Actor uses Reddit's public .json endpoints, which requires no authentication and works reliably with proxy rotation.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
startUrls	array	Yes	—	Reddit URLs (posts, subreddits, users, searches)
searchKeywords	array	No	[]	Keywords to search for on Reddit
maxPosts	integer	No	50	Max posts per subreddit/search (0 = unlimited)
maxComments	integer	No	20	Max comments per post (0 = unlimited)
sortBy	string	No	"hot"	Sort order: hot, new, top, rising, controversial
scrapePosts	boolean	No	true	Scrape post content
scrapeComments	boolean	No	true	Scrape comments from posts
scrapeUsers	boolean	No	false	Scrape user profile data
proxyConfiguration	object	No	—	Proxy settings for rate limit avoidance

Output

Each item in the dataset contains:

Field	Type	Description
title	string	Post or comment title
url	string	URL to the Reddit content
text	string	Full body text
author	string	Reddit username
subreddit	string	Subreddit name
score	number	Upvote count
comments	number	Comment count (posts only)
createdAt	string	Creation date (ISO 8601)
type	string	Content type: post, comment, or user

Example Input

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/machinelearning" }
  ],
  "searchKeywords": ["GPT-4", "LLM"],
  "maxPosts": 30,
  "maxComments": 10,
  "sortBy": "top",
  "scrapePosts": true,
  "scrapeComments": true,
  "scrapeUsers": false
}

Example Output

[
  {
    "title": "GPT-4 benchmarks show significant improvement in reasoning",
    "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/abc123/gpt4_benchmarks/",
    "text": "I ran GPT-4 against several reasoning benchmarks and the results are impressive...",
    "author": "ml_researcher",
    "subreddit": "MachineLearning",
    "score": 1247,
    "comments": 89,
    "createdAt": "2024-01-12T09:15:00Z",
    "type": "post"
  }
]

Integrations

• Google Sheets: Export CSV for collaborative analysis and filtering
• Zapier / Make: Schedule runs and push new posts to Slack, Discord, or email
• Apify Scheduler: Automate daily or hourly Reddit monitoring
• NLP Pipelines: Feed post/comment text into sentiment analysis or topic modeling
• Database Loading: Push results to PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Elasticsearch via Apify API
• Python / Node.js: Build custom Reddit analytics tools using Apify API clients

FAQ

Q: Does this require Reddit API credentials? A: No. The Actor uses Reddit's public .json endpoints, which are accessible without authentication. For high-volume scraping, proxy rotation helps avoid rate limits.

Q: Can I scrape a specific Reddit thread with all comments? A: Yes. Provide the post URL in startUrls and set scrapeComments to true. Adjust maxComments to control how many comments are extracted.

Q: What's the difference between posts and comments in the output? A: Each item has a "type" field indicating whether it's a "post", "comment", or "user". Posts include the comment count field; comments inherit the parent post's context.

Q: Can I scrape deleted or removed content? A: No. Deleted or removed Reddit content is not accessible through public endpoints. The Actor only returns currently visible content.

Q: How do I scrape a user's post history? A: Set scrapeUsers to true and provide the user's profile URL (e.g., reddit.com/u/username) in startUrls. The Actor will extract their profile data and recent activity.

SEO Keywords

reddit scraper, scrape reddit posts, reddit comments scraper, reddit data extraction, reddit api alternative, scrape reddit cheap, reddit post scraper, reddit user scraper, subreddit scraper, reddit to json, reddit content extraction, reddit monitoring tool, reddit sentiment analysis, scrape reddit discussions, reddit data mining, reddit analytics, reddit web scraper, cheap reddit scraper

For AI Agents

Purpose: Scrape Reddit posts, comments, user profiles, and subreddits with full text content and metadata.

Minimal Input JSON:

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/technology" }]
}

Output Fields: title, url, text, author, subreddit, score, comments, createdAt, type

Behaviors:

• Accepts Reddit URLs (posts, subreddits, user profiles) or search keywords
• Scrapes posts, comments, and optionally user profiles based on boolean flags
• Supports sort order configuration: hot, new, top, rising, controversial
• Uses Reddit's public JSON endpoints (no authentication required)
• Returns results as a JSON array in the default dataset
• Rate-limited scraping with proxy support for reliable operation

Billing: $0.0005 per result (per post, comment, or user profile scraped). One of the cheapest Reddit scraping options available.

Legal Disclaimer

This Actor is developed and maintained by an independent developer and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Reddit, Inc. Reddit is a registered trademark of Reddit, Inc.

The Actor scrapes publicly accessible content from reddit.com using Reddit's public JSON endpoints in compliance with applicable laws. Users are solely responsible for ensuring their use of this Actor complies with Reddit's Terms of Service and Content Policy. The developer assumes no liability for misuse of this tool or any consequences arising from scraping activities.

Use this Actor at your own risk and in accordance with all applicable terms of service and legal requirements.

Related Actors

Verified related actors on Apify that pair well with this one. All links point to real, publicly available actors.

• Reddit Scraper Lite
• YouTube Scraper
• Google Search Scraper