Reddit Lead Finder: People Asking For What You Sell

Find the conversations where someone is openly looking to buy, and get them ranked by how ready they are.

Search any phrase across Reddit or inside the communities you choose. Every post is scored 0 to 5 on buying intent, so a thread that says "looking for a CRM, any recommendations?" sorts above someone mentioning a CRM in passing. You get the post, the author, the community and a direct link, ready to reply to.

Built for founders, sales teams and agencies who would rather answer a live question than send a cold email.

How it works

flowchart LR
    A[Your phrases] --> B[Reddit API search]
    B --> C[Merge and de-duplicate]
    C --> D[Score buying intent]
    D --> E{Filters<br/>intent, upvotes, age, community}
    E -->|keep| F[(Ranked leads)]
    E -->|drop| G[Skipped]

Before you start: Reddit credentials

Reddit closed its public data endpoints, so this Actor reads the official API and needs an app of your own. It is free and takes about a minute.

1. Go to reddit.com/prefs/apps and choose create another app.
2. Pick type script. Any name works. Put http://localhost in the redirect field.
3. Copy the client id, the string under the app name, and the secret.
4. Paste both into the Actor input, along with your Reddit username.

No password is involved, and both values are stored as secrets.

What you get

One row per post:

{
  "title": "Looking for a CRM for a small team",
  "body": "We are 5 people and need something simple.",
  "author": "someuser",
  "subreddit": "smallbusiness",
  "subredditSubscribers": 1500000,
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/abc123/looking_for_a_crm/",
  "score": 42,
  "upvoteRatio": 0.95,
  "numComments": 17,
  "flair": "Question",
  "intentScore": 4,
  "postedAt": "2026-09-05T12:00:00.000Z",
  "daysSincePosted": 1,
  "matchedQueries": ["looking for a CRM"]
}

Rows come back sorted by intentScore, then by upvotes, so the best conversations are at the top of the sheet.

How the intent score works

Each post is checked for the phrases people actually use when shopping, and a question mark in the title counts as its own signal.

Score	What it usually means
0	Mentions your topic, is not looking for anything
1	One weak signal, worth a skim
2 to 3	A genuine request. This is the band most people work
4 to 5	Explicit and urgent, often naming a budget or a deadline

Set minIntent to 2 to cut the noise. It is the single most useful setting here.

Example input

{
  "queries": ["looking for a CRM", "best CRM for small business", "CRM recommendations"],
  "subreddits": ["smallbusiness", "sales", "Entrepreneur"],
  "redditClientId": "your_client_id",
  "redditClientSecret": "your_client_secret",
  "redditUsername": "your_username",
  "timeWindow": "week",
  "minIntent": 2,
  "selfPostsOnly": true
}

Run it from the command line

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/arched_friend~reddit-lead-finder/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries":["looking for a CRM"],"redditClientId":"ID","redditClientSecret":"SECRET","redditUsername":"USER","minIntent":2}'

Fetch the results:

$curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/arched_friend~reddit-lead-finder/runs/last/dataset/items?token=YOUR_TOKEN"

Daily prospecting

Turn on onlyNewLeads and schedule it. The Actor remembers every post it has already reported and returns only what appeared since the last run, so a daily schedule becomes a short list of fresh conversations instead of the same threads every morning.

Pair it with timeWindow: "day" and minIntent: 2 for a feed you can work in ten minutes.

Pricing

Pay per lead returned. Runs that find nothing cost nothing.

	Reddit Lead Finder	Social listening suite	Searching by hand
Cost for 100 leads	$0.40	$99 and up per month	Around 3 hours
Buying intent ranking	Included	Rarely	By eye
Only new since last run	Included	Sometimes	No
Runs on a schedule	Yes	Yes	No

Free tier included, so you can test a niche before spending anything.

Notes and limits

• Reddit returns at most 100 posts per page. Ask for more and the Actor pages through automatically.
• Your app gets its own rate quota. The Actor watches the remaining quota and warns before it runs out.
• Phrases beat single words. "crm" pulls everything; "looking for a crm" pulls buyers.
• Reply like a person. Reddit removes anything that reads as an ad, and communities ban fast. Answer the question first and mention what you sell only if it fits.

Related products

• Website Lead Extractor to pull contact details from any site a lead links to.
• Email List Cleaner to validate addresses before you send.
• Brand Mention Monitor to catch news coverage of your brand alongside these conversations.