Lemmy Scraper: Federated Communities & Posts

Reads posts from any Lemmy instance. You get the title, body, link, score, upvote and downvote split, comment count, community, author, and the federation trail showing which instance each post and author actually originated on.

Lemmy is the fediverse's Reddit-shaped link aggregator, and every instance exposes a fully open API v3 at /api/v3. That means no account, no OAuth app, no rate-limit quota, no proxy and no browser. For contrast, Reddit's own .json endpoints answer HTTP 403 to the same kind of anonymous request.

Agent skill: SKILL.md

https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/t7YoTxpZEJOWvw4Ug/records/lemmy-posts-scraper.md

What you get

Field	What it holds
instance, postId, postUrl	Instance you queried, its local post ID, and the canonical post link
title, body, url	Post title, self-text body, and the outbound link for link posts
apId	ActivityPub ID, which is the post's true origin URL across the fediverse
communityName, communityTitle, communityUrl, communityInstance	Community slug, display name, actor URL and the instance it lives on
creatorName, creatorDisplayName, creatorUrl, creatorInstance, creatorIsBot	Author handle, display name, actor URL, home instance and bot flag
score, upvotes, downvotes, commentCount	Full vote breakdown, since Lemmy publishes up and down separately, unlike Reddit
published, updated, newestCommentAt	Post timestamps and the most recent comment time
featured, locked, nsfw	Pinned in community or site-wide, locked to new comments, NSFW flag
thumbnailUrl, embedTitle, embedDescription	Link preview metadata
comments	Optional array of top-scoring top-level comments with their own scores
scrapedAt	When the run happened

RUN_SUMMARY in the key-value store holds per-run counts, the filters you used, and any target that failed.

Use cases

• Tech discussion tracking. Read !technology@lemmy.world and !programming@programming.dev in one run, outside Reddit entirely.
• Brand and product monitoring. Sweep several instances on a schedule and search the bodies you collect.
• Newsletter curation. TopWeek on a handful of communities gives you a ranked shortlist every Monday.
• Federation research. communityInstance versus creatorInstance shows how content actually crosses instances.
• Sentiment work. The separate upvotes and downvotes split supports controversy scoring that a net score cannot.

Quick start

The front page of one instance:

{
 "instances": ["lemmy.world"],
 "maxPostsPerInstance": 50
}

One community across three instances, ranked by the week:

{
 "instances": ["lemmy.world", "programming.dev", "https://lemmy.ml"],
 "communities": ["technology"],
 "sortBy": "TopWeek",
 "maxPostsPerInstance": 100
}

Discussion-heavy posts with their top replies:

{
 "instances": ["lemmy.world"],
 "communities": ["technology", "asklemmy"],
 "sortBy": "MostComments",
 "maxPostsPerInstance": 40,
 "includeComments": true,
 "maxCommentsPerPost": 10
}

Input

Field	Type	Default	Notes
instances	array	["lemmy.world"]	Hostnames or URLs. Each is queried independently.
communities	array	[]	Applied to every instance. Accepts technology, !technology@lemmy.world or a /c/ URL. Empty means each instance's whole front page.
sortBy	string	Hot	Hot, Active, New, Scaled, TopDay through TopAll, MostComments, NewComments, Controversial.
maxPostsPerInstance	integer	50	Total per instance. With several communities the budget is split evenly.
includeComments	boolean	false	Fetch top-level comments per post. Costs one extra request per post that has any.
maxCommentsPerPost	integer	5	Comments kept per post, highest score first. Ignored when includeComments is off.

A community that does not exist on an instance returns HTTP 404 and is recorded as a failure, and the other instances carry on. Because Lemmy federates, a community named on one instance is usually readable from several: !technology@lemmy.world seen through lemmy.ml returns that instance's federated copy.

Output example

{
 "instance": "lemmy.world",
 "postId": 50183504,
 "title": "New EU law requires devices to be repairable",
 "body": "The products covered by the obligation to repair currently include:\n\n- washing machines .",
 "url": "https://www.nporadio1.nl/fragmenten/nos-met-het-oog-op-morgen/.",
 "postUrl": "https://lemmy.world/post/50183504",
 "apId": "https://piefed.zip/c/technology@lemmy.world/p/1699468/new-eu-law-requires-devices-to-be-repairable",
 "communityName": "technology",
 "communityTitle": "Technology",
 "communityUrl": "https://lemmy.world/c/technology",
 "communityInstance": "lemmy.world",
 "creatorName": "inari",
 "creatorDisplayName": "inari",
 "creatorUrl": "https://piefed.zip/u/inari",
 "creatorInstance": "piefed.zip",
 "creatorIsBot": false,
 "score": 1764,
 "upvotes": 1768,
 "downvotes": 4,
 "commentCount": 283,
 "published": "2026-08-01T20:40:59.572119Z",
 "updated": "2026-08-01T20:42:20.713133Z",
 "newestCommentAt": "2026-08-06T10:29:32.713285Z",
 "featured": false,
 "locked": false,
 "nsfw": false,
 "thumbnailUrl": "https://radioimages.npox.nl/RAD1/image/.webp",
 "embedTitle": "Apparaten verplicht repareerbaar door nieuwe EU-wet",
 "embedDescription": "Iedere wasmachine, telefoon of televisie die je vanaf morgen in Europa koopt .",
 "comments": [
 {
 "commentId": 25077535,
 "body": "Hopefully this will benefit other countries indirectly .",
 "creatorName": "dan1101",
 "score": 199,
 "upvotes": 199,
 "downvotes": 0,
 "published": "2026-08-01T21:01:30.164757Z",
 "url": "https://lemmy.world/comment/25077535"
 }
 ],
 "scrapedAt": "2026-08-06T11:42:30.835Z"
}

Finding a community name

Lemmy writes community addresses three ways, and all three work here.

What you see	What to paste
!technology@lemmy.world	technology, or the whole handle. The ! and the domain are stripped
https://lemmy.world/c/technology	The whole URL
The sidebar heading "Technology"	technology, the slug rather than the display title

Put the domain in instances and the slug in communities. To read the same community from two instances, list both instances and one community name.

API example

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/arman-bd~lemmy-posts-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
 -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
 -d '{
 "instances": ["lemmy.world"],
 "communities": ["technology"],
 "sortBy": "TopWeek",
 "maxPostsPerInstance": 50
 }'

JavaScript example

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('arman-bd/lemmy-posts-scraper').call({
 instances: ['lemmy.world', 'programming.dev'],
 communities: ['technology'],
 sortBy: 'TopWeek',
 maxPostsPerInstance: 25,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
for (const post of items) {
 console.log(`[${post.score}] ${post.title} - ${post.communityName}@${post.instance}`);
}

Notes

• Lemmy caps a page at 50 posts. Asking for more returns couldnt_get_posts, so the Actor pages 50 at a time using 1-based page numbers until your budget is met.
• limit does not work on the comments endpoint. When max_depth is set Lemmy returns the whole depth-1 tree regardless of limit, so maxCommentsPerPost is applied after the response arrives.
• Federation means the origin instance differs from the one you queried. communityInstance and creatorInstance are parsed out of the ActivityPub actor URLs, so a post read from lemmy.world may well have been written on piefed.zip.
• Every instance runs its own Lemmy version. The Actor targets API v3, which every current instance serves. /api/v4 was not yet live on any instance tested.
• One bad target won't kill the run. A missing community returns 404 and lands in RUN_SUMMARY.failures, and the Actor only errors out if every target fails.

FAQ

Do I need a Lemmy account? No. You supply no credentials.

Do I need a proxy? No. Proxy configuration is not required to run this Actor.

How is this different from scraping Reddit? Reddit gates its API behind registered apps, quotas and pricing. Lemmy publishes the same shape of data, meaning link posts, scores and threaded comments, on an open endpoint, so the run is deterministic and free of blocks.

Can I get every post in a community? Raise maxPostsPerInstance and use sortBy: "New". The Actor keeps paging until the feed is exhausted or the cap is hit.

Why do some posts have an empty body? They are link posts. body is the self-text field and is only populated on text posts, so url, embedTitle and embedDescription carry the link instead.

Can I plug it into something else? Yes. Apify API, the client libraries, webhooks, scheduled runs, dataset exports to JSON, CSV or Excel, or MCP. The output is structured JSON.