Reddit Keyword Monitor & Brand Alerts

Never miss a Reddit conversation about your brand, product, or competitors — again.

Reddit is where your customers speak freely: praising you, comparing you to rivals, asking for alternatives, and warning each other away from bad products. This Actor turns those conversations into an actionable feed of alerts. Give it your keywords, point it at the subreddits that matter (or all of Reddit), and get back clean, structured matches you can push straight into Slack, a spreadsheet, a CRM, or your own app.

Outcome: you find the mention, the lead, or the PR risk while it's still fresh — not days later when the thread already has 500 upvotes.

⚡ Run it once for an instant sweep, or schedule it for always-on monitoring. Zero API keys. No setup headaches. Results in seconds.

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What you get out of it

• 🎯 Every relevant mention, none of the noise — precise keyword matching with negative filters, minimum-upvote thresholds, and author allow/deny lists so your feed stays clean.
• 🔔 Alerts the moment it matters — each match can fire a webhook or a formatted Slack message with a one-click link to the thread.
• 🧠 Analysis-ready data — structured JSON with the matched keyword, a highlighted snippet, author, score, subreddit, and permalink. Drop it into a dashboard or an LLM with zero cleanup.
• 🔁 No duplicate alerts — scheduled mode remembers what it already sent, so you only ever see new conversations.
• 💸 Cheap to run — a lightweight, no-API-key engine runs on as little as 512 MB RAM, so continuous monitoring costs pennies, not dollars.
• 🤖 Built for automation & AI agents — first-class Apify API and MCP support so LLMs and no-code tools can drive it directly.

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Who uses this and why

You are…	The result you get
Brand / PR team	Catch praise, complaints, and crises the moment they surface — respond before they trend.
Founder / marketer	Turn "anyone know an alternative to X?" threads into warm leads.
Competitive intelligence	Track every mention of rival products, launches, and pricing complaints.
Community / support	Know when your product is discussed so you can jump in and help.
Investor / analyst	Monitor tickers, projects, and sentiment across finance and crypto subreddits.
Agencies	Run branded monitoring for every client from one schedule.
Developers & AI agents	A clean, documented data source for pipelines, apps, and LLM tools.

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How it works (3 steps)

1. Tell it what to watch — add your keywords, brands, or phrases.
2. Tell it where to watch — pick specific subreddits, or scan all of Reddit.
3. Choose how to run — a one-off scan for instant results, or scheduled monitoring for continuous, deduplicated alerts.

That's it. Matches stream to your dataset as they're found and, optionally, to your webhook or Slack channel.

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Run modes

🟢 One-off scan (default)

Runs once, scans the most recent posts/comments, returns every match, and stops. Perfect for research, one-time exports, and quick "who's talking about us right now?" checks.

🔵 Scheduled monitor

Pair with the Apify Scheduler for always-on monitoring. The Actor remembers the newest item it has already seen per subreddit, so each run returns only new matches — no repeats, no duplicate alerts. Set it to run every 1–5 minutes for near-real-time coverage.

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Matching that actually stays relevant

• Match modes — substring (default), whole-word (avoids partial-word false positives), or full regex for power users.
• Case sensitivity — off by default; toggle on when case matters (e.g. ticker symbols).
• Ignore keywords — negative filters that drop a match even if a watch term appears (great for filtering out "job", "hiring", spam, etc.).
• Title-only mode — match on post titles only, for higher-signal alerts.
• Minimum upvotes — only surface matches with real traction.
• Author allow / deny lists — focus on specific users, or mute known bots and competitors.
• NSFW control — excluded by default for brand-safe feeds.

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Input reference

Field	Type	Default	What it does
keywords	string[]	(required)	Brands, competitors, or phrases to watch.
watchScope	string	"specific_subreddits"	"specific_subreddits" or "all_reddit" (site-wide).
subreddits	string[]	[]	Communities to scan when scope is specific.
stream	string	"both"	"posts", "comments", or "both".
runMode	string	"once"	"once" (scan & stop) or "scheduled_monitor" (dedupe across runs).
matchMode	string	"substring"	"substring", "word", or "regex".
caseSensitive	boolean	false	Respect upper/lowercase when matching.
ignoreKeywords	string[]	[]	Skip a match if any of these appear.
titleOnly	boolean	false	Match post titles only (ignore body).
minUpvotes	number	0	Minimum upvotes required to emit a match.
includeNsfw	boolean	false	Include NSFW (over-18) posts.
authorAllowlist	string[]	[]	Only match these authors (empty = all).
authorDenylist	string[]	[]	Exclude these authors.
lookback	number	100	Newest items scanned per subreddit per stream (1–1000). Auto-paginates beyond one page.
sinceId	string	""	Manual cursor — only return items newer than this Reddit fullname.
maxMatches	number	0	Cap matches per run (0 = unlimited).
webhookUrl	string	""	Optional alert URL fired on each match (dataset is always written too).
webhookFormat	string	"json"	"json" or "slack".
includeRaw	boolean	false	Attach the full raw Reddit object per row.
proxyConfiguration	object	US Residential	Apify proxy settings (recommended defaults).

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Output — clean, structured, analysis-ready

Every match is one dataset row tagged featureType: "keyword_monitor", with match context baked in:

Field	Description
matchedKeywords	Every watch-list keyword that hit this item.
matchedSnippet	A short excerpt highlighting the match.
matchedIn	"title", "body", or "comment".
fullname	Reddit fullname — reuse as sinceId for manual incremental runs.
subreddit, author, score, permalink	Core context for triage.
Post fields	title, selftext, url, numComments, nsfw, media, awards, and more.
Comment fields	body, depth, postId, parentId, and more.

Pre-built dataset views: overview, matches, posts, comments — switch views in the Apify console or via the API.

Example match

{
  "featureType": "keyword_monitor",
  "matchedKeywords": ["openai"],
  "matchedSnippet": "…just tried openai's latest model and the results are…",
  "matchedIn": "title",
  "fullname": "t3_abc123",
  "title": "OpenAI release discussion",
  "subreddit": "technology",
  "author": "example_user",
  "score": 142,
  "numComments": 87,
  "permalink": "https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/abc123/openai_release_discussion/",
  "createdAtISO": "2026-07-07T10:00:00.000Z",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-07T10:05:00.000Z"
}

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Copy-paste recipes

Brand monitoring on a schedule

{
  "keywords": ["Acme Corp", "acme widget"],
  "watchScope": "specific_subreddits",
  "subreddits": ["technology", "gadgets", "startups"],
  "runMode": "scheduled_monitor",
  "stream": "both",
  "matchMode": "word",
  "lookback": 250,
  "minUpvotes": 1,
  "webhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/YOUR/WEBHOOK/URL",
  "webhookFormat": "slack"
}

Competitor watch across all of Reddit

{
  "keywords": ["CompetitorX", "competitor x alternative"],
  "watchScope": "all_reddit",
  "stream": "both",
  "ignoreKeywords": ["hiring", "job"],
  "lookback": 500,
  "maxMatches": 20
}

Lead & intent discovery

{
  "keywords": ["looking for", "recommend", "alternative to"],
  "watchScope": "specific_subreddits",
  "subreddits": ["saas", "entrepreneur"],
  "stream": "comments",
  "matchMode": "substring",
  "minUpvotes": 2
}

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🤖 Built for LLMs, AI agents & MCP

This Actor is designed to be driven by automation and AI — not just clicked in a dashboard. Inputs and outputs are fully schema-documented, so an LLM can call it correctly on the first try and consume the results without any parsing glue.

Why it's LLM-friendly

• Self-describing schema — every input field has a title, type, and description the model can read.
• Predictable JSON output — flat, consistently named fields with a matchedSnippet that's ready to feed straight into a prompt.
• Deterministic filters — keyword logic and thresholds are explicit, so an agent can reason about and tune results.

Use with Apify MCP (Model Context Protocol)

The Apify MCP Server exposes this Actor as a callable tool for MCP-compatible clients such as Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, and ChatGPT. Once connected, an assistant can search for, configure, and run the Actor and read its results — all in natural language.

Connect via the hosted MCP endpoint:

https://mcp.apify.com

Example MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

Then just ask your assistant, for example:

"Use the Reddit Keyword Monitor to check r/technology and r/startups for any new mentions of 'Acme Corp' in the last 100 posts and comments, and summarize the sentiment."

The agent fills in the input, runs the Actor, and reads the matches back automatically.

Run it programmatically (Apify API)

Start a run and get results via the standard Apify REST API — ideal for backends, cron jobs, and agent tools:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_USERNAME~reddit-keyword-monitor/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "keywords": ["openai"],
    "watchScope": "specific_subreddits",
    "subreddits": ["technology", "artificial"],
    "stream": "both",
    "lookback": 100
  }'

Fetch the matches from the run's dataset:

$curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/DATASET_ID/items?token=YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN"

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Alerts: Slack & webhooks

Set webhookUrl to get notified on every match. Matches are always saved to the dataset first, and the webhook fires in addition — so you get both a permanent record and a real-time ping.

• webhookFormat: "json" — a compact JSON payload with keywords, snippet, subreddit, and permalink.
• webhookFormat: "slack" — a ready-to-post Slack message with a "View on Reddit" button.

Slack in 4 steps:

1. Create an Incoming Webhook in your Slack workspace.
2. Paste the URL into webhookUrl.
3. Set webhookFormat to "slack".
4. Schedule the Actor — matches land in your channel instantly.

You can also use native Apify webhooks to push the whole dataset to your backend when a run finishes.

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Scheduling & deduplication

For always-on monitoring, set runMode to "scheduled_monitor" and add an Apify Schedule (e.g. every 1–5 minutes).

• Remembers position automatically — the newest seen item per subreddit is stored between runs.
• Only new matches — no repeats, no duplicate alerts.
• Manual control — pass sinceId to start from a specific point; it's merged with saved state (the newer boundary wins).

Tip: for scheduled runs, leave sinceId empty and let the Actor handle dedupe for you.

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Popular use cases

• Brand & reputation monitoring — catch mentions before they trend.
• Competitor intelligence — track launches, complaints, and comparisons.
• Lead & intent discovery — surface buyers actively asking for solutions.
• Community & support — jump into threads about your product early.
• Crypto & finance pulse — watch tickers and projects across trading subreddits.
• Crisis detection — combine ignore-keywords and upvote thresholds to cut noise.

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Integrations

• Apify Scheduler — cron-style runs at any interval.
• Apify Webhooks — push results to your backend on run finish.
• Slack — per-match alerts via webhookUrl.
• Zapier / Make — webhook → spreadsheet, email, CRM, and 1000s of apps.
• Google Sheets — sync the dataset or route via webhook middleware.
• Apify MCP & API — for AI agents, LLM tools, and custom code.

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FAQ

Do I need a Reddit API key or developer account? No. It works out of the box with zero setup.

Will I get duplicate alerts? Only if you want them. In scheduled_monitor mode, dedupe is automatic — you only ever see new matches. One-off runs scan fresh each time.

Can I monitor all of Reddit at once? Yes — set watchScope to "all_reddit".

How fast can I schedule it? Every 1–5 minutes works great for near-real-time monitoring.

Is it expensive to run continuously? No — it's lightweight and runs on as little as 512 MB RAM, so continuous monitoring stays cheap.

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📬 Need a custom scraper or web app? Let's build it.

I'm DrunkCodes — I build custom data and software solutions, and I'm available for freelance and contract work. If this Actor is close to what you need but not quite, or you have something entirely different in mind, reach out.

I can help you with:

• 🕸️ Custom scrapers & Apify Actors — any website, marketplace, social platform, or API, built fast and built to last.
• 🤖 Data pipelines & automations — monitoring, alerting, enrichment, and delivery into your tools of choice.
• 🌐 Web apps of any kind — dashboards, internal tools, SaaS products, landing pages, and full-stack builds.
• 🔌 Integrations — connect data sources, LLMs, MCP tools, Slack, CRMs, and more.

Get in touch:

• 📧 Email: dubem115@gmail.com
• 💻 GitHub: github.com/DrunkCodes

Tell me what you're trying to achieve and I'll help you get there. No project too big or too small.

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License

ISC