Reddit Lead & Intent Finder — Turn Reddit Into a Warm Lead Pipeline

Find people on Reddit who are actively asking to buy, switch, or get help — right now. This Actor scans posts and comments for real buying and help intent ("looking for a tool that…", "recommend an alternative to X", "anyone know how to…", "frustrated with Y", "best CRM for startups") and hands you a clean, scored list of warm leads — the person, what they said, the matched intent, and a 0–100 relevance score.

Stop scrolling Reddit manually. Give it your product keywords and a few subreddits (or search queries), click Start, and pipe fresh, qualified leads straight to your CRM, Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, or Make — no setup, no browser, with optional built-in proxy support.

⚡ Built for speed & cost. A lightweight lead engine — runs fast, uses as little as 256–512 MB RAM, and costs a fraction of heavy browser-based tools.

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Why this Actor

• 🔥 Real intent, not noise — five tunable intent categories (recommendation, alternative-seeking, problem/help, pain points, buying signals) plus your own custom phrases and regex.
• 🎯 On-topic by default — a lead must mention your product/topic and show intent, so you get prospects, not chatter.
• 📊 Scored & ranked — every lead gets a 0–100 relevance score with a transparent breakdown (intent, topic, recency, engagement). Filter with minRelevance.
• 🧹 Bot & throwaway filtering — optional author enrichment (karma, account age, verified) with minKarma / minAccountAgeDays gates.
• 🔁 Incremental by design — scheduled runs remember what they've seen and emit only new leads.
• 🔔 Instant delivery — push each new lead to a webhook in JSON or Slack format.
• ✅ Works out of the box — no Reddit developer account or API setup required.
• 🤖 MCP-friendly — documented input/output schemas and copy-paste JSON for Apify MCP & LLM agents.

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Who is this for?

You are…	You get…
B2B / SaaS founder	People openly shopping for (or complaining about) tools like yours
Growth / demand-gen team	A steady feed of warm, intent-scored prospects to reach out to
Agency / lead-gen shop	Repeatable lead pipelines per client, delivered to their CRM
Social seller	Real conversations to join — with the exact quote and a direct link
Competitor conquesting	Catch "alternative to <competitor>" and "switching from <competitor>" the moment they post
Community / support team	Spot frustrated users and unanswered questions to help first

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How it works (3 steps)

1. Tell it what you sell — add topicKeywords (your category + competitor names).
2. Pick where to look — searchQueries for Reddit search, and/or subreddits to scan recent posts & comments. Choose mode: "both" to do both.
3. Get scored leads — each matching post/comment becomes a lead row with the matched intent phrase, intent category, topic keywords, a snippet, and a relevance score. Optionally stream them to a webhook.

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Intent categories

Toggle any of these built-in presets (or use all), and add your own phrases on top:

Category	Signals it catches (examples)
seeking_recommendation	"recommend", "any suggestions", "what should I use", "looking for a", "best … for"
alternative_seeking	"alternative to", "switching from", "instead of", "replacement for", "vs"
problem_help	"how do I", "anyone know", "need help", "struggling with", "can't figure out"
pain_point	"frustrated with", "hate that", "too expensive", "wish there was"
buying_intent	"ready to buy", "budget for", "pricing", "worth it", "free trial"

Add customIntentPhrases, choose matchMode (substring, word, or regex), and toggle caseSensitive for full control.

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Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
topicKeywords	string[]	–	Product/category/competitor terms a lead must mention. Recommended.
searchQueries	string[]	–	Queries for search mode.
subreddits	string[]	–	Subreddits to scan / scope search. Use ["all"] to search across all of Reddit instead of specific communities.
mode	string	both	search, scan, or both.
stream	string	posts	posts, comments, or both (scan mode).
intentPresets	string[]	all	Which built-in intent categories to use.
customIntentPhrases	string[]	[]	Extra intent phrases / regex.
matchMode	string	substring	substring, word, or regex.
caseSensitive	boolean	false	Case-sensitive phrase matching.
requireTopicMatch	boolean	true	Require a topic keyword and an intent phrase.
ignoreKeywords	string[]	[]	Skip content containing these words.
searchSort	string	relevance	relevance, hot, top, new, comments.
searchTime	string	all	hour, day, week, month, year, all.
resultsPerQuery	integer	50	Search results to examine per query (1–1000).
lookback	integer	50	Recent posts/comments to scan per subreddit (1–1000).
enrichAuthor	boolean	false	Fetch author karma/age/verified.
minAccountAgeDays	integer	0	Drop authors newer than this (auto-enriches).
minKarma	integer	0	Drop authors below this total karma (auto-enriches).
minRelevance	integer	0	Only keep leads scoring at/above this (0–100). Guide: 0 = all matches, 40–55 = balanced, 60–75 = strong leads, 80+ = strictest.
minScore	integer	0	Minimum net upvotes (upvotes − downvotes). 0 keeps fresh leads; raise to 5–20 for more-validated threads.
includeNsfw	boolean	false	Include NSFW posts.
excludeLockedOrRemoved	boolean	true	Skip locked/removed content.
authorAllowlist	string[]	[]	Only these usernames.
authorDenylist	string[]	[]	Never these usernames.
sinceId	string	""	Only leads newer than this Reddit fullname.
maxLeads	integer	0	Stop after N leads (0 = unlimited).
webhookUrl	string	""	POST each new lead here in addition to saving it to the dataset.
webhookFormat	string	json	json or slack.
includeRaw	boolean	false	Attach the full raw object.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy (US Residential)	Connection settings.

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Output

One row per lead, tagged featureType: "lead":

Field	Description
leadType	post or comment
discoveryMode	search or scan
subreddit, author, authorFullname	Where and who
title, body, url, permalink, postUrl	The content + direct outreach link
score, numComments, createdAtISO	Engagement & recency
matchedIntentCategory	Primary intent category
matchedIntentCategories, matchedIntentPhrases	All matched categories & phrases
matchedTopicKeywords	Topic keywords that matched
matchedSnippet, matchedIn	Snippet around the match + where it matched
relevanceScore	0–100 overall score
scoreBreakdown	{ intent, topic, recency, engagement }
authorProfile	Karma, account age, verified (when enrichment is on)

Dataset views

• Overview — score, intent, author, title, snippet, link.
• Leads — full detail with intent phrases, topics, and score breakdown.
• Post leads — leads sourced from posts.
• Comment leads — leads sourced from comments.

Example lead

{
  "featureType": "lead",
  "leadType": "post",
  "discoveryMode": "scan",
  "subreddit": "smallbusiness",
  "author": "growthhacker22",
  "title": "HubSpot is too expensive for a 5-person team — alternatives?",
  "matchedIntentCategory": "alternative_seeking",
  "matchedIntentPhrases": ["alternative to", "too expensive"],
  "matchedTopicKeywords": ["hubspot", "CRM"],
  "matchedSnippet": "…HubSpot is too expensive, looking for an alternative to it for our small team CRM…",
  "matchedIn": "title+body",
  "relevanceScore": 84,
  "scoreBreakdown": { "intent": 34, "topic": 20, "recency": 20, "engagement": 10 },
  "postUrl": "https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/abc123/..."
}

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Run it via API / MCP

Example input payload for the Apify API, SDK, or an MCP/LLM agent:

{
  "topicKeywords": ["CRM", "hubspot", "salesforce"],
  "searchQueries": ["best CRM for startups", "hubspot alternative"],
  "subreddits": ["smallbusiness", "sales", "Entrepreneur"],
  "mode": "both",
  "stream": "both",
  "intentPresets": ["seeking_recommendation", "alternative_seeking", "pain_point", "buying_intent"],
  "requireTopicMatch": true,
  "minRelevance": 55,
  "enrichAuthor": true,
  "minAccountAgeDays": 30,
  "maxLeads": 200,
  "webhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/XXX/YYY/ZZZ",
  "webhookFormat": "slack"
}

Start a run with the Apify API:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_USERNAME~reddit-lead-and-intent-finder/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "topicKeywords": ["CRM","hubspot"], "subreddits": ["smallbusiness"], "mode": "scan" }'

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Scheduling, webhooks & CRM/Slack

• Leads always land in the dataset. The webhook is an additional real-time push — every lead is saved to the run's dataset regardless, so nothing is lost and your run always produces output.
• Schedule the Actor (e.g. every 15–60 minutes) from the Apify console. Thanks to the built-in incremental cursor, each run returns only new leads — no duplicates.
• Slack: set webhookFormat: "slack" and paste a Slack Incoming Webhook URL into webhookUrl to get a formatted alert per lead.
• CRM / Sheets / Zapier / Make: set webhookFormat: "json" and point webhookUrl at your endpoint or automation to create a contact/row per lead.
• Bulk export: download the dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull it from the dataset API.

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FAQ

Do I need any setup or API keys? No. It works out of the box — just add your keywords and subreddits, then click Start.

How does the relevance score work? It blends four signals — intent strength, topic keyword hits, recency, and engagement — into a single 0–100 score, with a per-lead scoreBreakdown so you can see why.

How do I only get leads about my product? Keep requireTopicMatch: true (the default) and set topicKeywords to your category and competitor names. A lead must then match a topic and an intent phrase.

Will scheduled runs give me duplicates? No. The Actor persists a per-source cursor and only emits leads newer than the last run. You can also pass sinceId for a manual floor.

Can I search comments? Comment leads come from scan mode (stream: "comments" or "both"). Search mode returns post leads.

How do I filter out bots and throwaway accounts? Enable enrichAuthor and set minKarma and/or minAccountAgeDays.

Why use a proxy? Optional but recommended for the most reliable results on scheduled runs. The default Apify Proxy (US Residential) works well for most users.

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Need something custom? Let's build it

Beyond this Actor, I take on custom projects — and I'd love to help with yours:

• 🕷️ Custom scrapers & data pipelines — any website or platform, any scale, delivered as a ready-to-run Apify Actor, API, or scheduled data feed.
• 🌐 Web apps of any kind — dashboards, internal tools, SaaS products, landing pages, automations, and full-stack builds.
• 🔗 Integrations & automation — connect your data to CRMs, Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier/Make, or your own backend.

If you need a bespoke scraping solution, a web app, or an integration built end to end, get in touch and let's make it happen.

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