Reddit Buying Intent Lead Monitor

Find people asking for tools, vendors, recommendations, alternatives, pricing help, and competitor replacements on Reddit. This Actor uses Reddit search RSS feeds and turns posts into scored B2B leads with a suggested outreach angle.

What it does

• Searches Reddit for buyer-intent phrases such as looking for, recommend, alternative to, too expensive, and best tool.
• Supports global Reddit search or narrowed subreddit searches.
• Parses Reddit Atom/RSS entries without browser automation.
• Scores each post from 0 to 100 using buying-intent, competitor-replacement, pricing-pain, complaint-pain, business-context, and urgency signals.
• Outputs clean lead records with post URL, subreddit, author, title, content preview, matched intent, selected category preset, and outreach angle.
• Optional stateful deduplication stores previously returned Reddit URLs in the default key-value store, so scheduled daily alerts only emit fresh posts.
• Optional custom intent/category terms boost posts that mention your product category, competitor, or pain vocabulary and return the exact matched terms for routing.
• Optional category presets (crm-sales, marketing-automation, agency-services, ecommerce-shopify, developer-tools, project-management, finance-accounting, cybersecurity-compliance, lead-generation-sales-intelligence, hr-recruiting, seo-content-marketing, competitor-monitoring-market-intelligence, startup-fundraising-sales) preload proven intent, competitor, and exclusion dictionaries for faster setup.
• Optional competitor term tagging returns mentionedCompetitors for battlecard and replacement workflows without altering the score.
• Adds leadTier and alertRecommendation so scheduled runs can route hot leads immediately while batching lower-confidence matches for review.
• Adds alertSummary, a compact Slack/Discord/n8n-friendly one-line summary for immediate webhook notifications.
• Optional exclusion terms skip known noisy posts before scoring, such as homework, coupon, hiring, or support-only discussions.

Best use cases

• SaaS teams finding prospects asking for tools in their category.
• Agencies monitoring Reddit for service-buying discussions.
• Product marketers tracking competitor pain and replacement demand.
• Sales teams building daily warm-lead alerts.
• Founders validating demand and copy from real buyer language.

Example input

{
  "queries": [
    "\"looking for\" CRM",
    "\"alternative to\" HubSpot",
    "\"recommend\" email marketing tool"
  ],
  "subreddits": ["sales", "smallbusiness", "SaaS"],
  "maxItems": 50,
  "minIntentScore": 40,
  "daysBack": 14,
  "categoryPreset": "crm-sales",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["pipeline reporting", "lead scoring", "sales automation"],
  "competitorTerms": ["HubSpot", "Salesforce", "Pipedrive"],
  "excludedTerms": ["homework", "coupon", "hiring"],
  "includeNegativeIntent": true,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "crm-alerts"
}

Output fields

Field	Description
intentScore	0 to 100 lead score.
matchedIntent	Human-readable matched signal labels.
categoryPreset	Selected campaign preset, useful for routing daily alert streams in webhooks/CRMs.
matchedExtraIntentTerms	Configured category/intent terms found in the post title or content.
mentionedCompetitors	Configured competitor/vendor terms found in the post title or content.
leadTier	Routing tier: hot, warm, review, or low, based on score, competitor mentions, and category matches.
alertSummary	Compact one-line alert copy including tier, score, preset, subreddit, title, and top competitor mentions.
alertRecommendation	Suggested handling for alerting or batching the lead.
outreachAngle	Suggested positioning for a useful, non-spammy reply or follow-up.
title	Reddit post title.
content	Text extracted from the RSS entry summary/content.
subreddit	Subreddit parsed from the URL.
author	Reddit author when included in the feed.
updatedAt	Reddit feed update timestamp.
url	Reddit post URL.
query	Search query that found the post.
source	Data source label.

Example output

{
  "intentScore": 86,
  "matchedIntent": "active search; pricing pain; business context",
  "categoryPreset": "crm-sales",
  "alertSummary": "[HOT 86/100] crm-sales in r/sales: Looking for a CRM for our small sales team",
  "outreachAngle": "Lead shows pricing pain. Lead with ROI, lower-cost plan, or transparent pricing.",
  "title": "Looking for a CRM for our small sales team",
  "subreddit": "sales",
  "author": "u_example",
  "updatedAt": "2026-07-04T00:00:00Z",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/.../",
  "query": "\"looking for\" CRM",
  "source": "Reddit search RSS"
}

Query ideas

Use category-specific queries:

"looking for" CRM
"recommend" invoicing software
"alternative to" HubSpot
"too expensive" Salesforce
"best tool" cold email
"need" accounting software "small business"

Category campaign templates

Use these as narrow daily alert streams with enableStatefulDedup: true, daysBack: 1-3, and a unique dedupeKey per category. Keep minIntentScore at 45+ for sales alerts, then lower it temporarily during discovery runs.

You can now set categoryPreset to preload the matching intent dictionary, competitor list, and common exclusions, then use extraIntentTerms, competitorTerms, and excludedTerms to add account-specific vocabulary on top.

Market-backed preset shortlist

If you are unsure where to start, prioritize recurring B2B categories that map to current Apify Store demand signals:

1. seo-content-marketing — use for SEO tools and agencies because general SEO demand is proven, but Reddit lets you target recommendation and pain threads instead of another saturated search scraper.
2. lead-generation-sales-intelligence — use for sales teams because generic lead-generation Store supply is weak, while Reddit buying-intent monitoring creates a differentiated warm-lead workflow.
3. competitor-monitoring-market-intelligence — use for product marketing and competitive-intel teams watching replacement, pricing, and battlecard discussions.

Current Apify Store snapshot (2026-08-17): generic reddit actors show proven demand with 13,119 top-5 users in 30 days, while reddit leads remains under-served at only 18 top-5 users. Adjacent B2B workflows are stronger than the specialized supply: seo has 15,625 top-5 users, broad lead generation has only 78 top-5 users, and competitor monitoring has 141 top-5 users. Start with the SEO/content-marketing and lead-generation/sales-intelligence presets first, then use competitor monitoring as a lower-urgency market-intelligence campaign.

CRM and sales software

{
  "queries": ["\"looking for\" CRM", "\"alternative to\" HubSpot", "\"Salesforce\" \"too expensive\""],
  "subreddits": ["sales", "smallbusiness", "SaaS", "Entrepreneur"],
  "categoryPreset": "crm-sales",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["pipeline reporting", "lead scoring", "sales automation", "contact management"],
  "competitorTerms": ["HubSpot", "Salesforce", "Pipedrive", "Zoho"],
  "excludedTerms": ["homework", "student project", "coupon", "hiring"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "crm-daily-alerts"
}

Marketing automation and email tools

{
  "queries": ["\"recommend\" email marketing tool", "\"alternative to\" Mailchimp", "\"marketing automation\" \"too expensive\""],
  "subreddits": ["marketing", "Emailmarketing", "smallbusiness", "SaaS"],
  "categoryPreset": "marketing-automation",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["email sequences", "newsletter", "segmentation", "marketing automation"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Mailchimp", "Klaviyo", "HubSpot", "ActiveCampaign"],
  "excludedTerms": ["deliverability issue", "free coupon", "job", "hiring"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "marketing-automation-daily-alerts"
}

Agency/service buying intent

{
  "queries": ["\"looking for\" agency", "\"recommend\" SEO agency", "\"need\" web design agency"],
  "subreddits": ["smallbusiness", "Entrepreneur", "startups", "marketing"],
  "categoryPreset": "agency-services",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["SEO", "paid ads", "web design", "content marketing", "lead generation"],
  "competitorTerms": [],
  "excludedTerms": ["we are an agency", "our services", "portfolio", "for hire"],
  "minIntentScore": 50,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "agency-buying-intent-daily-alerts"
}

Ecommerce and Shopify apps

{
  "queries": ["\"looking for\" Shopify app", "\"alternative to\" Klaviyo", "\"cart abandonment\" \"recommend\""],
  "subreddits": ["shopify", "ecommerce", "smallbusiness", "Entrepreneur"],
  "categoryPreset": "ecommerce-shopify",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["Shopify app", "cart abandonment", "inventory sync", "subscriptions"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Shopify", "Klaviyo", "Recharge", "Yotpo", "Gorgias"],
  "excludedTerms": ["dropshipping course", "theme download", "job", "hiring"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "ecommerce-shopify-daily-alerts"
}

Developer tools and DevOps software

{
  "queries": ["\"looking for\" error tracking", "\"alternative to\" Datadog", "\"recommend\" API monitoring"],
  "subreddits": ["devops", "SaaS", "webdev", "ExperiencedDevs", "startups"],
  "categoryPreset": "developer-tools",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["API monitoring", "error tracking", "CI/CD", "observability"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Datadog", "Sentry", "Postman", "GitHub Actions", "LaunchDarkly"],
  "excludedTerms": ["homework", "student project", "tutorial", "job", "hiring"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "developer-tools-daily-alerts"
}

Project management and operations software

{
  "queries": ["\"looking for\" project management tool", "\"alternative to\" Asana", "\"ClickUp\" \"too expensive\""],
  "subreddits": ["projectmanagement", "smallbusiness", "Entrepreneur", "SaaS"],
  "categoryPreset": "project-management",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["resource planning", "client portal", "time tracking", "workflow automation"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Asana", "Monday.com", "ClickUp", "Trello", "Jira", "Basecamp"],
  "excludedTerms": ["homework", "school project", "template download", "job", "hiring"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "project-management-daily-alerts"
}

Finance and accounting software

{
  "queries": ["\"looking for\" accounting software", "\"alternative to\" QuickBooks", "\"expense management\" \"recommend\""],
  "subreddits": ["smallbusiness", "Entrepreneur", "accounting", "SaaS"],
  "categoryPreset": "finance-accounting",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["bookkeeping", "accounts payable", "invoicing", "payroll", "cash flow"],
  "competitorTerms": ["QuickBooks", "Xero", "FreshBooks", "Wave", "Gusto"],
  "excludedTerms": ["homework", "school assignment", "tax advice only", "job", "hiring"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "finance-accounting-daily-alerts"
}

Cybersecurity and compliance software

{
  "queries": ["\"looking for\" SOC 2 tool", "\"alternative to\" Vanta", "\"security questionnaire\" \"recommend\""],
  "subreddits": ["cybersecurity", "SaaS", "sysadmin", "msp", "startups"],
  "categoryPreset": "cybersecurity-compliance",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["SOC 2", "security questionnaire", "vendor risk", "compliance automation"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Vanta", "Drata", "Secureframe", "Wiz", "CrowdStrike"],
  "excludedTerms": ["homework", "certification exam", "ctf", "job", "hiring"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "cybersecurity-compliance-daily-alerts"
}

Lead generation and sales intelligence

{
  "queries": ["\"looking for\" lead generation tool", "\"alternative to\" Apollo", "\"sales intelligence\" \"recommend\""],
  "subreddits": ["sales", "SaaS", "smallbusiness", "Entrepreneur", "startups"],
  "categoryPreset": "lead-generation-sales-intelligence",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["buyer intent", "prospecting", "contact enrichment", "cold email list"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Apollo", "ZoomInfo", "Clay", "Clearbit", "Lusha"],
  "excludedTerms": ["we provide leads", "appointment setting service", "job", "hiring", "affiliate"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "lead-generation-sales-intelligence-daily-alerts"
}

HR and recruiting software

{
  "queries": ["\"looking for\" ATS", "\"alternative to\" Greenhouse", "\"recruiting software\" \"recommend\""],
  "subreddits": ["recruiting", "humanresources", "smallbusiness", "SaaS", "startups"],
  "categoryPreset": "hr-recruiting",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["applicant tracking", "candidate sourcing", "interview scheduling", "employee onboarding"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Greenhouse", "Lever", "Workday", "BambooHR", "Ashby"],
  "excludedTerms": ["resume review", "career advice", "job seeker", "interview tips", "hiring now"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "hr-recruiting-daily-alerts"
}

SEO and content marketing tools

{
  "queries": ["\"looking for\" keyword research tool", "\"alternative to\" Ahrefs", "\"rank tracking\" \"recommend\""],
  "subreddits": ["SEO", "bigseo", "content_marketing", "smallbusiness", "SaaS"],
  "categoryPreset": "seo-content-marketing",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["keyword research", "rank tracking", "technical SEO", "content briefs"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Ahrefs", "Semrush", "Moz", "Surfer SEO", "Clearscope"],
  "excludedTerms": ["guest post spam", "link exchange", "PBN", "job", "hiring"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "seo-content-marketing-daily-alerts"
}

Competitor monitoring and market intelligence

{
  "queries": ["\"looking for\" competitor monitoring", "\"alternative to\" Crayon", "\"market intelligence\" \"recommend\""],
  "subreddits": ["marketing", "SaaS", "productmarketing", "startups", "sales"],
  "categoryPreset": "competitor-monitoring-market-intelligence",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["price tracking", "competitive intelligence", "battlecards", "news monitoring"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Klue", "Crayon", "Kompyte", "AlphaSense", "Similarweb"],
  "excludedTerms": ["stock market", "crypto signals", "school project", "job", "hiring"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "competitor-monitoring-daily-alerts"
}

Startup fundraising and sales triggers

Use this when selling to recently funded startups or validating workflows adjacent to the live SEC Form D Startup Fundraising Leads Actor.

{
  "queries": ["\"recently funded\" startup sales", "\"seed funding\" \"looking for\" vendor", "\"alternative to\" Crunchbase"],
  "subreddits": ["startups", "SaaS", "sales", "Entrepreneur", "venturecapital"],
  "categoryPreset": "startup-fundraising-sales",
  "extraIntentTerms": ["runway", "new capital", "sales vendor", "growth stack"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Crunchbase", "PitchBook", "Apollo", "ZoomInfo", "Clay"],
  "excludedTerms": ["raise capital for you", "fundraising service", "crypto", "job", "hiring"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 2,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "startup-fundraising-sales-daily-alerts"
}

Product Hunt launch and founder leads

This is the next adjacent actor idea if Reddit activation stalls: monitor daily launches and makers, then enrich founder/company profiles for agencies, dev-tool sellers, fundraising services, and partnership teams. Store demand is modest but stable (product hunt top-5 actors at 206 users in 30 days on 2026-08-17), and one current top result has 100+ users, so a focused founder-lead workflow can differentiate with scoring and CRM-ready output.

Use Reddit as the validation channel before building the separate actor:

{
  "queries": ["\"launched on Product Hunt\" \"looking for\"", "\"Product Hunt\" \"recommend\" founder", "\"launching\" \"need\" marketing tool"],
  "subreddits": ["startups", "SaaS", "Entrepreneur", "indiehackers", "marketing"],
  "extraIntentTerms": ["Product Hunt", "launch day", "maker", "founder", "go-to-market"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Product Hunt", "BetaList", "Launch YC", "Hacker News"],
  "excludedTerms": ["upvote exchange", "launch spam", "job", "hiring"],
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "daysBack": 3,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "product-hunt-founder-leads-validation"
}

Pricing strategy

Pay per qualified lead:

• small actor-start fee per run,
• qualified-lead event only when a lead is written to the dataset.

This aligns cost with useful output and works well for recurring daily monitoring.

Scheduling ideas

Run daily with focused category queries and send dataset results to Slack, Discord, Airtable, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Salesforce, or n8n. Enable enableStatefulDedup for recurring alert workflows. Use a different dedupeKey per campaign or product category if you want separate seen-post histories.

Lightweight webhook routing templates

For Slack, Discord, or n8n routes, keep the dataset payload small and human-reviewable. Recommended message fields:

• alertSummary for the message headline, plus intentScore and matchedIntent for triage.
• title, subreddit, author, and url for context.
• mentionedCompetitors and matchedExtraIntentTerms for routing to the right owner.
• categoryPreset for campaign-level routing when multiple presets feed the same destination.
• outreachAngle as the recommended next action.

Suggested alert rule: only notify immediately when intentScore >= 70 or mentionedCompetitors is non-empty; batch lower-score leads into a daily review view. This reduces spam risk and makes the Actor safer for scheduled sales workflows.

Example Slack/n8n alert payload

Use alertSummary as the main message and keep the rest of the fields explicit so downstream tools can filter without parsing free text:

{
  "text": "{{alertSummary}}",
  "leadTier": "{{leadTier}}",
  "intentScore": "{{intentScore}}",
  "matchedIntent": "{{matchedIntent}}",
  "categoryPreset": "{{categoryPreset}}",
  "subreddit": "{{subreddit}}",
  "url": "{{url}}",
  "mentionedCompetitors": "{{mentionedCompetitors}}",
  "outreachAngle": "{{outreachAngle}}"
}

Recommended routing:

• Send hot leads, or any lead with mentionedCompetitors, directly to Slack/Discord.
• Send warm and review leads to Airtable, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Salesforce, or an n8n approval queue.
• Keep separate scheduled tasks and dedupeKey values for seo-content-marketing and lead-generation-sales-intelligence so each team gets focused alerts.

Daily alert recipe

For the highest-signal daily sales workflow, keep each run narrow: 3-8 category queries, 3-10 relevant subreddits, daysBack of 1-3, minIntentScore of 45+, and stateful dedupe enabled. Add excludedTerms for recurring false positives such as homework, coupon, jobs, hiring, or support-only phrases. Start broad for a discovery run, then schedule separate campaigns by ICP so each dataset is easy to route to the right sales or founder workflow.

Example focused CRM campaign:

{
  "queries": [
    "\"looking for\" CRM",
    "\"alternative to\" HubSpot",
    "\"Salesforce\" \"too expensive\""
  ],
  "subreddits": ["sales", "smallbusiness", "SaaS"],
  "daysBack": 2,
  "minIntentScore": 45,
  "enableStatefulDedup": true,
  "dedupeKey": "crm-daily-alerts"
}

Data source and limitations

• Source: public Reddit search RSS/Atom feeds.
• Reddit can rate-limit RSS endpoints, especially subreddit-specific searches. The Actor retries and skips temporarily blocked feeds instead of failing the whole run.
• This Actor does not log in, bypass access controls, solve CAPTCHAs, or scrape private content.
• Reddit leads require careful, helpful engagement. Use the output for research and thoughtful replies, not spam.

Roadmap

• More category-specific example campaign templates.
• More category presets and richer per-category scoring dictionaries. (Initial presets are implemented via categoryPreset.)
• Competitor-name extraction. (Initial configured competitor tagging is implemented via competitorTerms.)
• More Slack/Discord webhook examples and integration screenshots.
• CRM enrichment fields.