Reddit Post & Comments Scraper | Bulk Thread Export (2026)

2026-10-06: Replies fetched through full expansion now carry their correct depth. Gallery links and Reddit search URLs are accepted, image links are reported instead of read as posts, and post rows gain createdAt; comment rows gain subreddit, postTitle, isSubmitter and url.

Built by Clearpath, with 150,000+ combined lifetime runs across Reddit Search, Post & Comments and Subreddit Posts. A specialist suite for Reddit research.

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clearpath/reddit-post-comments-bulk-scraper on Apify collects Reddit posts with their comment trees: one post row plus one row per comment (body, author, score, depth, parentId, flags), from post URLs, gallery links, short links or IDs (postUrl, postUrls, postUrlsFile; a Reddit search URL runs as keywords, image/video file links are skipped) or, only when no URLs are given, from search keywords (queries, relevance-ranked; maxPostsPerQuery default 25, max 250, 1,000 found posts per run). Defaults return up to 200 comments per post (maxCommentsPerPost; 0 = unlimited) in best order (sort: best|top|new|old|controversial|qa) and skip collapsed 'load more' reply chains: for the complete thread set expandAllComments=true (usually a few percent more run time). For AMA/Q&A threads set filter=answered (OP replied) or filter=unanswered, usually with sort=qa. Deleted or private posts return a row with _status not_found or unavailable and are not charged; deleted comments are returned and charged. Pricing: pay per event, $2.99 per 1,000 posts plus $0.99 per 1,000 comments, see https://apify.com/clearpath/reddit-post-comments-bulk-scraper. Full input schema and README: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/clearpath~reddit-post-comments-bulk-scraper/builds/default To reach the maintainers, add feedback="<what you needed and did not get>" to any run, including one that worked: feature requests, a missing field or option, a wrong or empty result, or which actor you are switching to or from and why. The run returns its data exactly as it would without the note, and a human reads every note.

Why choose this actor?

10,000 comments in under 200 seconds. Collect comments from multiple posts in parallel, with full text, authors, scores and reply relationships. The bulk run used standard collection; full reply expansion takes longer.

Go further with full reply expansion. Include collapsed discussions and deeply nested replies. Keep the parent comment and reply depth for every comment, so you can follow who replied to whom. Export post details alongside the discussion.

Start with post links or keywords. Paste Reddit links, upload a list or find matching posts by topic. Choose from six comment sort orders, or filter AMA threads for questions answered by the original poster.

Quick start

Try one discussion with reply expansion enabled and a 50-comment cap.

{
  "postUrl": "https://www.reddit.com/r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus/comments/1k2vnz0/",
  "sort": "top",
  "maxCommentsPerPost": 50,
  "expandAllComments": true
}

Open actor input to paste your post link or add a batch. Set maxCommentsPerPost to 0 with reply expansion enabled to collect all available comments. Export JSON, CSV or Excel.

Posts and comments are billed separately. Full expansion takes longer on large discussions. Deleted or unavailable comment text cannot be recovered.

Clearpath · Reddit Suite

Comments You are here  Search Keyword research  Subreddits Community feeds  User Content Posts & comments  Profiles Karma & accounts

Key Features

• Fast bulk processing — processes multiple posts concurrently, so bulk runs finish in minutes instead of hours
• Full comment tree expansion — optionally scrape every comment in a thread, including deeply nested reply chains that Reddit collapses behind "load more" links
• 6 sort orders — best, top, new, old, controversial, Q&A. Each sort order returns a different ranking of the same comments
• Q&A/AMA filtering — isolate comments answered by the original poster, or find unanswered questions only. Built for extracting structured knowledge from AMA threads
• Bulk input, any format — paste URLs one by one, use bulk edit to paste a list, or upload a CSV/TXT file with thousands of post links. Accepts full URLs, short links, and bare post IDs
• Find posts by keyword — no URLs handy? Enter search keywords and the actor finds the matching posts, then scrapes all their comments. Supports subreddit: scoping and exact-phrase quotes

How to Scrape Reddit Post Comments

Single post, default settings

Paste any Reddit post URL. The actor fetches the post metadata and up to 200 comments sorted by best.

{
    "postUrl": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1k2vnz0/"
}

Short links and bare IDs also work:

{
    "postUrl": "redd.it/1k2vnz0"
}

{
    "postUrl": "1k2vnz0"
}

You can use any of these formats interchangeably. The actor normalizes all inputs before processing.

All comments, sorted by top

Set maxCommentsPerPost to 0 and enable expandAllComments to get the complete comment tree. Use sort to control the ordering.

{
    "postUrl": "https://www.reddit.com/r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus/comments/1k2vnz0/",
    "sort": "top",
    "maxCommentsPerPost": 0,
    "expandAllComments": true
}

This configuration captures every single comment in the thread, including replies nested 10+ levels deep that Reddit hides behind "continue this thread" links. Expect longer run times for threads with thousands of comments.

Multiple posts in one run

Use the postUrls array for small batches. Mix any URL format freely.

{
    "postUrls": [
        "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1k2vnz0/",
        "redd.it/abc123",
        "t3_xyz789"
    ],
    "sort": "new",
    "maxCommentsPerPost": 500
}

The actor processes posts in parallel, so adding more posts doesn't proportionally increase run time.

Bulk from file

Upload a .txt or .csv file through the Apify Console, or point to a hosted file URL. TXT files expect one URL per line. CSV files auto-detect a url or permalink column.

{
    "postUrlsFile": "https://example.com/my-post-urls.csv",
    "sort": "best",
    "maxCommentsPerPost": 100
}

You can also drag and drop a file directly into the "Post URLs file" field in the Apify Console. This is the fastest way to run large batches without writing any code.

Find posts by keyword

No post URLs handy? Leave the URL fields empty and enter search keywords in queries. The actor finds the posts that match each keyword, then scrapes all their comments: the same full comment trees you get from a URL run. Use maxPostsPerQuery to control how many matching posts to pull per keyword.

{
    "queries": [
        "data privacy subreddit:de",
        "\"climate policy\""
    ],
    "maxPostsPerQuery": 25,
    "sort": "best",
    "maxCommentsPerPost": 200
}

Operators work inside a keyword: subreddit:AskReddit scopes the search to one subreddit, and quotes match an exact phrase. The full Reddit search syntax works here too: boolean AND/OR/NOT, exclusions, grouping, and field operators like author:, title:, and self:. See the full query syntax and recipes ↗ in the Reddit Search Scraper. If post URLs are also present, they take precedence and the keywords are ignored.

Q&A/AMA thread: only OP answers

Use sort: "qa" with filter: "answered" to get only comments that the original poster replied to. This turns a sprawling AMA with thousands of comments into a clean, structured Q&A dataset.

{
    "postUrl": "https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/abc123/",
    "sort": "qa",
    "filter": "answered",
    "maxCommentsPerPost": 0,
    "expandAllComments": true
}

Find unanswered questions

The opposite of the above. Set filter: "unanswered" to find questions in a Q&A thread that the OP never responded to.

{
    "postUrl": "https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/abc123/",
    "sort": "qa",
    "filter": "unanswered"
}

Controversial comments only

Get comments sorted by controversy. Reddit's controversial algorithm surfaces comments with a roughly equal number of upvotes and downvotes.

{
    "postUrl": "https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/abc123/",
    "sort": "controversial",
    "maxCommentsPerPost": 50
}

Chronological order

Sort by old to get comments in the order they were posted. Useful for analyzing how a discussion evolved over time.

{
    "postUrl": "https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/abc123/",
    "sort": "old",
    "maxCommentsPerPost": 0,
    "expandAllComments": true
}

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
postUrl	string		A single Reddit post URL, short link (redd.it/abc), or post ID
postUrls	string[]	[]	Multiple post URLs or IDs. Use "Bulk edit" to paste a list
postUrlsFile	string		Upload a .txt/.csv file, or paste a URL to a hosted file
sort	enum	best	Comment sort order: best, top, new, old, controversial, qa
filter	enum	(all)	Comment filter: all comments, answered (OP replies only), unanswered
maxCommentsPerPost	integer	200	Max comments to scrape per post. Set to 0 for unlimited
expandAllComments	boolean	false	Recursively expand every collapsed reply chain to capture the full tree. Usually only a few percent slower; on long discussions it adds the most comments
maxCommentAgeHours	number	—	Keep only comments created within this many hours before the run starts (e.g. 24). Older comments are skipped and not charged. The whole thread is still read, because recent replies arrive under older comments too. Empty keeps every comment

At least one of postUrl, postUrls, or postUrlsFile is required.

Sort order reference

Value	Behavior
best	Reddit's default. Confidence-weighted ranking that balances score and vote count
top	Highest score first (upvotes minus downvotes)
new	Most recent comments first
old	Oldest comments first (chronological)
controversial	Comments with roughly equal upvotes and downvotes
qa	Prioritizes comments from the original poster. Combine with filter for Q&A extraction

What Data Can You Extract from Reddit Posts?

The output contains two row types: post rows and comment rows. Each post you provide produces one post row and its comment rows. Several posts are scraped in parallel, so rows of different posts can interleave in the dataset; the _post_id field links every comment to its post, so group or sort by it when scraping multiple posts.

Post row

One post row per URL, carrying the full post object: every field Reddit exposes for the post (score, author, timestamps, flair, awards, media, content and moderation flags, subreddit subscriber count, and more). The example below is trimmed for readability; large nested objects (preview, media, all_awardings) are shown abbreviated or omitted.

{
    "_type": "post",
    "_post_id": "t3_1k2vnz0",
    "_status": "found",
    "title": "Mark and Helly's relationship is kinda strange",
    "subreddit": "SeveranceAppleTVPlus",
    "commentCount": 227,
    "id": "1k2vnz0",
    "name": "t3_1k2vnz0",
    "author": "leninzen",
    "author_fullname": "t2_6l4z3",
    "score": 1840,
    "upvote_ratio": 0.97,
    "num_comments": 227,
    "created_utc": 1745062800,
    "permalink": "/r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus/comments/1k2vnz0/mark_and_hellys_relationship_is_kinda_strange/",
    "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus/comments/1k2vnz0/...",
    "domain": "self.SeveranceAppleTVPlus",
    "selftext": "Watching their dynamic again and...",
    "is_self": true,
    "is_video": false,
    "over_18": false,
    "spoiler": false,
    "stickied": false,
    "locked": false,
    "archived": false,
    "edited": false,
    "link_flair_text": "Discussion",
    "link_flair_background_color": "#0079d3",
    "total_awards_received": 3,
    "all_awardings": [ { "name": "Wholesome", "count": 2 } ],
    "thumbnail": "self",
    "post_hint": null,
    "preview": { "images": [ { "source": { "url": "https://preview.redd.it/...", "width": 1200, "height": 630 } } ] },
    "subreddit_id": "t5_3i9si",
    "subreddit_subscribers": 412503
}

Comment row (top-level)

Top-level comments have depth: 0 and parentId: null. These are direct replies to the post.

{
    "_type": "comment",
    "_post_id": "t3_1k2vnz0",
    "_status": "found",
    "id": "t1_mnx5qs6",
    "author": "leninzen",
    "score": 1202,
    "createdAt": "2025-04-19T13:03:54.022000+0000",
    "editedAt": null,
    "depth": 0,
    "parentId": null,
    "permalink": "/r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus/comments/1k2vnz0/.../mnx5qs6/",
    "body": "You do see it slowly build tbh. Especially after Mark's response to Helly's hanging attempt...",
    "isStickied": false,
    "isLocked": false,
    "isScoreHidden": false,
    "distinguishedAs": null,
    "authorFlair": null,
    "isDeleted": false,
    "childCount": 11,
    "authorId": "t2_8xk2p",
    "authorAccountType": "USER",
    "authorIsCakeDay": false,
    "authorIcon": "https://styles.redditmedia.com/.../avatar.png",
    "languageCode": "en",
    "isArchived": false,
    "isRemoved": false,
    "removedByCategory": null,
    "isCommercialCommunication": false,
    "isInitiallyCollapsed": false,
    "contentTypeHint": "RTJSON"
}

Comment row (nested reply)

Replies have depth > 0 and a parentId pointing to the comment they're replying to. You can reconstruct the full thread tree from these two fields.

{
    "_type": "comment",
    "_post_id": "t3_1k2vnz0",
    "_status": "found",
    "id": "t1_mnxbiet",
    "author": "Lanky_Perception_136",
    "score": 408,
    "createdAt": "2025-04-19T13:42:11.000000+0000",
    "editedAt": null,
    "depth": 1,
    "parentId": "t1_mnx5qs6",
    "permalink": "/r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus/comments/1k2vnz0/.../mnxbiet/",
    "body": "Like her slight smirk when he tells her he's happy she's here...",
    "isStickied": false,
    "isLocked": false,
    "isScoreHidden": false,
    "distinguishedAs": null,
    "authorFlair": "Mr. Milkshake",
    "isDeleted": false,
    "childCount": 2,
    "authorId": "t2_5h2k9",
    "authorAccountType": "USER",
    "authorIsCakeDay": false,
    "authorIcon": "https://www.redditstatic.com/avatars/defaults/v2/avatar_default_6.png",
    "languageCode": "en",
    "isArchived": false,
    "isRemoved": false,
    "removedByCategory": null,
    "isCommercialCommunication": false,
    "isInitiallyCollapsed": false,
    "contentTypeHint": "RTJSON"
}

Full field reference

Post fields: the post row carries the full post object. The table lists the routing keys and the most-used fields; the row also includes every other field Reddit exposes for the post (author_fullname, is_video, media, preview, gallery_data, all_awardings, gilded, distinguished, removed_by_category, num_crossposts, crosspost_parent_list, link-flair colors, subreddit_id, and more).

Field	Type	Description
_type	string	Always "post"
_post_id	string	Reddit post ID (t3_ prefixed)
_status	string	found, not_found, or unavailable
title	string	Post title text
subreddit	string	Subreddit name without the r/ prefix
commentCount	integer	Total comment count reported by Reddit
createdAt / editedAt	string/null	ISO 8601 creation and edit timestamps, in the same spelling as comment rows
searchQuery	string	Keyword mode only: the keyword that found this post (also on its comment rows)
author	string	Username of the post author
score	integer	Net upvotes
upvote_ratio	number	Fraction of votes that are upvotes
num_comments	integer	Comment count on the post object
created_utc	number	Creation time, UNIX seconds (UTC)
permalink	string	Relative URL path to the post
url	string	Post URL (outbound link, or the post itself for self-posts)
selftext	string	Post body text (markdown) for self-posts
domain	string	Source domain (self.<sub> for self-posts)
is_self / is_video	boolean	Post type flags
over_18 / spoiler / stickied / locked / archived	boolean	Content and state flags
link_flair_text	string/null	Post flair text
total_awards_received	integer	Number of awards
subreddit_subscribers	integer	Subscriber count of the subreddit

Comment fields:

Field	Type	Description
_type	string	Always "comment"
_post_id	string	Parent post ID (t3_ prefixed), links this comment to its post
_status	string	found, not_found, or unavailable
id	string	Comment ID (t1_ prefixed)
author	string	Username of the commenter, or "[deleted]" when the comment or the account was deleted
score	integer	Upvotes minus downvotes
createdAt	string	ISO 8601 creation timestamp
editedAt	string/null	ISO 8601 edit timestamp, or null if never edited
depth	integer	Nesting depth. 0 = top-level reply to the post, 1 = reply to a top-level comment, etc.
parentId	string/null	Parent comment ID (t1_ prefixed), or null for top-level comments
permalink	string	Relative URL path to the comment on Reddit
body	string	Comment text in markdown format
isStickied	boolean	true if pinned by a moderator
isLocked	boolean	true if replies are disabled
isScoreHidden	boolean	true if the score is hidden by subreddit rules (usually for recent comments)
distinguishedAs	string/null	"moderator", "admin", or null for regular users
authorFlair	string/null	User's flair text in the subreddit, or null
isDeleted	boolean	true if the comment was deleted by the author or removed by moderators
childCount	integer	Number of direct replies to this comment
authorId	string/null	Author account ID (t2_ prefixed)
authorAccountType	string/null	Account type (e.g. USER)
authorIsCakeDay	boolean	true if the comment was posted on the author's account anniversary
authorIcon	string/null	Author avatar URL
languageCode	string/null	Detected language of the comment
isArchived	boolean	true if the comment is archived
isRemoved	boolean	true if removed by a moderator
removedByCategory	string/null	Removal reason category, or null
isCommercialCommunication	boolean	true if flagged as paid/commercial
isInitiallyCollapsed	boolean	true if collapsed by default (e.g. low score)
contentTypeHint	string/null	Body content format hint (e.g. RTJSON)
subreddit	string	The post's subreddit
postTitle	string	The post's title
isSubmitter	boolean/null	true if the commenter is the post's author (null when the post's author could not be read)
url	string	Absolute link to the comment on Reddit

Pricing — Pay Per Event (PPE)

$2.99 per 1,000 posts  •  $0.99 per 1,000 comments

Charged separately for posts and comments. A run scraping 5 posts with 200 comments each costs ~$1.02.

Budget controls: Set a spending limit on any run from the Apify Console. The actor stops automatically when the budget is reached, and you keep all data scraped up to that point. The run's status message then says it stopped at your limit and how much it delivered, so a capped run never looks complete.

Use Cases

Sentiment analysis. Scrape comments from product launch posts, company announcements, or brand mentions to analyze public opinion. The score field provides a built-in signal for community agreement, and depth/parentId let you analyze how discussions branch.

Training data for LLMs. Extract large volumes of structured discussion data. Comments include the full reply chain hierarchy, so you can build conversation trees for fine-tuning dialogue models. The Q&A filter is especially useful for extracting clean question-answer pairs from AMA threads.

Market research. Monitor how Reddit communities discuss products, services, or trends. Scrape comments from relevant subreddit posts to understand what real users think, what complaints come up repeatedly, and what features people request.

Academic research. Study online discourse patterns, community dynamics, or information propagation. The chronological sort (old) combined with depth and parentId lets you reconstruct exactly how conversations developed over time.

Content curation. Extract top-rated comments from popular threads to curate highlights, summaries, or "best of" collections. Sort by top and set a low maxCommentsPerPost to get only the highest-rated responses.

Competitive intelligence. Track discussions about competitors, industry news, or market events across multiple subreddits. Upload a CSV of relevant post URLs and scrape them all in one run.

Bluesky threads. For a Bluesky post's full reply thread, every level deep, use Bluesky Scraper with Replies on.

FAQ

How many comments can I scrape per post? Set maxCommentsPerPost to 0 and enable expandAllComments to get every comment in a thread. Reddit posts can have tens of thousands of comments. The actor handles all of them, including deeply nested reply chains.

What does "Expand all sub-threads" actually do? Reddit collapses deeply nested reply chains and shows "load more comments" links. When expandAllComments is enabled, the actor recursively opens every one of these collapsed chains so you get the complete comment tree. When disabled, you get the comments visible on the default page load. On a typical post expansion adds a few percent more comments for a few percent more time; on discussions with a few hundred comments it raises coverage from roughly 55-80% to nearly all of them. Expanded comments are billed like any other comment.

How fast is it? Posts are processed in parallel. A single post with 200 comments finishes in a few seconds. Bulk runs with 100 posts at default settings complete in about a minute or two. Full expansion usually adds only a few percent to the run time.

What URL formats are accepted? Full URLs (reddit.com/r/sub/comments/abc123/title), gallery links (reddit.com/gallery/abc123), short links (redd.it/abc123), share links, bare post IDs (abc123), and prefixed IDs (t3_abc123). You can mix formats freely in the same run. A Reddit search URL (reddit.com/search/?q=...) is run as a keyword search with its query. Image and video file links (i.redd.it, v.redd.it) are not posts: they are skipped, and the run log counts every skipped input.

What happens if a post is deleted or private? Deleted, removed, and private posts are included in the output with "_status": "not_found" or "_status": "unavailable". You're only charged for posts and comments that were successfully scraped. If none of the requested posts could be retrieved at all, the run ends FAILED with a message to try again in a few minutes, so an automation can retry instead of reading an empty success.

How does the Q&A filter work? Set sort to qa and filter to answered to get only comment threads where the original poster replied. Set filter to unanswered to get threads with no OP response. This works best on AMA threads and support posts where the OP actively responds to questions.

Can I reconstruct the comment tree from the output? Yes. Every comment includes depth (0 for top-level, 1 for first reply, etc.) and parentId (the ID of the comment it replies to, or null for top-level). Walk these two fields to rebuild the full tree structure in any programming language.

What's the difference between "best" and "top" sort? "Top" ranks comments purely by score (upvotes minus downvotes). "Best" uses a confidence-weighted algorithm that accounts for both score and vote count. This means newer comments with fewer but mostly positive votes can rank above older comments with more total votes. "Best" is Reddit's default for good reason: it surfaces quality content that hasn't had time to accumulate raw vote counts.

Can I get only the comments from the last day? Yes. Set maxCommentAgeHours to 24. Only comments created within 24 hours before the run starts are delivered and charged; the post row is always included. The whole thread is read, since a recent reply can sit under a days-old comment, so you pay only for the recent comments without missing any of them.

How are deleted comments handled? Deleted comments appear in the output with isDeleted: true, author: "[deleted]" and an empty body. They keep their place in the tree (depth, parentId) and count toward your comment total and billing. A live comment from a deleted account also shows author: "[deleted]" but keeps its text. Reddit leaves some removed comments out of the tree entirely, so a reply can carry a parentId that is not in the dataset.

Is there a limit on how many posts I can scrape in one run? No hard limit. You can process thousands of posts in a single run. The actor scales linearly — doubling the number of posts roughly doubles the run time, not more.

Can I use this with the Apify API or integrations? Yes. Call the actor via the Apify API, schedule recurring runs, or connect it to integrations (webhooks, Zapier, Make, Google Sheets). The output is standard JSON that works with any downstream pipeline.

What's the output format? A flat JSON array. Each post's row comes before its comments, but several posts are scraped in parallel, so rows of different posts can interleave; group by _post_id to keep each thread together. Each row has a _type field ("post" or "comment") and a _post_id field that links comments to their parent post.

More Clearpath scrapers for Reddit

• Reddit Search Scraper
• Reddit Subreddit Posts Scraper
• Reddit Profile Scraper
• Reddit User Posts & Comments Scraper
• Reddit MCP Server

Also from the same studio (name, then account/slug for the URL https://apify.com/account/slug):

• Reddit Answers API (clearpath/reddit-answers-api)
• Reddit to LLM (clearpath/reddit-to-llm-api)
• Bluesky Scraper (clearpath/bluesky-scraper)

Full directory: Clearpath on Apify

Support

• Bugs: Issues tab
• Features: Email or issues
• Email: max@mapa.slmail.me

Legal Compliance

Extracts publicly available data. Users must comply with Reddit terms and data protection regulations (GDPR, CCPA).

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Bulk Reddit post and comment extraction. Full trees, sorted and filtered, from one URL or thousands.