Reddit Scraper - Scrape Reddit Posts, Comments, Subreddits & Users

Scrape Reddit at scale with this Reddit scraper — a web scraper for Reddit posts, comments, subreddit communities, and user profiles, run entirely via the Apify API. Pull data by keyword or URL — with NSFW filtering, sort order, and time-range controls. It is a simple way to scrape Reddit without wrestling with the official Reddit API.

What this Reddit Scraper does

The actor uses Reddit's public JSON API (the same one that powers old.reddit.com and is freely accessible) and supports four search dimensions in one run:

• Posts — keyword search across all of Reddit or restricted to a subreddit
• Comments — keyword search inside Reddit comment bodies
• Communities (subreddits) — find subreddits matching a keyword
• URLs — pass any Reddit URL (subreddit, single post, user profile) and the actor routes it correctly

You also get optional comment scraping per post, NSFW filtering, sort by new/hot/top/relevance/comments, and time-range filters (hour/day/week/month/year/all).

Why use this Reddit Scraper?

• Runs fully via the Apify API — bypass OAuth and the new pricing tier
• No rate-limit headaches — the actor handles 429 backoff automatically
• One-shot multi-mode — search posts + comments + communities in a single run
• URL-aware — paste subreddit / post / user URLs and let the actor route
• NSFW toggle — opt in or out cleanly
• Comment expansion — pull top-level comments per post in the same run

Use cases

• Brand monitoring — track every mention of your brand or product
• Sentiment analysis — feed Reddit comments into your AI/ML pipeline
• Audience research — find which subreddits your audience hangs out in
• Trend tracking — surface trending posts in your niche
• Influencer discovery — find prolific posters in target subreddits
• Content ideation — see what's getting upvoted in your category
• Lead generation — spot people asking for the product you sell
• Academic research — public-domain data for social science studies

Input

Search by keyword:

{
    "keywords": ["bitcoin", "ethereum"],
    "searchPosts": true,
    "searchComments": false,
    "searchCommunities": true,
    "communityFilter": "",
    "sortBy": "new",
    "timeRange": "week",
    "includeNsfw": false,
    "maxPosts": 100,
    "maxCommunities": 10
}

Scrape a specific subreddit:

{
    "urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/programming"],
    "scrapeComments": true,
    "maxPosts": 50,
    "maxCommentsPerPost": 20
}

Scrape a specific post + its comments:

{
    "urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/abc123/"],
    "scrapeComments": true
}

Output

Each post:

{
    "type": "post",
    "id": "abc123",
    "title": "Title of the post",
    "body": "Self-text (empty for link posts)",
    "subreddit": "programming",
    "author": "username",
    "ups": 4521,
    "num_comments": 234,
    "created_utc": 1735689600,
    "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/abc123/title/",
    "is_nsfw": false,
    "score": 4521,
    "link_flair": "Discussion"
}

Each comment has type: "comment". Each community has type: "community" with num_comments repurposed as subscribers.

How it works

The actor uses Reddit's public JSON API (reddit.com/...json endpoints) — the same machine-readable surface Reddit has supported since 2009. No login, no OAuth, no developer account. Built-in 429 retry-after handling keeps runs reliable.

Cost & speed

A 100-post keyword search completes in 5–10 seconds. With comment expansion (10 posts × 10 comments each) it takes 20–30 seconds. Memory usage stays under 256 MB.

Related actors

• Twitter / X Scraper — bulk tweet scraping
• TikTok Scraper — TikTok by hashtag, profile, search
• LinkedIn Profile Scraper — bulk LinkedIn profile extraction
• YouTube Channel Scraper — bulk YouTube video metadata

FAQ

Q: How do I scrape Reddit posts and comments? Search by keyword with searchPosts and searchComments, or pass Reddit URLs. Enable scrapeComments (with optional maxCommentsPerPost) to pull top-level comments for each post in the same run. Posts, comments, and communities can all be searched in a single job.

Q: Can I scrape a whole subreddit or a user profile? Yes. Pass any Reddit URL — a subreddit, a single post, or a user profile — into urls and the actor routes it correctly. You can also target a subreddit by keyword using communityFilter, with sort and time-range controls.

Q: Do I need the Reddit API? No. The actor uses Reddit's public JSON endpoints (reddit.com/...json) with automatic 429 back-off — no OAuth, developer account, or paid API tier required.

Q: Do I need a Reddit account? No.

Q: Will Reddit ban me? No — the actor uses public JSON endpoints with realistic browser headers and respects Retry-After on 429 responses.

Q: Can I scrape entire subreddits historically? The Reddit listing API caps at ~1,000 posts per sort order. For deeper history, run the actor multiple times with different sortBy values (new, top, hot) to capture different slices.

Q: How accurate is the comment scrape? Top-level comments only — Reddit returns these in the post's .json endpoint. Nested replies are not currently expanded.

Q: Is this legal? Reddit's public JSON endpoints are explicitly accessible to anyone. Always comply with Reddit's User Agreement and your local data-protection laws when storing personal data.