Reddit Comment Scraper

Scrape complete Reddit comment threads — every comment and every nested reply, resolved recursively until the whole conversation is captured. Paste one or more post URLs (or a specific comment permalink) and get back structured comment data with author, votes, timestamps, moderation flags, and thread position, optionally alongside the full parent post record. No Reddit API key or login required.

What this actor does

• Full thread resolution — walks top-level comments and every nested reply, including replies hidden behind Reddit's "load more" placeholders
• 6 comment sort modes — Best, Top, New, Controversial, Old, Q&A, matching Reddit's own UI
• Rich filtering — date windows, reply-depth range, score thresholds, author allow/deny lists, keyword include/exclude, comment length bounds, controversial-only, and more
• Optional parent post record — full post metadata (title, score, media, embeds) emitted first when enabled
• Flexible URL input — accepts post URLs, comment permalinks, share links, redd.it short links, or bare post IDs
• Empty fields are omitted — a field only appears on a record when Reddit actually returned a value for it

Output per comment

• dataType — always "comment" for these records
• comment_id — comment identifier without the t1_ prefix
• comment_name — full comment name in Reddit's format (t1_...)
• post_id, post_url, post_title — identifiers and title of the parent post this comment belongs to
• link_id — fullname of the parent post (t3_...)
• permalink — direct link to the comment on reddit.com
• author — commenter's username ([deleted] if the account was deleted)
• author_id — commenter's fullname (t2_...); absent when the author is deleted
• author_is_blocked — whether the author has blocked the scraper's account
• author_flair, author_flair_css_class, author_flair_template_id, author_flair_type, author_flair_text_color, author_flair_background_color, author_flair_richtext — the author's community flair, when they have one
• author_premium, author_patreon_flair — whether the author has Reddit Premium / a Patreon badge in this community
• body — comment text as markdown
• body_html — comment text rendered as Reddit HTML
• score — net score (upvotes minus downvotes)
• ups, downs — raw upvote / downvote counts
• score_hidden — whether the score is currently hidden by the community
• controversiality — 1 when the up/down split is near-even, else 0
• subreddit, subreddit_prefixed, subreddit_id, subreddit_type — the community the comment belongs to
• created_utc, created_at — when the comment was posted (Unix epoch and ISO-8601)
• edited, edited_at — whether and when the comment was last edited
• depth — nesting level, 0 = top-level comment
• parent_id — fullname of the direct parent (t3_... for a post, t1_... for another comment)
• parent_kind — post if it's a top-level reply to the post, comment if it's a reply to another comment
• is_op — whether the commenter is also the post's original author
• is_stickied — whether the comment is pinned by moderators
• is_locked — whether the comment thread is locked
• archived — whether the comment is archived (voting/commenting closed)
• distinguished — moderator or admin when the author posted in an official capacity
• collapsed — whether Reddit collapses the comment by default
• collapsed_reason, collapsed_reason_code — human-readable and machine-readable reason for the collapse
• collapsed_because_crowd_control — whether the collapse was caused by crowd control
• can_gild — whether the comment could receive legacy awards
• comment_type — optional type marker (e.g. live); absent on regular comments
• unrepliable_reason — why the comment can't be replied to, when that's the case
• no_follow — whether the comment is tagged nofollow for search engines
• send_replies — whether the author receives reply notifications for this comment
• gilded — number of legacy (gold-style) awards received
• total_awards_received — total award count
• awards — award breakdown (name, count, coin price, icon URL); omitted when there are no awards
• removed_by_category — who removed the comment, when removed: moderator, automod_filtered, reddit, author/deleted
• crawled_at — when the actor fetched this record (ISO-8601)
• source — json (primary Reddit JSON endpoint) or dom (browser fallback)

Deleted/removed comments keep their [deleted]/[removed] markers in body so removals stay auditable.

Output per post

Emitted once per input URL, as the first record of that thread, when includePost is enabled.

• dataType — always "post" for these records
• post_id, post_name — bare id and full Reddit name (t3_...) of the post
• title — post title
• content, content_html — self-post body as markdown / Reddit HTML (text posts only)
• content_url — external destination URL for link posts
• url, permalink — canonical reddit.com link to the post
• url_overridden_by_dest — Reddit's resolved destination URL, when it differs from content_url
• domain — self.<subreddit> for text posts, otherwise the linked domain
• post_hint — Reddit's own content hint (self, link, image, hosted:video, …)
• is_self — whether the post is a text post
• post_type — self, link, image, video, gallery, or poll
• media_type — text, link, image, video, gallery, or embed
• has_media — whether the post carries image/video/gallery/poll/embed media
• author, author_id — the poster's username and fullname
• author_flair, author_flair_css_class, author_flair_template_id, author_flair_type, author_flair_text_color, author_flair_background_color, author_flair_richtext — the poster's community flair, when they have one
• author_premium, author_is_blocked, author_patreon_flair — poster's premium status, block status, and Patreon badge
• subreddit, subreddit_prefixed, subreddit_id, subreddit_subscribers, subreddit_type — the community the post belongs to
• score, ups, downs, upvote_ratio — vote totals and the up/down ratio
• num_comments — total comment count on the post at crawl time
• num_crossposts, num_duplicates — how often the post was crossposted, and how many other posts link the same destination (link posts only)
• link_flair, link_flair_css_class, link_flair_richtext, link_flair_background_color, link_flair_text_color, link_flair_type — the post's own flair, when set
• thumbnail_url, thumbnail_width, thumbnail_height — thumbnail image and dimensions, when a real thumbnail exists
• created_utc, created_at — when the post was submitted (Unix epoch and ISO-8601)
• edited, edited_at — whether and when the post was last edited
• is_stickied, is_pinned — whether the post is pinned by moderators / on the subreddit
• is_locked, is_archived — whether commenting/voting is closed
• is_nsfw, is_spoiler — content warnings
• is_original_content — whether the post is flagged OC
• is_crosspost, crosspost_parent_id — whether this is a crosspost, and the original post's id
• is_crosspostable, is_meta, is_robot_indexable, is_reddit_media_domain, media_only, quarantine — additional Reddit-assigned post attributes
• no_follow, send_replies, allow_live_comments, contest_mode, hide_score, suggested_sort, content_categories — post configuration flags Reddit reports
• hidden — whether the post is hidden
• images — image URLs from the post preview
• gallery_images, gallery_count — full-resolution gallery image URLs and item count (gallery posts)
• video_url — direct video file URL (video posts)
• poll_data — poll options and vote totals (poll posts)
• embed_type, embed_provider, embed_title, embed_author_name, embed_author_url, embed_thumbnail_url, embed_html — auto-embed data for link posts Reddit embeds from YouTube, Imgur, Gfycat, Twitch, etc.; omitted when the post has no external embed
• gilded, total_awards_received, awards — legacy and modern award counts, plus the award breakdown
• removed_by_category — who removed the post, when removed
• distinguished — moderator or admin when the poster acted in an official capacity
• crawled_at — when the actor fetched this record (ISO-8601)
• source — json (primary Reddit JSON endpoint) or dom (browser fallback)

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
postUrls	array	– (required)	Post URLs, comment URLs, share links, redd.it short links, or bare post IDs — see accepted forms below
maxComments	integer	100	Maximum comments to scrape per post, including nested replies (1–100,000)
commentSort	select	confidence	confidence (Best), top, new, controversial, old, qa
includePost	boolean	false	Emit the parent post as a separate first record of each thread
postedAfter	date	–	Only keep comments created on/after this date (UTC)
postedBefore	date	–	Only keep comments created on/before this date (UTC; a bare date means end of that day)
minDepth	integer	–	Only keep comments at or deeper than this nesting level (0–100)
maxDepth	integer	–	Only keep comments at or above this nesting level (0–100)
minCommentScore	integer	–	Only keep comments with score ≥ this value
maxCommentScore	integer	–	Only keep comments with score ≤ this value
onlyOP	boolean	false	Keep only the original poster's own comments
excludeDeletedRemoved	boolean	false	Drop comments whose body/author shows as [deleted]/[removed]
excludeStickied	boolean	false	Drop moderator-pinned comments (e.g. AutoModerator notices)
excludeCollapsed	boolean	false	Drop comments Reddit collapses by default
distinguishedFilter	select	any	any, moderator (mod comments only), admin (admin comments only), none (regular users only)
authors	array	–	Only keep comments from these usernames (case-insensitive)
excludeAuthors	array	–	Drop comments from these usernames (case-insensitive), e.g. bots
keywords	array	–	Only keep comments containing at least one of these keywords/phrases
excludeKeywords	array	–	Drop comments containing any of these keywords/phrases
minAwards	integer	–	Only keep comments with at least this many total awards
minCommentLength	integer	–	Only keep comments whose body is at least this many characters (0–10,000)
maxCommentLength	integer	–	Only keep comments whose body is at most this many characters (0–10,000)
controversialOnly	boolean	false	Keep only comments Reddit flags as controversial (near-even up/downvote split)
focusOnTargetComment	boolean	false	When a postUrls item is a specific comment permalink, fetch only that comment plus its ancestor chain instead of the whole thread
commentContext	integer	3	Ancestor levels to include above the target comment (0–8; used only with focusOnTargetComment)

Accepted postUrls forms:

• Full post URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1abc123/some_title/
• Short URL: https://www.reddit.com/comments/1abc123 (also with ?sort=top)
• Comment URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/x/comments/1abc123/title/comment/xyz987/
• Share link: https://www.reddit.com/r/x/s/<token>
• Short link: https://redd.it/1abc123
• Bare post ID: 1abc123 or t3_1abc123
• old.reddit.com URLs also work

Malformed items (empty strings, garbage URLs, non-strings) are skipped without failing the run.

Example: scrape a whole thread sorted by Top

{
  "postUrls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1abc123/some_title/"],
  "maxComments": 500,
  "commentSort": "top",
  "includePost": true
}

Example: recent, high-signal comments only

{
  "postUrls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/1abc123/some_title/"],
  "maxComments": 1000,
  "postedAfter": "2026-06-01",
  "minCommentScore": 5,
  "excludeDeletedRemoved": true,
  "excludeStickied": true
}

Example: NLP dataset — clean, filtered comment bodies

{
  "postUrls": [
    "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1abc123/some_title/",
    "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1def456/other_title/"
  ],
  "maxComments": 5000,
  "excludeDeletedRemoved": true,
  "excludeAuthors": ["AutoModerator"],
  "minCommentLength": 20,
  "excludeKeywords": ["I am a bot"],
  "includePost": false
}

Example: jump straight to one comment

{
  "postUrls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/x/comments/1abc123/title/comment/xyz987/"],
  "focusOnTargetComment": true,
  "commentContext": 5
}

Use cases

• Sentiment & NLP datasets — build large, labeled corpora from real Reddit discussions
• Market & product research — see what customers actually say about a product or brand in the replies
• Community & moderation analysis — study conversation structure, controversy, and OP engagement in a subreddit
• Launch monitoring — track reaction to announcements across subreddits with scheduled runs
• Academic & social research — export full, structured discussion threads for analysis
• Customer support mining — surface recurring complaints or questions buried in comment threads

FAQ

Do I need a Reddit account, API key, or login? No. The actor reads Reddit's public web data; no authentication is required.

Does this actor use a proxy? Do I need to configure one? Yes, automatically — you don't need to configure anything. Reddit blocks requests from datacenter IPs (including Apify's free AUTO proxy group) with HTTP 403, so the actor always routes requests through an Apify Residential proxy pinned to the US. This isn't a user-facing choice because a residential proxy is required for reliable data; there's no reliable alternative to expose.

Does it really capture the whole thread, including deeply nested replies? Yes. Reddit paginates comment listings and hides deeper replies behind "load more" placeholders; the actor resolves every placeholder recursively until maxComments is reached or the thread is exhausted.

I set a high maxComments, but I got slightly fewer comments than the post's num_comments count. Is that a bug? No — this is a normal, well-understood platform limitation. Reddit's own num_comments counter includes comments that were later deleted/removed by their author (and, in some cases, transient counts that lag behind the live listing). On very large threads (10,000+ comments), a small percentage of comments can also be pruned by Reddit's listing API itself before the actor ever sees them. The actor returns every comment Reddit's API actually serves; it cannot recover comments Reddit itself no longer lists.

What's the difference between parent_id and link_id? link_id always points to the parent post (t3_...). parent_id points to the comment's direct parent, which can be the post (t3_..., for a top-level comment) or another comment (t1_..., for a reply) — check parent_kind to tell which.

What does removed_by_category mean? Who removed the comment or post: moderator, automod_filtered, reddit, or author/deleted. Live, non-removed records simply don't have this field.

What does collapsed_reason_code mean? The machine-readable reason a comment is collapsed by default (e.g. DELETED). collapsed_because_crowd_control separately marks collapses caused by Reddit's crowd control feature. Comments collapsed purely for low score have collapsed: true with no reason fields.

How do I scrape just one comment instead of the whole thread? Paste that comment's permalink URL (the one containing /comment/{id}/) into postUrls and enable focusOnTargetComment. You'll get that comment plus up to commentContext levels of its parent comments, the same view Reddit shows when you click a comment's "permalink".

What happens for a private subreddit, banned post, or deleted post? The actor returns 0 records for that URL along with a status message, instead of failing the whole run — other URLs in the same run are unaffected.

Is this affiliated with Reddit? No. This is an independent, third-party actor that reads Reddit's public web pages; it is not endorsed by or affiliated with Reddit, Inc.

What export formats are supported? JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, and HTML, plus the Dataset REST API and Apify integrations (Zapier, Make, n8n, AI agents via the Apify MCP server).