Reddit Scraper Fast — Extract Posts, Comments & Search Results

The fastest lightweight Reddit scraper on Apify. Extract posts, comments, and search results from any public subreddit in seconds — no Reddit API key, no login, no OAuth setup. Built with async httpx for maximum throughput.

Try it free on Apify — 5,000 results/month included in Apify's free tier.

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Key Features

• No authentication required — scrapes Reddit's public JSON endpoints directly
• 3x faster than alternatives — async httpx with intelligent request batching
• Full-text search — search across all of Reddit or within a specific subreddit
• Comment extraction — fetch top comments per post with author, score, and body text
• 5 sort modes — hot, new, top, rising, controversial
• Time filtering — hour, day, week, month, year, all
• Rich metadata — score, upvote ratio, flair, awards, NSFW flag, domain, thumbnail
• Pay-per-result pricing — only pay for the data you actually extract
• Proxy support — automatic residential proxy rotation for reliable scraping

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Use Cases

1. Brand Monitoring & Sentiment Analysis — Track mentions of your brand, product, or competitors across Reddit. Analyze upvote ratios and comment sentiment to gauge public perception in real-time.

2. Market Research & Trend Detection — Discover what topics are gaining traction in your industry. Monitor rising posts in niche subreddits to spot emerging trends before they hit mainstream.

3. Content Marketing Research — Find the most engaging content formats and topics in your niche. Analyze top-performing posts to inform your content strategy with data-driven insights.

4. AI/ML Training Data Collection — Collect labeled discussion data for NLP models, sentiment analysis, or conversational AI training. Reddit's threaded structure provides natural question-answer pairs.

5. SEO & Keyword Research — Discover the exact questions and language your audience uses on Reddit. Find long-tail keywords and content gaps that traditional SEO tools miss.

6. Academic & Social Research — Gather data for studying online communities, public discourse patterns, information spreading, and social dynamics at scale.

7. Competitive Intelligence — Monitor competitor subreddits, product feedback threads, and community discussions. Track feature requests and complaints to find market opportunities.

8. Lead Generation — Find users actively asking for product recommendations in your category. Identify subreddits where your target audience discusses relevant pain points.

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Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
subreddit	string	No	popular	Subreddit to scrape (without r/ prefix). Examples: programming, python, dataisbeautiful
searchQuery	string	No	—	Search keyword. Searches all of Reddit, or within the specified subreddit if both are provided
maxItems	integer	No	25	Maximum posts to fetch (1–500)
includeComments	boolean	No	false	Fetch top comments for each post (increases run time)
maxComments	integer	No	5	Number of top comments per post (1–25). Only used when includeComments is true
sort	string	No	hot	Sort order: hot, new, top, rising, controversial
timeFilter	string	No	week	Time range for top/controversial/search: hour, day, week, month, year, all

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Input Examples

Browse a subreddit (hot posts)

{
    "subreddit": "artificial",
    "maxItems": 50,
    "sort": "hot"
}

Search Reddit with comments

{
    "searchQuery": "best project management tools 2026",
    "maxItems": 100,
    "includeComments": true,
    "maxComments": 10,
    "sort": "top",
    "timeFilter": "month"
}

Search within a subreddit

{
    "subreddit": "startups",
    "searchQuery": "bootstrapped SaaS revenue",
    "maxItems": 200,
    "sort": "top",
    "timeFilter": "year"
}

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Sample Output

{
    "id": "1abc123",
    "title": "Python 3.14 released with experimental JIT compiler",
    "author": "guido_van_rossum",
    "subreddit": "programming",
    "score": 4521,
    "upvoteRatio": 0.97,
    "numComments": 312,
    "createdUtc": 1711900000,
    "url": "https://python.org/downloads/release/python-3140/",
    "permalink": "https://reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1abc123/...",
    "selftext": "",
    "isNsfw": false,
    "isSelf": false,
    "flair": "News",
    "domain": "python.org",
    "thumbnail": "https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/...",
    "awards": 5,
    "topComments": [
        {
            "id": "kx7m2n",
            "author": "dev_enthusiast",
            "body": "The JIT improvements are incredible — 40% faster on CPU-bound benchmarks.",
            "score": 892,
            "created_utc": 1711903600
        }
    ]
}

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Integration Examples

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("cryptosignals/reddit-scraper-fast").call(run_input={
    "subreddit": "programming",
    "maxItems": 100,
    "includeComments": True,
    "maxComments": 5,
    "sort": "top",
    "timeFilter": "week",
})

for post in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(f"[{post['score']}] {post['title']}")
    if post.get("topComments"):
        for c in post["topComments"]:
            print(f"  └─ {c['author']}: {c['body'][:80]}...")

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from "apify-client";

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: "YOUR_API_TOKEN" });

const run = await client.actor("cryptosignals/reddit-scraper-fast").call({
    subreddit: "technology",
    maxItems: 50,
    includeComments: true,
    sort: "top",
    timeFilter: "day",
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((post) => {
    console.log(`[${post.score}] ${post.title} — ${post.numComments} comments`);
});

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Pricing

This actor uses Apify's pay-per-result (PPE) pricing:

• Free tier: 5,000 results/month included with every Apify account
• Paid usage: billed per result at Apify's standard PPE rate
• No hidden fees — you only pay for the posts actually extracted
• Platform costs: minimal compute (no browser required), making this one of the cheapest Reddit scrapers available

Sign up for free and start scraping immediately.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need a Reddit API key? A: No. This actor scrapes Reddit's public JSON endpoints directly. No API key, no OAuth, no login required.

Q: How many posts can I scrape per run? A: Up to 500 posts per run. For larger datasets, schedule multiple runs with different subreddits or time filters.

Q: Does this actor handle Reddit's rate limiting? A: Yes. Built-in delays and automatic retry logic handle Reddit's rate limits. The actor uses Apify's proxy infrastructure (including residential proxies) for reliable access.

Q: Can I search across all of Reddit? A: Yes. Set searchQuery without specifying a subreddit to search across all of Reddit. Or combine both to search within a specific subreddit.

Q: What's the difference between this and reddit-scraper? A: This "fast" version uses lightweight HTTP requests (no browser) making it 3x faster and significantly cheaper per result. Use this when you need posts and comments. Use the full version if you need browser-rendered content.

Q: Are comments included by default? A: No. Set includeComments to true to fetch comments. Each post with comments requires an additional request, so runs with comments enabled take longer.

Q: Can I filter NSFW content? A: The output includes an isNsfw flag on each post. You can filter NSFW content in your data pipeline using this field.

Q: How fresh is the data? A: Data is scraped in real-time. Each run fetches the latest available data from Reddit based on your sort and time filter settings.