Reddit Community, Posts & Comments Scraper

Scrape Reddit communities without an account: profile details, weekly activity, posting rules, wiki pages, filtered post feeds and capped comment trees. Find communities by keyword, collect a subreddit's recent posts, or follow post URLs into their comment threads. No API key, login or proxy setup.

What this actor does

• Four modes: communities (default), discover, posts and comments
• Community intelligence: name, description, creation date, community type, weekly active users, weekly contributions, rules and wiki pages
• Filtered feeds: sort, time window, date range, score/comment/award thresholds, post type, flair/title/body keywords, author allowlist, domain, and exclusion flags
• Comment trees: 20-25 comments per page with "load more" expansion, four alternate sort orders, per-post and depth caps
• Keyword discovery: search Reddit's community directory and optionally scrape posts from everything it finds (discovery records are search snapshots; use communities mode for full profiles)
• Empty fields are omitted — records only contain values Reddit actually returned

Output: community records (dataType: "community")

One record per community in communities and discover modes.

• subreddit, subreddit_prefixed, subreddit_id, url — identity
• description, public_description, community_icon, icon_img — presentation
• created_utc, created_at, subreddit_type, wiki_enabled — metadata
• weekly_active_users, weekly_contributions — Reddit's weekly activity metrics
• subscribers, active_user_count and the extended community settings — best-effort: included when Reddit's public metadata endpoint is reachable from the run's network, otherwise omitted
• rules[] — short_name, description, description_html, priority
• wiki_pages[] — name, content_md (Markdown source)
• stickies[] — up to two pinned/highlighted posts using the post fields below (when posts are collected)
• search_term — the discovery keyword that surfaced the community
• crawled_at, source — fetch timestamp and data source

Output: post records (dataType: "post")

One record per collected post in communities, discover and posts modes.

• post_id, post_name, subreddit, subreddit_prefixed, subreddit_id — identity
• title, content, content_html, content_url, url, permalink, domain, post_type, media_type — content
• author, author_id, link_flair, author_flair, author_flair_* — author and flair
• score, ups, upvote_ratio, num_comments, total_awards_received, awards[] — engagement
• images[], gallery_images[], gallery_count, video_url, thumbnail_url, has_media — media
• is_stickied, is_locked, is_archived, is_pinned, is_nsfw, is_spoiler, is_original_content, is_crosspost, distinguished, removed_by_category — flags
• poll_data, crosspost_parent_id, language, created_utc, created_at, edited, edited_at — extras
• crawled_at, source — fetch timestamp and data source

Output: comment records (dataType: "comment")

One record per comment in comments mode, or when "Include comments for collected posts" is on.

• comment_id, comment_name, post_id, post_title, post_url, link_id — identity
• author, body, body_html, content_type — content
• score, total_awards_received, depth, position, parent_positions, parent_id, parent_kind — engagement and tree position
• is_op, is_stickied, is_locked, collapsed, is_highlighted — flags
• subreddit, subreddit_prefixed, subreddit_id, permalink — context
• created_utc, created_at, edited, edited_at — timing
• crawled_at, source — fetch timestamp and data source

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	communities	communities, discover, posts or comments
subreddits	array	–	Names, r/ names or full URLs (prefill: python)
postUrls	array	–	Post/comment URLs or bare IDs for comments mode
discoverMode	string	search	search, popular or new
discoverQuery	string	–	Keyword for community discovery
discoverSort	string	relevance	relevance or activity
maxDiscoverResults	int	10	Discovered communities cap (1-100)
includeRules	bool	true	Add community rules
includeWiki	bool	false	Add wiki pages and Markdown
maxWikiPages	int	20	Wiki pages per community (0-200)
includeWeeklyStats	bool	true	Weekly active users and contributions
includePosts	bool	true	Collect recent posts
maxPosts	int	25	Posts per subreddit (1-1,000)
sort	string	hot	hot, new, top, rising, controversial, best
timeFilter	string	day	hour/day/week/month/year/all
includeNSFW	bool	false	Keep NSFW posts
onlyWithFlair	bool	false	Keep only posts with a flair
postType	string	–	self/link/image/video/gallery/poll
minScore / maxScore	int	–	Score range
minComments / maxComments	int	–	Comment-count range
excludeStickied	bool	false	Drop pinned posts
minUpvoteRatio	number	–	Minimum upvote ratio (0-1)
excludeRemoved	bool	false	Drop removed posts
excludeCrossposts	bool	false	Drop crossposts
excludeSpoilers	bool	false	Drop spoilers
excludeLocked	bool	false	Drop locked posts
excludeDeletedAuthor	bool	false	Drop deleted authors
onlyOriginalContent	bool	false	Keep only OC posts
minAwards	int	–	Minimum total awards
titleContains	string	–	Title substring (case-insensitive)
contentContains	string	–	Body substring (requires post details)
flairContains	string	–	Flair substring
authorFlairContains	string	–	Author-flair substring
authors	array	–	Author allowlist
domain	string	–	Link-domain substring
distinguished	string	–	moderator/admin/special/none
postedAfter / postedBefore	date	–	Creation-date window (UTC)
includeComments	bool	false	Comments for collected posts
maxCommentsPerPost	int	25	Comments per post (1-10,000)
commentSort	string	confidence	confidence, top, new, controversial, old
maxCommentDepth	int	3	Keep replies up to this depth (0 = top-level only)
includePostDetails	bool	false	Open post pages for body/media/flags
maxItems	int	1000	Hard cap across all record types

Example: community profile with rules and weekly activity

{
  "mode": "communities",
  "subreddits": ["python", "learnpython"],
  "includeRules": true,
  "includeWeeklyStats": true,
  "includePosts": false
}

Example: top posts from several communities

{
  "mode": "posts",
  "subreddits": ["technology", "programming"],
  "sort": "top",
  "timeFilter": "week",
  "maxPosts": 100,
  "minScore": 500,
  "minComments": 50,
  "postType": "self",
  "excludeStickied": true,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Example: discover communities by keyword

{
  "mode": "discover",
  "discoverMode": "search",
  "discoverQuery": "machine learning",
  "discoverSort": "activity",
  "maxDiscoverResults": 15,
  "includePosts": false
}

Example: comment trees from post URLs

{
  "mode": "comments",
  "postUrls": [
    "https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1x1xbpb/expressing_multiple_emotions_at_one_time/"
  ],
  "commentSort": "top",
  "maxCommentsPerPost": 100,
  "maxCommentDepth": 3,
  "includePostDetails": true,
  "maxItems": 150
}

Use cases

• Community due diligence — profile a subreddit's rules, activity and culture before posting or advertising
• Brand and topic monitoring — schedule weekly runs over niche communities and track post volume and engagement
• Moderation research — compare posting rules and pinned guidance across many communities
• Content strategy — find high-performing post types, flairs and domains in a target community
• Audience research — follow a thread's comment tree to understand sentiment and objections
• Community discovery — search by topic and get profiles for every relevant subreddit

FAQ

Do I need a Reddit account, API key or proxy? No. The actor reads Reddit's public pages and needs no credentials. It tries a direct connection first and only falls back to proxy routes if the network is blocked.

Why are subscriber counts sometimes missing? Reddit no longer shows member counts to signed-out visitors on the rendered page. The actor fills subscribers only when a public metadata endpoint happens to be reachable from the run's network; otherwise the field is omitted rather than guessed.

Why is the moderator list missing? The public moderator list is login-gated on Reddit. Signed-out runs cannot see it, so moderators is normally omitted.

Why is a subreddit missing from my run? Private, banned, NSFW-gated or nonexistent communities return nothing. The run log lists the skipped names. Public communities with no matching posts are also reported.

Why do discovery records have no rules or wiki? Discovery mode returns the community information Reddit shows in search results (name, description, icon, weekly activity). Run communities mode with the discovered names for full rules, wiki and creation details.

Why does contentContains return nothing? Post bodies are not on feed cards. Turn on "Fetch full post details" so the actor opens each post page before applying the body filter.

How many posts can I get? The feed is walked page by page (24-25 posts per page) until your maxPosts or global maxItems cap is reached. Reddit may stop serving older pages for very deep walks; split by date window with postedAfter/postedBefore if you need more history.

How do comment caps work? maxCommentsPerPost stops a thread after N comments, maxCommentDepth drops deeper replies, and maxItems caps the whole run. Setting depth to 0 keeps top-level comments only. postUrls can also point at a comment permalink.

Why does comments mode return nothing on Apify cloud? Reddit currently challenges individual post/comment pages on Apify's residential exits even though community feeds, search and about pages load normally. This is a confirmed cloud hard limit, not an input error or a transient retry issue: the actor stops after two challenged post pages and reports it in the status message. Community, post and discovery modes are unaffected. Comment trees are verified from non-cloud networks.

Can I export the data? Yes — JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, plus REST API and integrations with n8n, Zapier, Make and AI agents via the Apify MCP server.

Is this affiliated with Reddit? No. It is a third-party actor that reads publicly visible pages.