Reddit Archive Scraper

Extract Reddit posts and comments — including the full history back to 2005. No login, no API key, no OAuth dance.

---

Why this scraper

It works where Reddit's own API does not. Reddit answers requests from datacentre IP addresses with HTTP 403, which is exactly where a scraper runs. This Actor reads a public archive instead, so runs do not fail on Reddit's blocking.

Past the 100-per-request limit. The archive caps every request at 100 records. Ask for 10,000 posts and a naive scraper returns 100. This one walks a moving time window and keeps going — verified duplicate-free.

Historical data, not just what is on the front page today. Search any date range back to 2005: what a subreddit discussed during a launch, an outage or a controversy, long after the thread scrolled away.

---

What you can extract

Mode	What you get
Posts	Every post from a subreddit or user, with title, text, score, upvote ratio, comment count and linked domain
Comments	Comments from a subreddit or user, with text, score and thread position
Comments on specific posts	The full comment set of a given thread

---

Quick start

1. Pick Posts.
2. Enter a subreddit — programming or r/programming, both work.
3. Set Maximum results, click Start, download as CSV or JSON.

---

Example inputs

Recent posts from a subreddit

{
  "mode": "posts",
  "subreddits": ["programming"],
  "maxItems": 5000
}

What a subreddit discussed in a specific month

{
  "mode": "posts",
  "subreddits": ["technology"],
  "since": "2024-01-01",
  "until": "2024-02-01",
  "maxItems": 3000
}

Track brand mentions across communities

{
  "mode": "comments",
  "subreddits": ["programming", "webdev", "javascript"],
  "maxItems": 5000
}

A user's complete history

{
  "mode": "posts",
  "authors": ["spez"],
  "maxItems": 1000
}

Every comment on one thread

{
  "mode": "postComments",
  "postIds": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1vf6msi/"],
  "maxItems": 2000
}

---

Output fields

Posts

Field	Description
title, text	Headline and body
url, linkUrl, domain	Reddit link, external link and its domain
subreddit, author	Where and by whom
score, upvoteRatio, numComments	Reception — the ratio shows how contested a post was
createdAt, createdAtTimestamp	When, as ISO date and Unix timestamp
flair	Category tag the subreddit assigned
isSelfPost, isVideo, isNsfw, isSpoiler, isStickied, isLocked	Status flags
awards, gilded, thumbnail	Extras

Comments

Field	Description
text	Comment content, HTML entities decoded
author, subreddit, score	Who, where, how received
postId, parentId	Which post and which item it replies to
isTopLevel	Whether it replies to the post rather than another comment
isSubmitter	Whether the post's author wrote it
createdAt, url	When and where to find it

---

Input notes

• Subreddits accept programming or r/programming.
• Usernames accept spez or u/spez.
• Post IDs accept the ID or a full Reddit URL.
• Several subreddits split the maxItems budget evenly between them.
• Dates use 2026-01-31 format, or a Unix timestamp.

---

Limits

• Scores are archive snapshots, not live counts — they reflect the moment the archive captured the item.
• Deleted content stays in the archive where it was captured before deletion, and is missing where it was not.
• Rate limits apply. The archive asks callers to slow down; large runs pace themselves and therefore take longer.
• Search by keyword is not supported by the archive — filter by subreddit, user and date, then search the exported text yourself.

---

FAQ

Do I need a Reddit account or API key? No.

Why not use Reddit's own API? It returns HTTP 403 for requests from datacentres, which is where scrapers run. This Actor sidesteps that entirely.

How far back does the data go? To 2005, when Reddit launched.

Can I get more than 100 items? Yes — that limit is exactly what this Actor is built to walk past.

What formats can I export? CSV, Excel, JSON, XML, or straight from the Apify API.

---

Source and responsible use

Data comes from the public Arctic Shift Reddit archive.

Usernames and comment text are personal data under GDPR. You remain responsible for how you store, analyse and republish the output — and deleted content should be treated as deleted, whatever the archive still holds.