📡 Reddit Scraper

Scrape posts and comments from any Reddit subreddit — no API key, no login required.

✨ Features

• Multiple subreddits — Scrape several subreddits in a single run
• Flexible sorting — Hot, New, Top, Rising, or Controversial
• Time filters — Past hour, day, week, month, year, or all time
• Search within subreddits — Filter posts by keyword
• Comment extraction — Optionally fetch and flatten comment trees
• Rich post data — Title, author, score, upvote ratio, flair, preview images, awards, and more
• No API key needed — Uses Reddit's public .json endpoints

🔧 How It Works

1. The Actor sends HTTP requests to Reddit's public JSON endpoints (e.g., reddit.com/r/python/hot.json)
2. Posts are extracted from the paginated response (up to 100 per page)
3. If comments are enabled, each post's comment thread is fetched and the nested tree is flattened
4. Built-in rate limiting (2–4 second delays) prevents Reddit from blocking requests
5. Results are pushed to the Apify dataset as flat JSON objects

📥 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
subreddits	String	python	Comma-separated subreddit names (without r/ prefix)
sort	Select	hot	Sort mode: hot, new, top, rising, controversial
time_filter	Select	week	Time range for top/controversial: hour, day, week, month, year, all
max_posts	Integer	25	Max posts per subreddit (1–1000)
search_query	String	(empty)	Optional keyword search within each subreddit
include_comments	Boolean	false	Fetch comments for each post (slower due to rate limiting)
max_comments_per_post	Integer	10	Max comments per post when comments are enabled
comment_sort	Select	top	Comment sort: best, top, new, controversial, old, qa

📤 Sample Output

Post (without comments)

{
    "post_id": "1abc2de",
    "title": "Python 3.13 released with major performance improvements",
    "author": "guido_van_rossum",
    "subreddit": "python",
    "score": 4523,
    "upvote_ratio": 0.97,
    "num_comments": 312,
    "url": "https://docs.python.org/3.13/whatsnew/3.13.html",
    "permalink": "https://www.reddit.com/r/python/comments/1abc2de/python_313_released/",
    "is_self": false,
    "selftext": "",
    "domain": "docs.python.org",
    "flair": "News",
    "is_video": false,
    "over_18": false,
    "spoiler": false,
    "stickied": false,
    "created_utc": "2025-10-01T14:30:00+00:00",
    "thumbnail": "https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/...",
    "preview_image": "https://preview.redd.it/...",
    "total_awards": 5,
    "gilded": 2,
    "num_crossposts": 3,
    "fetched_at": "2025-12-15T10:00:00+00:00"
}

Comment (when include_comments is enabled)

Comments are included as an array in each post's comments field:

{
    "comment_id": "k7xyz99",
    "post_id": "1abc2de",
    "author": "pythonista42",
    "body": "The new JIT compiler is incredible. 2x speedup on my workloads.",
    "score": 891,
    "depth": 0,
    "is_submitter": false,
    "parent_id": "t3_1abc2de",
    "permalink": "https://www.reddit.com/r/python/comments/1abc2de/.../k7xyz99/",
    "stickied": false,
    "distinguished": "",
    "controversiality": 0,
    "created_utc": "2025-10-01T15:00:00+00:00",
    "fetched_at": "2025-12-15T10:00:30+00:00"
}

⚠️ Notes

• Rate limiting: Reddit allows ~10–30 unauthenticated requests per minute per IP. The Actor uses 2–4 second delays between requests to stay within limits. Fetching comments for many posts will be slow.
• No login required: Uses public .json endpoints. NSFW/quarantined content may not be accessible without authentication.
• Post text truncation: selftext is truncated to 2,000 characters; comment body to 3,000 characters.
• Pagination limit: Reddit caps unauthenticated listing access at ~1,000 posts per subreddit.
• Memory: Typical runs use minimal memory. Enable comments on large subreddits with caution.