Lemmy Scraper

Lemmy scraper for posts, comments, search and communities on any instance, with no login and no API key. Pull posts from any Lemmy community or the instance feed, comments of a post, full-text search (posts, comments, communities, users) and the community directory on lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, programming.dev, sh.itjust.works and others. It uses each instance's public JSON API, so runs are fast and you pay per result.

What you can do with it

• Reddit-alternative monitoring — schedule posts mode for communities like technology, privacy, selfhosted; feed new threads into Slack, a sheet, or an LLM summarizer.
• Brand / keyword tracking — search mode finds posts or comments that mention your product, with score and comment counts.
• Community discovery — communities mode lists communities by subscribers and monthly active users, for outreach or market sizing.
• Discussion datasets — comments mode pulls the comment tree text of given posts (best-scored first).
• Automated feeds — Schedule it on Apify and pipe results to Google Sheets, Slack, n8n or Make via the Apify integration.
• Cross-instance comparison — run the same search or communities query against several instances to see where a topic is most active.

Output example

Mode posts / search Posts (type: "post"):

{
  "instance": "lemmy.world",
  "type": "post",
  "id": 53847679,
  "title": "Firm that lets you rent out your idle Mac for AI inference workloads warns of plummeting token costs …",
  "url": "https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/…",
  "body": null,
  "ap_id": "https://lemmy.world/post/53847679",
  "community": "technology@lemmy.world",
  "community_title": "Technology",
  "author": "eicker",
  "author_instance": "lemmy.world",
  "score": 87,
  "upvotes": 90,
  "downvotes": 3,
  "comments_count": 23,
  "published": "2026-11-01T09:15:48.137107Z",
  "updated": null,
  "nsfw": false,
  "thumbnail": "https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/cc25223b-….png",
  "locked": false,
  "featured": false
}

Mode comments / search Comments (type: "comment"): same fields; title is the parent post title, body the comment text, comments_count the number of replies, plus post_id.

Mode communities / search Communities (type: "community"):

{ "instance": "lemmy.world", "type": "community", "name": "technology@lemmy.world", "title": "Technology", "description": "This is a most excellent place for technology news …", "subscribers": 89338, "posts": 22511, "comments": 981435, "users_active_month": 15247, "actor_id": "https://lemmy.world/c/technology", "nsfw": false, "published": "2023-06-11T02:16:17.173483Z" }

Search Users (type: "user"): name, actor_id, post_count, comment_count, bot, published.

Input

Field	Description
instance	Server domain. Default lemmy.world.
mode	posts (default), search, communities, comments
communities	Mode posts. Names like technology or technology@lemmy.world. Empty = the instance's All feed.
sort	Hot (default), New, TopDay, TopWeek, TopMonth, TopAll, Active. For communities mode Hot means TopAll.
query, searchType	Mode search. Posts (default), Comments, Communities, Users.
postIds	Mode comments. Numeric post ids on the chosen instance (id of a post row).
maxItems	Stop after N rows total. Default 100.

Pricing

Pay per item: one event per dataset row (post, comment, community or user). Nothing is charged for rows that are never produced.

Notes

• Remote communities are only available if the chosen instance already federates with them; use name@other.instance and check the row count.
• Instances rate-limit anonymous clients; 50 rows per request.
• Unknown community → no rows. Comments need the post id from the same instance.

FAQ

Do I need an API key or account?

No. It only calls public, anonymous endpoints of the instance you choose. Instances rate-limit anonymous clients, and the actor fetches 50 rows per request to stay efficient.

How much does it cost?

$0.002 per result and nothing else: with pay-per-event pricing you are not billed for Apify compute. 100 results cost $0.20, and the Apify free plan's $5 monthly credit covers about 2,500 results. Rows that are never produced are never charged.

How do I get the data into Google Sheets or my app?

Export the run's dataset as CSV, JSON or Excel from the Apify Console, read it from the dataset API endpoint, or connect it to Google Sheets, Slack, n8n, Make or Zapier with Apify integrations.

Is it legal to scrape Lemmy?

It only reads public data via the platform's public API and respects rate limits. You are responsible for complying with Lemmy's terms and applicable law.

Why do I get no rows for a community?

The chosen instance only knows remote communities it already federates with. Use name@other.instance, or set instance to the community's home server. Comments also need a post id from the same instance.

Related Actors

• Mastodon Scraper
• Hacker News Scraper
• Dev.to Articles Scraper