Reddit Lead Finder - Buying Intent, Competitor & Brand Mentions

Find people on Reddit who are asking for a tool like yours, looking for an alternative to a competitor, or complaining about price. Search by keyword, subreddit or thread URL, and get every post and comment scored 0-100 for buying intent with the exact phrases that triggered the score. Schedule it with new-only mode to get a fresh lead feed every day. No Reddit API key, no Reddit login.

Real output from a default run of Reddit Lead Finder in Apify Console.

What can Reddit Lead Finder do?

• Find buying-intent conversations: "looking for", "recommend", "alternative to", "switching from", "anyone use", "which tool", "worth it" and your own phrases.
• Track competitors and your brand: flag every post or comment that mentions names in competitors or targetBrands.
• Catch pricing pain and complaints: "too expensive", "frustrated", "broken" and your own pain phrases.
• Score and label every result: leadScore (0-100) plus labels such as buying_intent, competitor_alternative, pricing_pain, pain_point, urgent and vendor_research.
• Read the comments too: analyze top-level comments under each post, where many recommendation requests and complaints live.
• Monitor only new signals: with onlyNew, each scheduled run delivers only posts and comments you have not received before.
• Filter the noise: set minLeadScore to drop low-signal rows and pick an analysisMode focused on buying intent, complaints or competitor alternatives.

Built for SaaS founders, B2B sales and growth teams, agencies, and product marketers who use Reddit for lead generation, competitor monitoring, brand mentions and voice-of-customer research.

What data does each lead contain?

One row per qualifying post or comment.

Field	Description
recordType	post or comment
leadScore	0-100 score from intent, pain, pricing, competitor, recency and engagement signals
leadLabels	buying_intent, competitor_alternative, pricing_pain, pain_point, urgent, vendor_research
matchedIntentKeywords, matchedPainKeywords	The phrases that produced the score
matchedBrands, matchedCompetitors	Your brands and competitors found in the text
sentimentLabel, sentimentScore	positive / neutral / negative and a score from -1 to 1
summarySnippet	Short excerpt for fast triage
title, selftext / postTitle, body	Post title and body, or parent post title and comment text
subreddit, author, permalink	Community, username and direct link
score, numComments	Reddit engagement when available
createdAt, fetchedAt	Publication and collection time
sourceType, source	Which search, subreddit or URL found the row

Output example

{
  "recordType": "post",
  "leadScore": 81,
  "leadLabels": ["buying_intent", "competitor_alternative", "pricing_pain"],
  "matchedIntentKeywords": ["alternative", "looking for"],
  "matchedPainKeywords": ["too expensive"],
  "matchedBrands": [],
  "matchedCompetitors": ["HubSpot"],
  "sentimentLabel": "negative",
  "sentimentScore": -0.5,
  "summarySnippet": "Looking for a HubSpot alternative for a 6-person team. Pricing got too expensive after the last renewal...",
  "title": "HubSpot alternative for a small team?",
  "subreddit": "SaaS",
  "author": "example_user",
  "score": 41,
  "numComments": 18,
  "createdAt": "2026-10-24T14:22:00+00:00",
  "permalink": "https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/example123/hubspot_alternative_for_a_small_team/",
  "sourceType": "search",
  "source": "HubSpot alternative"
}

How much does Reddit lead generation cost?

• $4.00 per 1,000 scored leads ($0.004 per post or comment delivered)
• $0.00005 per Actor start (per GB of memory)

You pay only for rows that pass your minLeadScore. Rows filtered out are not charged.

Setup	Rows per run	Approx. monthly cost
Daily monitor, 5 searches, onlyNew, score 35+	~20	~$2.40
Weekly competitor sweep, 10 searches + comments	~150	~$2.60
One-off research run	500	$2.00 once

Set a maximum charge per run in Apify. The Actor stops delivering rows when that limit would be exceeded. See the Pricing tab for current rates.

How to find leads on Reddit

1. Add search phrases buyers actually type: "HubSpot alternative", "best CRM for startups", "invoice software recommendation".
2. Add your competitors and brands to competitors and targetBrands.
3. Optional: add subreddits to read their newest posts, or postUrls to analyze specific threads.
4. First run: set minLeadScore to 0 and maxTotalItems to 50 to see everything, then raise the threshold (30-40 works well for lead feeds).
5. Schedule it: save as a task, turn on onlyNew, set a unique stateKey (for example crm-leads), and schedule daily.
6. Get alerts: add a webhook or use Make, Zapier or n8n to post new rows to Slack, email, Notion, Sheets or your CRM.

Input example

{
  "searchQueries": ["HubSpot alternative", "best CRM for small business", "Pipedrive vs"],
  "subreddits": ["SaaS", "smallbusiness"],
  "targetBrands": ["YourCRM"],
  "competitors": ["HubSpot", "Pipedrive", "Salesforce"],
  "analysisMode": "all",
  "minLeadScore": 35,
  "sort": "new",
  "maxItemsPerSource": 50,
  "maxTotalItems": 200,
  "includeComments": true,
  "maxComments": 5,
  "onlyNew": true,
  "stateKey": "crm-leads"
}

Input reference

Field	Default	Notes
searchQueries	[]	Site-wide Reddit keyword searches
subreddits	[]	Communities to read (by sort), with or without r/
postUrls	[]	Specific threads to analyze with their top comments
targetBrands / competitors	[]	Names to detect and boost
intentKeywords / painKeywords	built-in lists	Replace with your own phrases
analysisMode	all	all, buying_intent, complaints, competitor_alternatives
minLeadScore	25	0 to 100
sort / time	new / month	hot, new, top, rising; time window for top
maxItemsPerSource	50	Posts per search or subreddit (max 500)
maxTotalItems	100	Rows per run, posts plus comments (max 5,000)
includeComments / maxComments	true / 5	Top-level comments per post (max 100)
onlyNew / stateKey	false / default	New-only monitoring memory
dedupe	true	Remove duplicates across sources
requestDelayMs / proxyConfiguration	700 / none	Politeness delay and optional Apify Proxy

searchQueries, subreddits and postUrls are independent sources. Adding a subreddit reads that community's listing; it does not restrict keyword searches to it.

How the lead score works

The score is transparent and deterministic, so you can see why every row is there:

• Recommendation or comparison language adds the most (buying_intent).
• Pain and pricing language, competitor names and your brand names add more.
• Question titles, comments, upvotes, comment count and recency (last 7 or 30 days) add small boosts.
• matchedIntentKeywords, matchedPainKeywords, matchedBrands and matchedCompetitors show the evidence.

Sentiment uses a positive/negative word list, not an AI model. Always open the permalink before replying, and follow each subreddit's rules on self-promotion.

Use Reddit Lead Finder with Slack, CRMs and AI agents

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("groupoject/reddit-lead-finder-sentiment-monitor").call(run_input={
    "searchQueries": ["CRM alternative"],
    "competitors": ["HubSpot"],
    "minLeadScore": 35,
    "onlyNew": True,
    "stateKey": "crm-leads",
})
for lead in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(lead["leadScore"], lead["leadLabels"], lead["permalink"])

• Slack / email alerts: schedule a task and connect the Apify Slack or Gmail integration, or a webhook to your own endpoint.
• CRM and Sheets: send rows to HubSpot, Airtable, Notion or Google Sheets through Make, Zapier or n8n.
• AI agents (MCP): https://mcp.apify.com?tools=groupoject/reddit-lead-finder-sentiment-monitor lets Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT run lead searches for you.

Each run writes a SUMMARY record (rows delivered, sources, threshold, previously seen count).

FAQ

Do I need a Reddit API key or account? No. The Actor reads public Reddit web pages (no RSS feeds, no API key), so it keeps working after Reddit retires RSS. You only need an Apify account.

How is this different from a Reddit scraper? A scraper gives you everything. This Actor scores and labels each post and comment for buying intent, competitor mentions and pricing pain, drops low-signal rows before you pay for them, and remembers what it already sent you.

Are these verified sales leads? No. They are public conversations that match buying signals. Qualify them yourself and respect community rules before reaching out.

Does it read nested replies? It reads top-level comments under each post (up to maxComments), not full nested reply trees.

Why did a scheduled run return nothing? With onlyNew, no rows means no new matching posts since the last run. Check SUMMARY.previouslySeenCount. A new stateKey starts a fresh baseline.

What if Reddit rate-limits the run? Each blocked request is retried with a fresh IP and, if needed, through Apify residential proxy, so runs keep going without RSS feeds or an API key.

Related Actors

• Reddit API Scraper - raw posts and comments through Reddit's official OAuth API
• YouTube Comments Scraper - audience feedback from YouTube videos
• Google News Scraper - news mentions of your brand and competitors
• Meta Ads Library Monitor - track competitors' new ads