Reddit Scraper

Extract Reddit post data at scale — browse subreddit feeds, run keyword searches, and pull top comments from public Reddit JSON endpoints. No login, no OAuth, no browser, and no Reddit API key required.

Features

• Subreddit feed scraping - scrape new, hot, or top posts from any subreddit with automatic pagination
• Keyword search - search within one or more subreddits using Reddit's public search endpoint
• Top comments - optionally fetch top-level comments for each post to capture discussion context
• Multi-subreddit runs - scrape several subreddits in one actor run
• Fast and lightweight - HTTP-only extraction via curl_cffi, no browser overhead
• Auto-deduplication - results are deduplicated by post ID across subreddit and query combinations
• Proxy-ready - supports Apify proxy configuration for larger runs and rate-limit mitigation

Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
subreddits	array of strings	—	Subreddit names to scrape, without the r/ prefix. Required.
searchQueries	array of strings	—	Keywords to search inside each subreddit. If empty, the actor scrapes the subreddit feed directly.
sort	string	"new"	Sort order: new, hot, top, or relevance. relevance is only meaningful when searchQueries is used.
timeFilter	string	"week"	Time range filter for top and search results: hour, day, week, month, year, all.
maxResults	integer	100	Maximum posts to return per subreddit, or per subreddit + query combination. Range: 1-5000.
includeComments	boolean	false	Fetch top-level comments for each post. Slower but adds discussion context.
maxComments	integer	10	Maximum number of top-level comments to include per post when comments are enabled.
proxy	object	—	Apify proxy configuration. Recommended for large runs to avoid rate limiting.

Output Fields

Field	Type	Description
postId	string	Reddit post ID
subreddit	string	Source subreddit name
title	string	Post title
url	string	Full Reddit post URL
author	string	Reddit username of the post author
body	string	Self-post text body, empty for link posts or removed content
score	integer	Reddit score
upvoteRatio	number	Upvote ratio reported by Reddit
numComments	integer	Total number of comments on the post
flair	string	Post flair text if present
createdAt	string	Post creation time in ISO 8601 format
isNsfw	boolean	Whether the post is marked NSFW
isSelf	boolean	Whether the post is a self post
thumbnail	string	Thumbnail URL or Reddit thumbnail marker
externalUrl	string	External destination URL for link posts
scrapedAt	string	Time when this actor scraped the record
comments	array	Top-level comments as objects with author, body, score, createdAt

Usage Examples

Scrape New Posts from a Subreddit

{
  "subreddits": ["forhire"],
  "sort": "new",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Search Inside Multiple Subreddits

{
  "subreddits": ["forhire", "freelance", "webscraping"],
  "searchQueries": ["hiring developer", "need help building"],
  "sort": "new",
  "timeFilter": "month",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Scrape Top Posts with Comments

{
  "subreddits": ["startups"],
  "sort": "top",
  "timeFilter": "week",
  "maxResults": 25,
  "includeComments": true,
  "maxComments": 5
}

Large Run with Proxy

{
  "subreddits": ["forhire", "freelance", "entrepreneur", "SaaS"],
  "searchQueries": ["looking for developer", "need automation"],
  "sort": "relevance",
  "timeFilter": "week",
  "maxResults": 200,
  "proxy": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Pricing

This actor is designed to be lightweight and inexpensive: approximately $2 per 1,000 results, using a simple pricing model of start fee + per-result charge.

Notes

• Public data only - the actor reads Reddit's public JSON endpoints. No login, OAuth, or private user data is used.
• Cookie workaround - Reddit's JSON endpoints require a cookie header to be present, but the cookie value itself does not need to be real. This actor uses the minimal cookie _ = 1.
• Rate limits - Reddit applies per-IP rate limiting. Large runs should use Apify proxy rotation for stability.
• Comments cost extra requests - enabling includeComments adds one extra request per post that has comments, so large runs will be slower.
• Result scope - maxResults applies independently to each subreddit, or each subreddit + search query combination when search is enabled.

Legal

This actor extracts publicly available Reddit data from endpoints accessible to any visitor on the public web. No authentication or account access is used.