Lemmy Scraper - Posts, Communities & Comments

Scrape Lemmy posts and communities in bulk from any instance. Extract title, body, score, upvotes, comments, author, community, URL and timestamps to CSV/JSON. No API key, no login.

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What does the Lemmy Scraper do?

This Actor turns any Lemmy search into a structured dataset. You give it by instance feed or by community, it walks the result pages one after another, and it writes one clean row per post into your dataset — ready to export as JSON, CSV or Excel, or to pull straight from the Apify API.

Every Lemmy instance exposes the same documented, keyless REST API, so the Actor talks to it directly and works against any server in the fediverse — lemmy.world, lemmy.ml or a niche instance — by changing one input. Pagination is followed automatically until it runs out of results, hits your page limit or hits your Max items cap, whichever comes first. Every row is de-duplicated across the whole run, so you are never billed twice for the same post.

There is no API key, no login and no browser involved. That keeps runs fast and cheap, and it means you can schedule the Actor without worrying about credentials expiring.

Who is it for?

• Social listening teams tracking discussion that never appears on Reddit.
• Researchers studying fediverse communities and moderation at scale.
• Journalists monitoring niche communities for emerging stories.
• Product teams watching what users say about a category or competitor.
• AI teams collecting structured discussion data for training or grounding.

Use cases

• Export the top posts of a community and rank them by score.
• Monitor several communities in one run for mentions of a product or topic.
• Track how engagement in a community changes week over week.
• Compare activity across instances to find where a topic really lives.
• Build a discussion dataset with authors, scores and timestamps.

Why use this Lemmy Scraper?

• 🔑 Keyless — no account, no API token, no cookies to paste.
• 📦 19 fields per post — everything the result page exposes, already typed.
• 📄 Real pagination — it walks page after page instead of returning the first screen.
• 🎯 Precise caps — Max items stops the run exactly where you want it, so the bill is predictable.
• 📊 Export anywhere — JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, plus the Apify API and integrations.
• 💸 Pay per result — you pay for rows you actually receive, with no platform fees to calculate.

What data can you extract?

Every run produces one row per post, with these fields:

Field	Type	Description
postId	string	Lemmy post ID on its home instance
title	string	Post title
body	string	Post body text when the post has one
postUrl	string	Canonical fediverse URL of the post
linkUrl	string	External link the post points at, if any
score	number	Net score of the post
upvotes	number	Number of upvotes
downvotes	number	Number of downvotes
commentsCount	number	Number of comments
authorName	string	Author username
authorUrl	string	Author profile URL
communityName	string	Community name
communityTitle	string	Human-readable community title
communityUrl	string	Community URL
nsfw	boolean	Whether the post is flagged not safe for work
publishedAt	string	ISO timestamp the post was published
instance	string	Instance the run read from
page	number	Result page the post appeared on
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of extraction

Output example

{
  "authorName": "schizoidman",
  "authorUrl": "https://lemmy.zip/u/schizoidman",
  "body": "> An investigation by Gamers Nexus found LG smart TVs sweep local networks to map phones and nearby devices. Tests also showed the sets can capture\u2026",
  "commentsCount": 356,
  "communityName": "technology",
  "communityTitle": "Technology",
  "communityUrl": "https://lemmy.world/c/technology",
  "downvotes": 6,
  "instance": "lemmy.world",
  "linkUrl": "https://www.notebookcheck.net/LG-smart-TVs-caught-logging-audio-with-screen-off-and-snooping-on-local-devices.1391214.0.html",
  "nsfw": false,
  "page": 1,
  "postId": "51625918",
  "postUrl": "https://lemmy.zip/post/71045682",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-07T07:53:20.130805Z",
  "score": 1507,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-12T10:21:04.911Z",
  "title": "LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices",
  "upvotes": 1513
}

How to use

Option A — by instance feed

{
  "instance": "lemmy.world",
  "maxItems": 500,
  "maxPagesPerSearch": 10,
  "sort": "TopWeek"
}

1. Open the Actor and fill in the instance feed field.
2. Set Max pages per search and Max items to bound the run.
3. Click Start, then export from the Output tab.

Option B — by community

{
  "communities": [
    "technology",
    "privacy"
  ],
  "instance": "lemmy.ml",
  "maxItems": 500,
  "maxPagesPerSearch": 10,
  "sort": "New"
}

Paste one or more Lemmy URLs into Start URLs and the Actor paginates each of them independently.

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
instance	string	lemmy.world	Host of the Lemmy instance to read, without https://.
communities	array	[]	Community names to restrict the run to, e.
sort	string	TopDay	Ordering applied to the feed.
maxPagesPerSearch	integer	6	How many result pages to walk for each search.
maxItems	integer	300	Stop after this many posts.
maxConcurrency	integer	2	Parallel requests.
proxyConfiguration	object	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Proxy used to fetch pages.

Tips for best results

• lemmy.world is the largest instance; point the Actor at a niche one to reach a specific community.
• Leave Communities empty to read the whole instance feed, or name them to narrow the run.
• TopDay and TopWeek give the highest-signal posts; New is better for monitoring.
• Lemmy returns 50 posts per page, so a 10-page run yields roughly 500 rows.
• score is upvotes minus downvotes — sort by it to find what actually landed.
• Schedule a daily run to build an engagement history rather than a snapshot.
• Posts without a body are link posts; use linkUrl for those.
• Keep Max concurrency low — most instances are volunteer-run and small.
• The fediverse federates, so a post can appear on several instances; deduplicate on postUrl.
• Pair with the Reddit and Mastodon scrapers for full coverage of open social discussion.

Integrations

Send results straight into the tools you already use: Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make, Airtable or any Webhook. You can also schedule the Actor to run hourly, daily or weekly and have each run append to the same dataset, which is how you build a price or availability history rather than a one-off snapshot.

API usage

Run the Actor and collect results from any language. Replace <YOUR_TOKEN> with your Apify API token.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logiover~lemmy-community-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"instance": "lemmy.world", "maxItems": 500, "maxPagesPerSearch": 10, "sort": "TopWeek"}'

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('logiover/lemmy-community-scraper').call({"instance": "lemmy.world", "maxItems": 500, "maxPagesPerSearch": 10, "sort": "TopWeek"});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('<YOUR_TOKEN>')
run = client.actor('logiover/lemmy-community-scraper').call(run_input={"instance": "lemmy.world", "maxItems": 500, "maxPagesPerSearch": 10, "sort": "TopWeek"})
for item in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This Actor is available through the Apify MCP server, so an AI agent can call it as a tool. Point your agent at https://mcp.apify.com and it can run the Lemmy Scraper on demand — for example: "Pull the first 500 posts from Lemmy and summarise the price distribution." The agent receives the same structured rows you would get from the UI.

FAQ

Do I need a Lemmy account or API key?

No. The Actor reads publicly available pages only. There is nothing to authenticate and no credentials to rotate.

How many posts can I get in one run?

As many as the search exposes. Raise Max pages per search and Max items together; the run stops at whichever limit it reaches first.

Why did I get fewer rows than I asked for?

The search ran out of posts. That is normal for narrow queries — broaden the search or add more searches to one run.

Are results de-duplicated?

Yes. Each post is emitted once per run, even when it appears on several pages, so you are never billed twice for the same record.

Why are some fields empty?

Lemmy does not publish every attribute for every post. Empty means the source did not show it, not that extraction failed.

What export formats are supported?

JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML and RSS from the Output tab, plus the Apify API and any integration you connect.

How fast is it?

It is pure HTTP with no browser, so a page of results typically takes a second or two. Raise Max concurrency carefully — the source rate-limits aggressive crawling.

Can I schedule it?

Yes. Use the Apify scheduler to run it on any interval and append each run to the same dataset for time-series analysis.

Does it work behind a proxy?

It uses Apify Proxy automatically. You can switch groups or supply your own proxies in Proxy configuration.

How often does the data change?

Lemmy updates continuously. Re-run whenever you need current data; the Actor always reads the live pages, never a cache.

Is the output schema stable?

Yes. Field names and types are fixed, so downstream pipelines will not break between runs.

What if the site changes its layout?

Open an issue on the Issues tab and it gets fixed. The Actor is actively maintained.

Is it legal?

This Actor reads only publicly available pages on Lemmy — the same content any visitor sees without logging in. It does not bypass authentication, does not collect private data and does not attempt to defeat access controls. You are responsible for how you use the output: respect the source's terms of service, applicable copyright, and data-protection law such as GDPR where personal data is involved. Scraping public data is generally lawful in the EU and the US, but the responsibility for the downstream use of that data sits with you.

Related scrapers

• Reddit Search Scraper — Reddit posts and comments
• Mastodon Scraper — Fediverse microblogging
• Bluesky Archive Scraper — Bluesky posts at scale
• Hacker News Archive — Tech discussion history