Reddit Search Scraper — Search Any Subreddit by Keyword (No API Key, No Login)

Search within any subreddit on Reddit by keyword, sort mode and time window — no login, no OAuth app, no API key. Returns each matching post or comment with title, author, subreddit, body text, permalink and timestamps in clean, deduplicated JSON. Pass a whole list of {query, subreddit, sort, time, type} searches and each one runs independently. Built on Reddit's only surviving logged-out search surface — the subreddit-scoped Atom feed (/r/{sub}/search.rss) — with residential-proxy session rotation for reliable fetches.

🏆 Why this Reddit search scraper?

Bulk multi-search (many keyword × subreddit × sort × time combos per run) · clean decoded post & comment text · residential-proxy backed · export to JSON / CSV / Excel. The no-API-key Reddit search alternative for brand monitoring, niche-community intel and NLP/sentiment pipelines — after Reddit hard-blocked the legacy search.json API.

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⚠️ Read this before you buy — how it works & what it does NOT return

As of mid-2026 Reddit hard-blocks the legacy search.json API — both www.reddit.com and old.reddit.com return 403, even over residential proxies with a browser fingerprint. The only logged-out search endpoint Reddit still serves is the subreddit-scoped Atom feed (/r/{sub}/search.rss). This Actor uses that feed, which has three consequences you should understand up front:

• A subreddit is REQUIRED on every search. All-of-Reddit (global) search has no working logged-out endpoint anymore — searches without a subreddit are skipped with a warning.
• ~25 results per search, no pagination. The feed returns at most ~25 of the most relevant items per query and exposes no cursor. To widen coverage, run more searches (vary keyword, subreddit, sort and time window).
• No numeric signals. The RSS feed does not carry score, upvoteRatio, numComments or awards — those lived only on the now-dead .json API. If you need upvote or comment counts, this is not the right tool; use a dedicated OAuth-based Reddit tool instead.

Those fields still exist in the output object (always null) purely for schema stability — see the field reference below.

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✨ What this Actor does / Key features

• 🔎 Keyword search inside any subreddit — supply a query and a target subreddit; get back the most relevant matching posts or comments.
• 📚 Bulk multi-search — pass many {query, subreddit, sort, time, type} objects in one run; each executes independently and its rows are tagged with the search that found them.
• 🔀 All feed sort modes — relevance, hot, top, new and comments.
• ⏳ All time windows — hour, day, week, month, year and all.
• 🧵 Posts or comments — set type to link (posts, default) or comment.
• 🧼 Clean decoded text — handles Reddit's double-encoded HTML entities and returns readable title and text, deduplicated per run.
• 🔗 Full attribution — every row carries the Reddit id, fullname (e.g. t3_...), permalink, author, subreddit and ISO createdAt / editedAt timestamps.
• 🛡️ Residential-proxy backed — Reddit blocks Apify datacenter IPs, so the Actor defaults to the residential pool and rotates sessions + user-agents on 403/429 with backoff.
• 🔓 No login, no API key — no Reddit account, OAuth app or developer credentials required. Only an Apify account.
• 📦 Export-ready — clean flat rows straight to CSV, JSON, Excel, XML or JSONL from the Apify Dataset.

🚀 Quick start (3 steps)

1. Configure — add one or more search objects to searches. Each needs a query and a required subreddit; sort, time and type are optional.
2. Run — click Start. The Actor fetches each subreddit search feed over a residential proxy and streams matching rows into your dataset.
3. Get your data — open the Output tab and export to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or JSONL, or pull it via the Apify API.

📥 Input

Provide at least one search object in searches — each must include a subreddit. Everything else is optional.

Example — monitor two communities for AI keywords

{
  "searches": [
    { "query": "ai agent", "subreddit": "MachineLearning", "sort": "new", "time": "month", "type": "link" },
    { "query": "openai",   "subreddit": "OpenAI",          "sort": "top", "time": "week",  "type": "link" }
  ],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 25
}

Example — same keyword across several subreddits (brand monitoring)

{
  "searches": [
    { "query": "shopify", "subreddit": "ecommerce",    "sort": "new", "time": "month", "type": "link" },
    { "query": "shopify", "subreddit": "Entrepreneur", "sort": "new", "time": "month", "type": "link" },
    { "query": "shopify", "subreddit": "smallbusiness","sort": "new", "time": "month", "type": "link" }
  ]
}

Example — mine comments for a sentiment / NLP pipeline

{
  "searches": [
    { "query": "side hustle", "subreddit": "Entrepreneur", "sort": "top", "time": "all", "type": "comment" }
  ],
  "proxyConfig": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"], "apifyProxyCountry": "US" }
}

Field	Type	Description
searches	array	List of search objects. Each: query (required text), subreddit (REQUIRED — the sub to search within, e.g. MachineLearning), sort, time, type. Each runs as a separate search and returns up to ~25 most-relevant items. Required.
searches[].query	string	Keyword to search for inside the subreddit.
searches[].subreddit	string	Subreddit to search within (without r/). Required — global all-of-Reddit search is not available logged-out.
searches[].sort	string	relevance, hot, top, new or comments.
searches[].time	string	hour, day, week, month, year or all.
searches[].type	string	link (posts, default) or comment.
maxResultsPerSearch	integer	Cap items per search (1–25). Reddit's logged-out feed returns ~25 max with no pagination, so values above 25 have no extra effect. Default 25.
proxyConfig	object	Apify Proxy settings. Reddit blocks datacenter IPs, so the residential pool is used by default; set apifyProxyCountry: "US" for a higher success rate.

Want more than ~25 per topic? The feed cap is per-search, so add more searches entries — vary the keyword, sort (new vs top) and time window to surface different slices of the same community. That is the only way to widen coverage.

📤 Output

One clean, deduplicated row per matching result. Here is a sample post record:

{
  "resultType": "link",
  "id": "1twtdob",
  "fullname": "t3_1twtdob",
  "subreddit": "MachineLearning",
  "author": "Intellerce",
  "title": "We built a source-available LLM reliability library",
  "text": "TL;DR: Reliability techniques that boost an LLM's correctness...",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/1twtdob/...",
  "permalink": "https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/1twtdob/...",
  "createdAt": "2026-06-04T16:51:29+00:00",
  "editedAt": "2026-06-04T16:51:29+00:00",
  "searchQuery": { "query": "ai agent", "subreddit": "MachineLearning", "sort": "new", "time": "month", "type": "link" },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-06T17:59:00.000Z"
}

The Overview table view surfaces title, subreddit, author, text, createdAt and permalink for quick scanning; the full schema is always available in the raw JSON/CSV export.

💡 Use cases

• Brand / keyword monitoring — watch specific communities for mentions of your product, competitor or campaign; run on a schedule with sort=new.
• Competitor & topic intel — search niche subreddits where your audience actually hangs out and pull the most relevant threads.
• Trend research & content discovery — pull sort=top, time=week per subreddit to see what's resonating right now.
• Sentiment & NLP pipelines — bulk-ingest decoded post and comment text across many searches as input for classification or LLM workflows.
• Community research — compare how the same keyword is discussed across several subreddits by fanning one query out over multiple searches.
• Lead & audience discovery — find people asking questions your product answers, complete with author and permalink for follow-up.

👥 Who uses it

Growth marketers & social-listening teams · community and brand managers · founders & indie hackers doing customer research · market researchers & data journalists · ML/NLP engineers building sentiment and discussion datasets.

💰 Pricing

This Actor runs on a simple pay-per-result model — you only pay for the rows actually returned, with no separate Apify platform fees to calculate. Because each search caps at ~25 items, costs stay small and predictable even across many searches. Try it on the free tier first, then scale up. See the Pricing tab on this page for the current rate.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Is it legal to scrape Reddit? The Actor reads only publicly available content from Reddit's public subreddit search feed. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with Reddit's terms and applicable law, such as GDPR.

Does Reddit have a public search API? Not for logged-out clients anymore. As of mid-2026 Reddit hard-blocks the legacy search.json API (www and old.reddit both return 403). The only logged-out search surface still served is the subreddit-scoped Atom feed (/r/{sub}/search.rss), which is exactly what this Actor uses.

Do I need an API key or a login? No. There is no Reddit account, OAuth developer app or API key required — only an Apify account. The Actor reads the public subreddit feed over a residential proxy.

Do I need a proxy? Reddit blocks Apify datacenter IPs aggressively, so the Actor defaults to the residential proxy pool and rotates sessions on 403/429. You can leave proxy settings at their default; setting apifyProxyCountry: "US" can improve the success rate.

How much data can I get? Each individual search returns at most ~25 of the most relevant items (the feed's cap, with no pagination). To scale up, add more searches entries — vary the keyword, subreddit, sort and time window. Total results scale with the number of searches you run, not with a per-search limit.

Why are score, numComments and upvoteRatio empty? Those numeric signals lived only on the now-blocked .json API. The RSS feed does not carry them, so they are always null. This Actor is for discovering and reading matching posts/comments, not for upvote/comment analytics.

Is this a Reddit API alternative for searching subreddits?

Yes. Reddit's logged-out search.json API is hard-blocked as of mid-2026, so this Actor acts as a no-API-key way to search any subreddit by keyword. It returns posts and comments from the subreddit-scoped feed, with a ~25-result cap per search.

Can I scrape Reddit without an API or login?

Yes — no login, OAuth or developer app is required. The Actor reads Reddit's public subreddit search feed over a residential proxy, so it works without a Reddit account or API credentials.

How do I export Reddit posts and comments to CSV or JSON?

Run your searches and Apify stores the matching rows in a dataset you can download as CSV, JSON, Excel, XML or JSONL (or pull via the API). Each row carries title, author, subreddit, text, permalink and timestamps — ready for a spreadsheet or NLP pipeline.

How do I monitor a subreddit for brand or keyword mentions?

Add a search object with your keyword and the target subreddit, set sort to new, and schedule the run to capture the latest matching posts over time. Fan the same keyword across several subreddits with multiple search objects for wider brand coverage.

Can I search several subreddits for the same keyword at once?

Yes. Pass multiple search objects, each with the same query but a different subreddit; every one runs independently and each returned row is tagged with the searchQuery that found it.

Can I collect comments as well as posts?

Yes. Set type to comment on a search object to pull matching comments (with decoded text and permalink) instead of posts. Posts and comments share the same row format and can be merged downstream.

🔗 More social & community scrapers by logiover

Building a cross-platform community-discussion dataset? Pair Reddit search with the rest of the social/dev/content suite:

Source	Actor
👽 Reddit	Reddit Subreddit Scraper · Reddit Historical Archive Scraper
🟠 Hacker News	Hacker News Search Scraper
💬 Q&A	Stack Exchange Questions Scraper
🐦 Microblogs	X / Tweet Scraper · Threads Scraper
👩‍💻 Dev content	Dev.to Articles Scraper · Substack Newsletter Scraper
▶️ YouTube	YouTube Comments Scraper
🎵 TikTok	TikTok Brand Mention Monitor

👉 Browse all logiover scrapers on Apify Store — 180+ actors across real estate, jobs, crypto, social media & B2B data.

⏰ Scheduling & integration

Schedule this Actor on Apify to monitor your subreddits daily or hourly and build a growing keyword-mention dataset. Export results to JSON, CSV or Excel, sync to Google Sheets, or push to your database, BI tools and webhooks through the Apify API. Connect it to Make, n8n or Zapier to route fresh Reddit mentions straight into Slack, Discord, Notion or any HTTP endpoint the moment they appear.

⭐ Support & feedback

Found a bug or need an extra field? Open an issue on the Issues tab — response is usually fast. If this Actor saves you time, a ★★★★★ review on the Store page genuinely helps and is hugely appreciated. 🙏

⚖️ Legal

This Actor extracts only publicly available data from Reddit's public subreddit search feed and is intended for legitimate research, analytics and monitoring use. You are responsible for complying with Reddit's terms of service, GDPR and any applicable local laws.

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📝 Changelog

2026-07-06

• ✨ README overhaul: added a badge row, ready-to-run example scenarios, a collapsible full field reference, an expanded high-intent FAQ (API alternative, no-login export, data volume) and a curated social/community cross-promo grid. Kept the RSS-only reality (subreddit required, ~25/search cap, no score/comments) front and center.

2026-07-01

• Maintenance pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data and confirmed successful runs within the 5-minute quality window on the default input.
• Sharpened Store metadata (SEO title & description) and expanded the FAQ with high-intent, long-tail questions for easier discovery in Google and Apify Store search.
• Added ready-to-run example tasks that cover common real-world use cases.

2026-06-15

• Reliability pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data with real-world inputs. Routine maintenance build.

2026-06-07

• 📚 Docs: added coverage for using the actor as a Reddit API alternative, exporting Reddit posts/comments to CSV/JSON, and scraping Reddit without an API key or login.

2026-06-06

• 📚 Docs & schema accuracy pass: README now reflects the RSS-only reality (subreddit required, ~25/search cap, no score/comments). Removed always-null score/numComments columns from the dataset table; added the populated text column.

2026-06-05

• 🛡️ Reliability fix: results no longer dropped by strict output validation — runs complete cleanly.

2026-06-04

• Verified live & refreshed build — reliability/maintenance pass.