Reddit Scraper

The fastest, most affordable way to get full-fidelity Reddit data — no API key required. Posts and comments with raw markdown bodies, exact parent linkage, and live scores, fresh within minutes. One simple schema, zero setup, flat $0.50 per 1,000 items.

Why this actor

Option	What it takes
Scraping APIs	Per-request pricing that grows with your volume
This actor	$0.50 per 1,000 posts/comments — flat, nothing to configure, start in minutes

• Full fidelity — raw markdown body (not rendered HTML), exact parentId for comments, score / upvote_ratio / num_comments, isNsfw, media URLs
• Fresh data — new posts and comments within minutes; live-path results carry current scores, not day-old snapshots
• No credentials required — no Reddit account, no API app, no proxy config
• Resilient by design — multiple independent data sources behind one schema; if one is down, another serves. You get data or an explicit signal, never a silent empty result
• Honest failure modes — a deleted post returns an empty dataset; a source outage returns an explicit archive_unavailable item. You can always tell them apart

📋 What Data Can You Extract?

Each Reddit post/comment includes:

Field	Description
url	Permanent Reddit URL
id	Reddit unique identifier (t3_/t1_ prefixed)
title	Post title (posts only)
body	Text content — raw markdown
username	Author username
communityName	Subreddit name (e.g., r/python)
dataType	Content type: "post" or "comment"
parentId	Parent post/comment id (exact, for comments)
score	Upvotes minus downvotes
upvote_ratio	Ratio of upvotes (0-1)
num_comments	Number of comments (posts only)
createdAt	ISO 8601 timestamp
isNsfw	NSFW flag
media	Array of image/video URLs (if present)

🎯 Use Cases

• Market Research — Monitor discussions about products, brands, or topics
• Sentiment Analysis — Analyze community opinions and trends
• AI Training Data — Raw markdown text with thread structure, ready for pipelines
• Content Aggregation — Collect posts for newsletters or content curation
• Trend Detection — Track emerging topics and viral content within minutes

💡 Input Configuration

Subreddit Scraping

{
  "subreddits": ["python", "MachineLearning", "datascience"],
  "limit": 25,
  "sort": "new"
}

Parameters:

• subreddits (array, required) - List of subreddit names (without r/ prefix)
• limit (number, optional) - Posts per subreddit (1-100, default: 10)
• sort (string, optional) - Sort order: "new", "hot", "top" (default: "new"). Only "new" is exact; "hot" and "top" return the newest posts.
• keyword (string, optional) - Only posts whose title or text contains this keyword, newest first

Single URL Scraping

Scrape a specific post or comment by URL — the fastest, cheapest mode:

{
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/python/comments/abc123/title/"
}

Parameters:

• url (string, required) - Full Reddit post or comment URL
• liveFallback (boolean, optional, default false) - If primary sources can't serve the item, scrape it from Reddit's live public feeds. Degraded data (plain-text body, no scores), so it's opt-in. Off: outages return an archive_unavailable error item instead.

📊 Output Example

[
  {
    "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/bittensor_/comments/1or4vcv/james_altucher_on_bittensor/",
    "id": "t3_1or4vcv",
    "title": "James Altucher on Bittensor: The Only Tech That Matters Since Bitcoin",
    "body": "# Who Is James Altucher\n\nJames Altucher is not a typical crypto influencer...",
    "username": "Internal-Patience533",
    "communityName": "r/bittensor_",
    "dataType": "post",
    "parentId": null,
    "score": 29,
    "upvote_ratio": 1.0,
    "num_comments": 3,
    "createdAt": "2025-11-07T20:10:31Z",
    "isNsfw": false,
    "media": ["https://i.redd.it/2iyvqtsu6wzf1.png"]
  }
]

🔧 Advanced Usage

Keyword Filtering

{
  "subreddits": ["technology"],
  "keyword": "artificial intelligence",
  "limit": 50,
  "sort": "top"
}

Multiple Subreddits

{
  "subreddits": ["python", "javascript", "golang", "rust"],
  "limit": 20,
  "sort": "hot"
}

📈 Reliability

One input schema, several independent sources behind it — the actor picks the best available per request and you never manage any of it:

• Primary: high-throughput archive sources with rate-limit backoff and proxy rescue
• Live path: direct fetches that return current scores and minute-fresh content
• Continuity: public Atom feeds keep subreddit scraping alive even during full outages (liveFallback enables the same for single-URL mode)
• Signals: archive_unavailable items mean "our sources are down", empty datasets mean "the post is really gone" — automated pipelines can act on each correctly

❓ Common Questions

Q: Do I need a Reddit account or API key? A: No. Everything is handled by the actor.

Q: How fresh is the data? A: Minutes for posts and comments. Live-path results include current scores; archive-served results can carry scores that lag up to ~36 hours for very fresh items.

Q: Can I scrape comments? A: Yes — full comment objects with exact parentId, via direct URL.

Q: Can I scrape private subreddits? A: No, only public subreddits and posts.

Q: What does it cost? A: $0.50 per 1,000 posts/comments, flat. No proxies to buy, no accounts to manage, no surprise per-request fees.

🛠 Self-hosting: optional full-fidelity fallback

Running your own fork? Set a secret environment variable REDDIT_SESSION_COOKIE with the reddit_session cookie of a dedicated Reddit account (DevTools → Application → Cookies). Anonymous reddit.com is bot-walled, but a normal logged-in session is not — and the cookie works from any IP. With it set, the actor gains a full-fidelity live path (raw markdown, exact parent_id, live scores) that engages only when the archives can't serve an item. Use a dedicated account, not a personal one: Reddit may suspend accounts used for scraping. When unset, behavior is unchanged.

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