Reddit Scraper 🔥

Skip the homework. Scraping Reddit used to mean wrestling with APIs, fighting rate limits, and begging for OAuth tokens. Not anymore.

This Actor logs into Reddit like a real user, browses subreddits, searches for keywords, and extracts posts with comments — all without touching a single API endpoint.

⚠️ Important: Do not use regular datacenter proxies for Reddit scraping.

Reddit aggressively blocks non-residential IPs; always use residential proxies if scraping at scale, otherwise you will be blocked quickly.

✨ Features

• 🔍 Search Mode – Search all of Reddit or within a specific subreddit by keyword
• 🔐 Login Support – Uses your Reddit credentials to access content as an authenticated user
• 📜 Infinite Scroll – Automatically scrolls to load more posts (unlimited)
• 💬 Comments Extraction – Grabs threaded comments with author, upvotes, and timestamps
• 🖼️ Full Post Details – Extracts text, images, videos, galleries, and external links
• 🎭 Stealth Mode – Uses Camoufox (stealthy Firefox fork) to avoid detection
• 🔄 Flexible Filtering – Sort by Hot, New, Top, or Rising

🚀 Getting Started

📖 Two Modes: Browse vs Search

This Actor supports two modes of operation:

Mode	When to Use	Required Fields
Browse	Scrape posts from a specific subreddit feed	subreddit (required)
Search	Find posts by keyword across Reddit	searchQuery (required)

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🔍 Search Mode

Search for posts by keyword — either across all of Reddit or within a specific subreddit.

Search All of Reddit

{
    "searchQuery": "artificial intelligence",
    "searchSort": "relevance",
    "searchTimeFilter": "week",
    "postCount": 20,
    "redditSessionCookie": "your-session-cookie-here"
}

Search Within a Subreddit

{
    "searchQuery": "renewable energy",
    "subreddit": "technology",
    "searchSort": "top",
    "searchTimeFilter": "month",
    "postCount": 15,
    "redditSessionCookie": "your-session-cookie-here"
}

Search Sort Options:

• relevance – Best matches first (default)
• hot – Currently trending results
• top – Highest upvoted
• new – Most recent
• comments – Most discussed

Time Filter Options:

• all – All time (default)
• hour – Past hour
• day – Past 24 hours
• week – Past week
• month – Past month
• year – Past year

---

📂 Browse Mode

Scrape posts from a subreddit feed with your preferred sorting.

{
    "subreddit": "technology",
    "filter": "hot",
    "postCount": 25,
    "redditSessionCookie": "your-session-cookie-here"
}

---

🔑 Authentication (Two Options)

You can authenticate in two ways:

Option 1: Session Cookie (Recommended ⭐)

Use a session cookie for faster, more reliable scraping. The cookie is valid for ~6 months.

💡 Tip: With a valid session cookie, you can try running without a proxy — it often works! This saves costs and speeds up your scrapes.

{
    "subreddit": "technology",
    "filter": "hot",
    "postCount": 25,
    "redditSessionCookie": "your-session-cookie-here"
}

Option 2: Email & Password

Use credentials to login (requires residential proxy). The session cookie will be printed in the logs so you can copy it for future runs.

{
    "subreddit": "technology",
    "filter": "hot",
    "postCount": 25,
    "redditEmail": "your-email@example.com",
    "redditPassword": "your-password",
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true,
        "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
    }
}

📋 How to Get Your Session Cookie

There are two ways to get your Reddit session cookie:

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Method A: Run the Actor with Login (Automated)

1. Run the Actor with your Reddit email/password AND a residential proxy enabled
2. After successful login, look for this in the logs:

============================================================
 SESSION COOKIE FOR FUTURE USE (copy this value):
 eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6IlNIQTI1N...
 ============================================================

3. Copy the entire cookie value (it's a long string)
4. Save it somewhere safe — this cookie is valid for ~6 months!

---

Method B: Extract from Your Browser (Manual)

If you prefer not to share your password, you can grab the session cookie directly from your browser:

Chrome / Edge:

1. Open Reddit and log in to your account
2. Press F12 (or right-click → "Inspect") to open Developer Tools
3. Go to the Application tab (or "Storage" tab in some browsers)
4. In the left sidebar, expand Cookies → click https://www.reddit.com
5. Find the cookie named reddit_session in the list
6. Double-click the Value column to select it, then copy the entire value

Firefox:

1. Open Reddit and log in to your account
2. Press F12 to open Developer Tools
3. Go to the Storage tab
4. Expand Cookies → click https://www.reddit.com
5. Find reddit_session and copy its value

⚠️ Important: The cookie value is a very long encoded string (starts with something like eyJ...). Make sure you copy the entire value — don't truncate it!

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For all future runs:

• Just paste the cookie into redditSessionCookie
• No proxy needed! No login needed! Much faster!

💡 Why use the cookie? It skips the login process entirely, making runs faster and more reliable. Reddit's login page has CAPTCHAs and rate limits that can cause failures.

Input Parameters

Search Mode Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
searchQuery	String	Search term to find posts. Enables search mode.	—
searchSort	String	Sort results: relevance, hot, top, new, comments	relevance
searchTimeFilter	String	Time range: all, hour, day, week, month, year	all

Browse Mode Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
subreddit	String	Subreddit name without "r/" (required for browse, optional for search)	—
filter	String	Post sorting: hot, new, top, rising	hot

Common Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
postCount	Integer	Number of posts to scrape (0 = all)	1
commentsPerPost	Integer	Comments per post (0 = all)	5
extractDetails	Boolean	Extract full post content (text/images/videos) and comments	true
redditSessionCookie	String	Session cookie (recommended, valid ~6 months)	—
redditEmail	String	Reddit email/username (only needed to get cookie)	—
redditPassword	String	Reddit password (only needed to get cookie)	—
proxyConfiguration	Object	Proxy settings (required for login, optional with cookie)	Disabled

📊 Output Example

{
    "id": "1h2abc3",
    "title": "Scientists discover new renewable energy source",
    "author": "u/sciencefan42",
    "subreddit": "r/technology",
    "upvotes": 15420,
    "commentCount": 892,
    "postedTime": "5 hours ago",
    "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1h2abc3/...",
    "details": {
        "fullTitle": "Scientists discover new renewable energy source that could power cities",
        "contentType": "link",
        "textContent": null,
        "imageUrl": null,
        "videoUrl": null,
        "externalUrl": "https://example.com/article",
        "galleryUrls": []
    },
    "comments": [
        {
            "id": "kx7def8",
            "author": "techguru99",
            "content": "This could change everything!",
            "upvotes": "2.1k",
            "postedTime": "4 hours ago",
            "depth": 0,
            "permalink": "/r/technology/comments/..."
        }
    ]
}

🎯 Use Cases

• Brand Monitoring – Search for your company/product name across all of Reddit
• Market Research – Track trends, sentiment, and discussions in your industry
• Content Curation – Find viral posts and popular topics for content ideas
• Competitor Analysis – Search for competitor mentions and discussions
• Academic Research – Collect data for social media studies with keyword filtering
• Lead Generation – Find engaged communities and discussions relevant to your product

⚙️ How It Works

With Session Cookie (recommended):

1. Authenticate – Injects your session cookie before any navigation
2. Navigate – Goes directly to your target (subreddit or search results)
3. Scroll – Loads posts dynamically until reaching your target count
4. Extract – Visits each post to grab full details and comments
5. Output – Saves everything to a clean, structured dataset

With Email/Password:

1. Login – Authenticates with your Reddit credentials using a real browser
2. Log Cookie – Prints the session cookie for you to copy for future runs
3. Navigate – Goes to your target subreddit or search results page
4. Scroll & Extract – Same as above

Search vs Browse:

• Search Mode (searchQuery provided) – Navigates to Reddit's search page with your query, optionally scoped to a subreddit
• Browse Mode (no searchQuery) – Navigates directly to the subreddit feed with your chosen filter

🛡️ Proxy Support

When do you need a proxy?

• ✅ First run with email/password – Required! Use residential proxy to login and get your session cookie
• ❌ Future runs with session cookie – Not required! Cookie-based auth works without proxy

For the initial login, use residential proxies:

{
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true,
        "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
    }
}

⚠️ Important: Regular datacenter proxies will NOT work for Reddit. Always use residential proxies for the login step.

💡 Tips

• Use the session cookie for faster, more reliable scraping (see instructions above)
• Search tip: Use quotes in searchQuery for exact phrase matching (e.g., "data center")
• Search tip: Combine searchQuery with subreddit to search within a specific community
• Start with a small postCount (5-10) to test your setup
• Use commentsPerPost: 0 to get ALL comments (slower but complete)
• Enable extractDetails for text posts, images, and video URLs
• First run: Use residential proxy with email/password to get your session cookie
• Future runs: Use session cookie only — no proxy needed!

📜 Legal & Ethical Use

This Actor is intended for legitimate data collection purposes. Please:

• Respect Reddit's Terms of Service
• Don't scrape personal or sensitive information
• Use reasonable delays and limits
• Comply with applicable data protection laws

🤝 Support

Having issues? Found a bug? Want a feature?

• Open an issue on the Actor's page
• Contact the developer through Apify

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