Reddit Scraper: posts, comments and search without an API key

This Reddit scraper collects public posts and visible comments as structured dataset rows, without a Reddit API key, a login or an OAuth app. Choose a subreddit listing, a single post with its discussion, or a keyword search. Each post or comment becomes one row, with a type field identifying which kind it is. Public permalinks let you return to the original discussion, while Reddit identifiers help you match the same post across repeated collections.

Use the actor for community monitoring, research into product feedback, or a collection of discussions for analysis. A subreddit run answers what a community is discussing in a selected order. Search finds posts mentioning a phrase across Reddit or within one community. Post mode adds the visible comments beneath a specific post, keeping the author, text, score and reply relationships that Reddit makes available.

What the Reddit scraper returns

• Three modes from one actor: a subreddit listing, a single post with its visible comment tree, and a search across Reddit or inside one subreddit.
• Score, comment count, author, subreddit and timestamp on every post, plus the public permalink and Reddit's own identifiers.
• Comment depth and parent identifiers, so the reply tree can be rebuilt rather than read as a flat list.
• score_hidden as its own field. Reddit hides comment scores for a while after posting; a null score with score_hidden: true is a real state, not a missing value.
• Post flags for analysis: NSFW, spoiler, original content, crosspost count, flair, and whether a row is a promoted post rather than an organic one.
• Pagination that follows Reddit's own next links, so a large run walks through the listing instead of fetching the first page again.
• Clean exports: download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or read it through the Apify API.

Reddit scraper input

Set mode to subreddit, post or search. Subreddit mode needs subreddit. You can provide the community name with or without r/. Post mode needs post_url, either a full Reddit link or a relative post path. Search mode needs query; adding subreddit restricts the search to that community. Quoted phrases are accepted using Reddit's own search syntax.

Field	Type	Required	Default	What it does
mode	select	yes	subreddit	subreddit, post or search
subreddit	string	conditional	– (prefill webscraping)	Required in subreddit mode; optional in search mode to restrict the search
post_url	string	conditional	–	Required in post mode. Any Reddit post link, or a relative post path
query	string	conditional	–	Required in search mode
sort	select	no	hot	Listings: hot, new, top, rising, controversial. Search: relevance, hot, top, new, comments
time	select	no	all	all, hour, day, week, month, year
limit	integer	no	50	Maximum rows, 1 to 1000
proxy_country	string	no	–	Optional two-letter country code
retries	integer	no	4	Attempts per page, 1 to 6

The default sort is hot in both listing and search mode. Listings support hot, new, top, rising and controversial. Search supports relevance, hot, top, new and comments. When a listing sort is supplied to search that search does not support, the search uses new. The time field defaults to all and accepts hour, day, week, month and year. It applies to listing sorts top and controversial, and to search.

limit is the maximum number of dataset rows, from 1 to 1000, with a default of 50. In post mode the post and its comments share this limit. A limit of 10 therefore allows the post and up to nine visible comments. retries accepts one to six attempts per page and defaults to four. The optional proxy_country field accepts a two-letter country code. Leaving it empty uses the configured country.

The store's initial example requests 50 posts from webscraping, sorted by hot, with the all-time window. That community name is a prefill, rather than a default added to every API request. An API request in subreddit mode must still supply a community name.

A search inside one community looks like this:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "price tracking",
  "subreddit": "webscraping",
  "sort": "new",
  "time": "month",
  "limit": 100
}

Output

This is a real post row collected from the Python community during the local verification on 2 October 2026:

{
  "type": "post",
  "id": "t3_g53lxf",
  "title": "Lad wrote a Python script to download Alexa voice recordings, he didn't expect this email.",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/g53lxf/lad_wrote_a_python_script_to_download_alexa_voice/",
  "link_url": "https://i.redd.it/2s0dj8ob12u41.png",
  "author": "iEslam",
  "subreddit": "Python",
  "score": 12343,
  "comments_count": 133,
  "created_at": "2020-04-20T23:11:39Z",
  "domain": "i.redd.it",
  "rank": 1,
  "is_nsfw": false,
  "is_promoted": false,
  "is_spoiler": false,
  "is_original_content": false,
  "crossposts": 6,
  "selftext": null,
  "flair": "Discussion",
  "author_fullname": "t2_g532u",
  "position": 1,
  "_type": "post",
  "source": "reddit-scraper",
  "platform": "reddit",
  "fetched_at": "2026-10-02T10:07:17.035Z",
  "short_id": "g53lxf",
  "post_url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/g53lxf/lad_wrote_a_python_script_to_download_alexa_voice/",
  "post_id": "g53lxf",
  "text": "Lad wrote a Python script to download Alexa voice recordings, he didn't expect this email.",
  "author_handle": "iEslam",
  "author_id": "t2_g532u",
  "posted_at": "2020-04-20T23:11:39Z",
  "likes": 12343
}

And a real comment row from post mode, collected on the same day from a thread in the n8n community. It is a reply at depth 2, so it carries the identifier of the comment it answers:

{
  "type": "comment",
  "id": "t1_o82m6zk",
  "post_id": "t3_1rgczas",
  "author": "PulsePilot-AI",
  "score": 2,
  "score_hidden": false,
  "text": "Mostly lead gen. I’ve also used it for finding trending topics, getting weekly news updates (pulling Reddit posts from a few of my favorite communities, having an llm summarize and send an update directly to my email). Hbu what have ur main uses cases been?",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/n8n/comments/1rgczas/free_reddit_scraper_no_api_key_needed_free_n8n/o82m6zk/",
  "depth": 2,
  "subreddit": "n8n",
  "author_fullname": "t2_1n95wnqzrk",
  "post_short_id": "1rgczas",
  "parent_comment_short_id": "o7rmltz",
  "post_url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/n8n/comments/1rgczas/free_reddit_scraper_no_api_key_needed_free_n8n/",
  "created_at": "2026-03-01T16:12:55Z",
  "_type": "comment",
  "source": "reddit-scraper",
  "platform": "reddit",
  "fetched_at": "2026-10-02T10:07:27.227Z",
  "short_id": "o82m6zk",
  "comment_id": "o82m6zk",
  "comment_url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/n8n/comments/1rgczas/free_reddit_scraper_no_api_key_needed_free_n8n/o82m6zk/",
  "parent_comment_id": "o7rmltz",
  "author_handle": "PulsePilot-AI",
  "author_id": "t2_1n95wnqzrk",
  "posted_at": "2026-03-01T16:12:55Z",
  "likes": 2
}

Listing rows contain the title, author, subreddit, score, comment count, submission timestamp and public URL. They also include a destination link, domain, listing rank, post flags, crosspost count and any visible flair. position gives the order within the returned collection. A self post's full body is generally absent from a listing; use post mode when you need its visible body text.

Search results retain their search-specific fields. They include title, author, subreddit, score, comment count, timestamp, flair and a visible text excerpt. They do not promise the listing-only flags, domain or rank. Submission timestamps remain strings; the search representation can include a UTC offset where the listing representation uses Z.

Comment rows carry text, depth, post_id, score and score_hidden. A null score represents an unavailable score, rather than an invented zero. Additional parent identifiers describe reply relationships. A parent comment may have been deleted, so its identifier can remain referenced even when that parent has no dataset row. post_id on comments retains Reddit's fullname representation; post_short_id supplies the matching post identifier without its prefix.

All rows include fetched_at, source, platform, short_id and _type. These extra fields support joining and comparing collections while the original fields remain available. The default key-value store provides a summary record, including counts and mode-specific information. An errors record is present when a collection encountered an actual input or upstream error.

Use cases

Brand and product monitoring. Search mode with your brand or product name, sorted by new, on a schedule. Because created_at and score come back as real values, you can tell a post quietly sitting at two upvotes from one that is climbing, which is the difference between noise and something you should answer today.

Datasets for AI and NLP. Subreddit mode with a high limit gives you posts with their titles and links; post mode gives you the visible discussion under any of them with the reply depth intact. selftext and text are plain text with the markup stripped, which is what an embedding or summarisation pipeline wants.

Tracking a community's agenda. Run top with time: week on a schedule and store the results. Which topics reach the top of a community, and at what score, is a trend signal that is hard to get anywhere else.

Competitor and sentiment research. Reddit is where people say what they think of tools they pay for. Search inside the subreddits where your category lives, keep the rows with score above a threshold, and you have a filtered feed of opinions that carried weight with other readers.

Lead and problem discovery. Search for phrases such as "looking for a tool" or "how do I" in the communities your customers read, and review the newest matches with their permalinks.

How this Reddit scraper compares

	This actor	Reddit's official Data API	Open-source scripts
Setup	Fill in a form or send JSON	Register an app, OAuth credentials, accept the Data API terms	Install, configure, maintain your own code
Login or API key	None	Required	Usually an API key
Posts, comments and search	One input, three modes	Separate endpoints	Depends on the library
Hidden score kept apart from a missing one	Yes, score_hidden	Yes	Rarely
Export	JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, API	JSON only	Whatever you build
Cost	$3.50 per 1,000 rows, pay per event	Free tier with strict rate limits; commercial use priced separately	Your own servers and time

Other Reddit actors in the Apify Store mostly focus on one job each, for example listings only or comments only. This one covers subreddit listings, single threads and search with one schema, so rows from different runs can be joined on id, short_id and post_id.

Pricing

The live model has two events. run_start costs $0.0005 once per run, including an empty run or invalid input. item costs $0.0035 for each post or comment actually delivered. This is $3.50 per 1000 rows plus the start fee, so a 1,000-row run costs $3.5005. Empty collections have no item charges. Posts and comments share the same per-row price, and duplicate posts across collected pages are delivered and charged only once. All pricing is pay-per-event: there are no compute-unit charges on top.

Users without a paid Apify plan receive at most ten rows per run. The input limit is reduced before collection, and item charges follow the rows delivered. Paying users keep their requested limit. The summary reports the delivered count and whether the free-plan cap was reached.

Limits and collection behavior

Reddit decides how many posts or comments are available. Asking for 1000 rows does not guarantee 1000 results; a listing may end sooner. Listings and searches follow Reddit's continuation links. A request interrupted by the collection budget resumes automatically within the actor's remaining run time. If collection cannot finish, already collected rows remain available and the summary identifies the partial result.

Post mode reads the discussion rendered on the post page. It does not expand “load more comments” controls. The post's comments_count therefore describes Reddit's total, while commentsFound describes comments found on the returned page. These two counts can differ. Empty searches and unavailable communities finish successfully with no dataset rows. Invalid input or a temporary upstream block also produces an empty, successful run with an explanation.

Private, quarantined and banned subreddits return nothing, which is correct rather than an error: anything that requires a logged-in account is out of reach by design, since there is no credential in the input.

FAQ

Does Reddit Scraper need my Reddit login?

No. It collects public data without a customer login, API key or OAuth token. Private or unavailable content is outside this collection.

Is this a Reddit API alternative?

For reading public data, yes. You do not register an app or manage OAuth tokens; you send the input and get rows back. If you need to post, vote or read private messages, you still need Reddit's own API, because this actor only reads public pages.

Can I search only one subreddit?

Yes. Set mode to search, provide query, and add subreddit. Omit subreddit to search across Reddit. The returned subreddit field identifies the community for each result.

Can I scrape all the comments on a post?

You get the comment tree Reddit renders on the post page, with depth and parent identifiers, which is the top of the discussion. Replies hidden behind "load more comments" are not expanded.

Why are fewer rows returned than I requested?

limit is a ceiling. A listing can end, a query can have fewer matches, and a post can render fewer comments than its total comment count. Partial collection is reported explicitly when a requested continuation cannot finish.

Are empty results charged per item?

No. Item charges correspond to delivered posts and comments. The separate $0.0005 start event still applies once to an empty run, matching the existing pricing model.

Can I use it from Python, n8n or Make?

Yes. Call the actor through the Apify API or one of Apify's integrations, then read the default dataset. Post rows share their core fields (id, title, author, subreddit, score, url, created_at) across modes, so a workflow built on a subreddit run can read a search run too.