Reddit Keyword Monitor & Search API: Mentions and Leads

Search Reddit by keyword and subreddit and get the posts where people ask for recommendations, look for alternatives, complain about a tool or talk about budget. Run it on a schedule and get only new or edited posts each time. No login, no Reddit API key.

• Keyword and subreddit search. Up to 5 search terms per run, optionally limited to up to 10 subreddits, newest posts first, over the last day, week, month, year or all time.
• Buying-signal tags. Every post is checked for four kinds of language: recommendation requests, alternatives and switching, problems, and pricing or budget. You see the exact phrase that matched and the sentence around it.
• Monitoring mode. Pass the previous run's snapshot back in and export only posts that are new or edited since then. Built for daily or weekly brand, competitor and market checks.
• Ready to use. Title, full post text, subreddit, date and link per post, plus a discussion report sorted by how many signals each post carries.
• Simple pricing, platform costs included. $0.04 per search page of up to 25 posts.

Quick start

1. Enter a search term such as CRM recommendation or your product category.
2. Optionally add subreddits (for example smallbusiness, SaaS) and pick a time range.
3. Click Start. Open the Relevant discussions view, or the DISCUSSION-REPORT record for the posts with signals, strongest first.

{
    "queries": ["CRM recommendation", "bookkeeping software"],
    "subreddits": ["smallbusiness", "SaaS"],
    "timeRange": "month",
    "maxPagesPerQuery": 2
}

That checks up to 4 search pages (2 terms × 2 pages) and costs at most $0.16.

Use cases

You are…	You use it to…
A founder or marketer	Find threads where people ask "what tool should I use for X" in your category
A product team	Collect complaints and feature gaps about your product or competitors
A content team	See the exact questions your audience asks, in their words
A sales or growth team	Build a daily feed of posts mentioning a competitor or "alternative to …"
An agency	Monitor several brands' mentions on a schedule and export to a sheet

What you get per post

Illustrative example, main fields:

{
    "postId": "t3_1abc234",
    "subreddit": "smallbusiness",
    "title": "Looking for a CRM recommendation for a 5-person agency",
    "text": "We've outgrown spreadsheets. Budget is around $50/month per seat...",
    "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/1abc234/looking_for_a_crm_recommendation/",
    "postedAt": "2026-09-28T14:02:11.000Z",
    "signalCount": 2,
    "matchedSignals": [
        { "type": "RECOMMENDATION", "matchedPhrase": "Looking for", "excerpt": "Looking for a CRM recommendation for a 5-person agency We've outgrown spreadsheets..." },
        { "type": "PRICE_OR_BUDGET", "matchedPhrase": "Budget", "excerpt": "...outgrown spreadsheets. Budget is around $50/month per seat..." }
    ],
    "change": "NEW_TO_SAMPLE",
    "query": "CRM recommendation"
}

Also stored per run: SUMMARY (pages, posts, filters, stop reasons), DISCUSSION-REPORT (posts with signals, sorted, plus counts per signal type) and SNAPSHOT (the baseline for your next monitoring run).

The four signals

Signal	Matches language such as
RECOMMENDATION	"looking for", "recommend", "suggestions", "which tool", "what software"
ALTERNATIVE	"alternative", "switching", "replacement", "moving away"
PROBLEM	"struggling", "frustrated", "not working", "pain points", "need help"
PRICE_OR_BUDGET	"pricing", "too expensive", "affordable", "budget", "overpriced"

These are transparent English phrase rules, not an AI model, so you can see exactly why a post was flagged. Read the post before acting on it.

Pricing

Pricing change on 16 October 2026. From that date you pay $0.002 per post delivered to your dataset instead of $0.04 per search page. Filtered, duplicate and unchanged posts are not charged, so a quiet check costs only the $0.00005 run start. Until then the page pricing below applies.

$0.04 per completed search page on the Free plan, with up to 25 posts per page. In our own runs pages averaged 16 posts, so expect about $1.60 to $2.50 per 1,000 posts. Paid Apify plans get the Store discount: Bronze $0.038, Silver $0.036, Gold and above $0.034 per page. Each run also has a $0.00005 start fee. Compute and proxy costs are included.

Job	Search pages	You pay (Free plan)
One search term, one page	1	$0.04
5 terms, 2 pages each	10	$0.40
Daily monitor, 3 terms, 1 page each, for a month	90	$3.60

• A search Reddit refuses is never charged; you get an error row instead.
• A completed page is charged even if all its posts were filtered out or unchanged.
• Set Maximum total charge on the run to cap spending; pages already delivered are kept.

Monitor Reddit on a schedule

1. Run once with your terms. Save the SNAPSHOT record from that run (only when SUMMARY.partial is false).
2. Next time, pass it as previousSnapshot with the same terms, subreddits and time range, and set onlyChanges: true.
3. Only posts new to the search results or edited since the snapshot are exported. Save the new SNAPSHOT and repeat.

The repeat-run workflow (ZIP) does this for you: it runs a watchlist, exports CSV and JSON, saves the next baseline only after a complete run, and includes a spending cap and a resume command. Python 3.10+ and your APIFY_TOKEN, no extra packages. Schedule it with your own scheduler.

Input

Field	Default	Description
queries	—	1 to 5 search terms, up to 200 characters each
subreddits	[]	Up to 10 subreddit names (without r/) to limit the search
timeRange	month	day, week, month, year or all
maxPagesPerQuery	1	1 to 5 pages of up to 25 posts per term
previousSnapshot	[]	The SNAPSHOT from your last run, for monitoring
onlyChanges	false	Export only posts that are new or edited since the snapshot

Reddit API or this Actor?

Reddit's Data API is free at 100 queries per minute per OAuth client, but only for non-commercial use. Monitoring brands, competitors or leads for a business is commercial use, which needs Reddit's approval and a paid agreement (Reddit announced $0.24 per 1,000 API calls in 2023). You also need a registered app, OAuth and your own rate limiting. This Actor needs none of that: it reads Reddit's public search, adds the buying-signal tags and the monitoring snapshot, and is priced per page.

Option	Commercial use	Setup	Price
Reddit Data API, free tier	Not allowed without approval	App registration, OAuth, rate limiting	Free, 100 queries a minute
Reddit Data API, commercial	After Reddit approves you	Application and contract	$0.24 per 1,000 calls as announced in 2023
PRAW (Python wrapper of the same API)	Same rules as the API	Same	Same
This Actor	Yes	An Apify token	$0.04 per search page of up to 25 posts; from 16 Oct $0.002 per post

Use it from code and automations

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("sauliusautomatesit/reddit-customer-questions").call(run_input={
    "queries": ["alternative to Notion"],
    "timeRange": "week",
})
for post in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    if post.get("signalCount"):
        print(post["signalCount"], post["title"], post["url"])

run.default_dataset_id is for apify-client 3.x (pip install apify-client); on 2.x write run["defaultDatasetId"].

JavaScript (npm install apify-client):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('sauliusautomatesit/reddit-customer-questions').call(
    { queries: ['best CRM for small business'], subreddits: ['smallbusiness', 'sales'], timeRange: 'month' },
    { maxTotalChargeUsd: 0.2 },
);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
for (const post of items) {
    const tags = (post.matchedSignals || []).map((s) => s.type).join(',');
    console.log(`r/${post.subreddit}`, tags || '-', post.title, post.url);
}

Plain HTTP:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/sauliusautomatesit~reddit-customer-questions/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN&maxTotalChargeUsd=0.2" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries": ["alternative to Notion"], "timeRange": "week"}'

Works with the Apify node in n8n, the Apify module in Make, Zapier, and AI agents through the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=sauliusautomatesit/reddit-customer-questions).

Limits, honestly

• Posts only. Comments, user profiles and private communities are not collected.
• No vote or comment counts. Reddit's public search feed does not publish them, so score and commentCount are null. Open the link to see them.
• Bounded search. Up to 5 terms × 5 pages × 25 posts = 625 posts per run, newest first. It covers what Reddit's search returns, not every conversation on Reddit.
• Adult, promoted and removed or deleted posts are excluded. Post text is capped at 30,000 characters (textTruncated shows when).
• Signals are English phrase matches; non-English posts are exported but may carry no signals.
• If Reddit refuses a search, the Actor retries across proxy pools, then writes an error row with errorCode and recommendedAction, charges nothing for it and keeps the other terms' results.

This tool does not contact authors or post replies. Reddit content remains subject to Reddit's terms and its authors' rights.

FAQ

Do I need a Reddit account or API key? No.

Can I search Reddit without the API? Yes. This Actor reads Reddit's public search with no account, app or OAuth, and returns JSON through the Apify API.

Is the Reddit API free? For non-commercial use within 100 queries a minute. Business use needs Reddit's approval and paid terms.

Can it find posts in a specific subreddit? Yes. Add up to 10 names in subreddits.

Will I get the same posts again on the next run? Not with monitoring on. Pass the last SNAPSHOT as previousSnapshot and set onlyChanges: true.

Is a flagged post a lead? It is a post worth reading. The signal shows the phrase that matched; you decide whether it is relevant.

Support and reviews

Open an issue on the Issues tab if something does not work; include the run link. If the Actor is useful to you, a short review helps other people find it.