Reddit Scraper: Posts, Comments, Subreddits & Users

What does Reddit Scraper do?

Reddit Scraper downloads public Reddit posts and comments as structured data from three kinds of input: subreddits, user profiles and single post URLs. It reads Reddit the way a logged-out visitor does: no login, no Reddit API key, no OAuth app, no rate-limited developer account. Each post row has the title, full text, author, subreddit, score, upvote ratio, comment count, flair, post type, link, images, video and date. Each comment row has its text, author, score, date, reply depth and parent, so you can rebuild the whole thread.

Keyword search is currently unavailable. Since November 2026 Reddit has refused keyword searches from logged-out visitors, for posts, comments, communities and users alike. Those runs end as FAILED and cost only the $0.003 run start. Subreddits, user profiles and post URLs still work. To follow a topic, add the subreddits that discuss it and use Must contain keywords.

Optional keyword filters, date filters and AI tags for demand research (pain points, tool requests, willingness to pay, feature requests, products named, sentiment) turn the subreddits you pick into a list of people asking for what you build.

Run it from the Apify Console or call it as a Reddit API alternative, schedule it, and send results to Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, webhooks or your own database.

What data can you extract from Reddit?

📰 Post title	📝 Post body	💬 Comments and replies
👤 Author	🏘️ Subreddit	⬆️ Score
🔢 Comment count	📅 Created at	🏷️ Flair
🖼️ Images	🎬 Video URL and duration	🔗 Outbound link and domain
🧵 Reply depth	🌐 Language	🔞 NSFW and spoiler flags

Why use Reddit Scraper?

• Brand monitoring and social listening: watch the subreddits in your market for posts that name your brand, product or competitor.
• SaaS idea and demand research: find people who ask for a tool, complain about one, or say what they would pay. Turn on AI tags to get the pain point and the products named in every post and comment.
• Market and product research: see what people ask, recommend and complain about in any subreddit.
• Sentiment analysis and AI datasets: clean post and comment text with scores, dates and thread structure.
• No Reddit API needed: Reddit closed self-service API keys in 2025. This scraper needs none.
• Cheap and predictable: $1 per 1,000 posts and $0.50 per 1,000 comments. No subscription.

How to scrape Reddit

1. Add subreddits, users or post URLs under Reddit URLs (for example r/python, https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/top/?t=week, u/spez).
2. Pick the sort (Hot, New, Top, Rising, Controversial) and the time range.
3. Set Max results per URL or keyword, and Max comments per post if you want comment threads.
4. Optional: add Must contain keywords, a Posted after date, or turn on AI tags.
5. Click Start. Download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read them through the API.

What can it scrape?

Input	Example	What you get
Subreddit	r/startups, reddit.com/r/startups/top/?t=month	Posts in Hot, New, Top, Rising or Controversial order
User profile	u/spez, reddit.com/user/spez/	The user's posts, newest first or top
Post URL	reddit.com/r/x/comments/abc123/..., redd.it/abc123	One post with its full comment thread

Every post can also bring its comments: set Max comments per post above 0. Replies are included with their depth and parent ID; turn off Include replies to keep only top-level comments.

Input

Field	What it does
Reddit URLs	Subreddits, users and posts, full URLs or short forms
Subreddit and user sort, Time range	Hot, New, Top, Rising, Controversial; hour to all time
Max results per URL or keyword, Max posts per run	Caps; a run also stops at your maximum cost limit
Max comments per post, Comment sort, Include replies	Comment threads (Best, Top, New, Controversial, Old, Q&A)
Posted after / before	Posts only: 2026-10-01, an ISO time, or 7 days, 12 hours
Comments posted after / before	Comments only, same formats
Must contain keywords, Exclude keywords, Keyword match	Keep rows that contain any (or all) keywords and none of the excluded ones. Whole words, case-insensitive; automat* matches any ending
Filter post comments by keywords too	Off: every comment of a kept post is saved. On: thread comments must match too
Minimum score, Skip pinned posts, Skip NSFW posts	Quality filters
AI tags for demand research	Adds aiTags to every post and comment (+$1 per 1,000 tagged rows)

Rows removed by a filter, and duplicates across your inputs, are never charged. Keywords are matched on title + text for posts and on the text for comments.

Output

A post:

{
    "dataType": "post",
    "id": "1x4jwxm",
    "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/1x4jwxm/tifu_by_asking_my_coworker_about_her_kindle_that/",
    "title": "TIFU by asking my coworker about her Kindle that died",
    "body": "she meant Kendell. Her daughter. ...",
    "author": "v-fee",
    "subreddit": "tifu",
    "createdAt": "2026-10-13T01:35:57.185Z",
    "score": 7296,
    "upvoteRatio": 0.98,
    "numComments": 273,
    "postType": "text",
    "flair": "S",
    "images": [],
    "videoUrl": null,
    "source": "r/tifu"
}

A comment:

{
    "dataType": "comment",
    "id": "o2k5d7e",
    "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1qqxvlw/comment/o2k5d7e/",
    "postId": "1qqxvlw",
    "postTitle": "Anthropic: AI assisted coding doesn't show efficiency gains...",
    "parentId": "t3_1qqxvlw",
    "depth": 0,
    "author": "arlaneenalra",
    "body": "It's called a \"perishable skill\" you have to use it or you lose it.",
    "score": 1479,
    "createdAt": "2026-01-30T06:36:11.512Z"
}

With AI tags on, every post and comment also gets:

{
    "aiTags": {
        "painPoint": "Auto reconciliation with QuickBooks was horrendous, manual fixes",
        "asksForRecommendation": false,
        "willingToPay": false,
        "featureRequest": "AI agent resolving transaction issues",
        "productsMentioned": ["Alternative Payments", "QuickBooks Premier", "FlexPoint"],
        "sentiment": "mixed"
    }
}

aiTags is null when tagging is off or the AI could not tag that row (such rows are not charged for tagging).

Field	Meaning
dataType	post or comment
id, fullname, url	Reddit ID (1x4jwxm), full name (t3_1x4jwxm) and link
title, body	Post title and full text
author, authorId, authorUrl	The author ([deleted] when removed)
subreddit, subredditId, subredditUrl	The community
createdAt	UTC publish time
score, upvoteRatio, numComments, awardCount	Engagement
postType, domain, link, flair, language	text, link, image, gallery or video, and the external link
images, thumbnailUrl, videoUrl, videoHlsUrl, videoDurationSec	Media (original i.redd.it images, MP4 and HLS video)
isNsfw, isSpoiler, isStickied	Flags
postId, postUrl, postTitle, parentId, depth	Comments only: the thread and the comment it answers
aiTags	AI tags (posts and comments, when turned on)
source, sourceType, scrapedAt	Which input found the row, and when

How much does it cost to scrape Reddit?

Pay per event: $1 per 1,000 posts, $0.50 per 1,000 comments, and $0.003 per run. The per-run fee is charged when a run starts, even if the run later fails. AI tags add $1 per 1,000 tagged posts or comments. 1,000 posts cost about $1. 100 posts with 50 comments each (5,000 comments) cost about $2.60, or about $7.70 with AI tags. Runs on the Apify free plan work within the monthly credit.

Tips

• For brand monitoring, add the subreddits in your market with the New sort, put your brand names in Must contain keywords, set Posted after to 1 day, and schedule the run daily.
• For SaaS demand research, add the subreddits your buyers use, set Must contain keywords to phrases like looking for a tool, alternative to or is there an app, and turn on AI tags. Then filter the dataset on aiTags.asksForRecommendation or aiTags.willingToPay.
• Use Must contain keywords to keep only rows that name your market (crm*, invoic*). Filtered rows cost nothing.
• For a subreddit's best content, use reddit.com/r/<name>/top/?t=year or pick Top and a time range.
• Use Comment sort: Top with a small Max comments per post to get the most upvoted opinions fast.
• Memory is capped at 512 MB.

Run it on a schedule

Save your input as a task, then open Schedules in Apify Console and pick how often it runs. Daily is the usual choice for brand monitoring. Weekly works for market research. Each run creates a new dataset, so you can compare runs over time.

To send results somewhere automatically, use the Integrations tab: Google Sheets, Slack, Make, Zapier, n8n and webhooks are built in. AI agents such as Claude or ChatGPT can run it as a tool through the Apify MCP server.

Use it with Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor (MCP)

Add this Actor as a tool in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code or any other MCP client. Use this server URL:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=scrape-lads/reddit-scraper

Sign in with your Apify account when asked. Then ask your agent in plain words, for example:

Get the top 50 posts from r/homelab this month and their comments.

The agent runs this Actor and reads the results for you. Runs are billed to your Apify account at this Actor's prices.

In Claude Code, add it with one command:

$claude mcp add --transport http reddit-scraper "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=scrape-lads/reddit-scraper"

Related actors

Actor	What it does
TikTok Scraper Pro	TikTok hashtags, profiles, keyword search, comments and followers.
Video Transcript Scraper	Transcripts from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and X videos.
Tweet Scraper V2	Tweets from X by search, profile or list.
Google Search Results Scraper	Google search results for any keyword.

FAQ, limits and support

Is it legal to scrape Reddit? It collects only public posts and comments that any logged-out visitor can see. You are responsible for using the data in line with Reddit's terms and privacy laws such as GDPR.

How many posts can I get? Reddit lists up to about 1,000 posts per feed, and its New feed often ends sooner for logged-out visitors. To go further, combine sorts and time ranges (Top of the year, Top of the month, New), or schedule runs to collect new posts over time. Duplicates across inputs are removed.

Can I search Reddit by keyword? Not at the moment. Reddit refuses keyword searches from logged-out visitors, so posts, comments, communities and users searches all fail, and the run ends as FAILED instead of returning an empty result. The search fields stay in the input so existing setups keep their settings. Use subreddits with Must contain keywords instead. It covers only the subreddits you list, so add every community that discusses your topic.

How do the keyword filters work? A row is kept when it contains at least one Must contain keyword (or all of them with Keyword match: All) and none of the Exclude keywords. Matching ignores case and works on whole words, so crm does not match crmjewelers; end a word with * to match any ending. Filtered rows are never charged.

What do the AI tags cost and how good are they? $1 per 1,000 tagged posts or comments, on top of the row itself. A fast language model reads each post or comment (the first 1,500 characters) and returns short tags. They are meant for sorting and filtering large lists, not as a final judgment: spot-check the rows you act on. If the AI service has a problem, rows are still saved with aiTags: null and are not charged for tagging.

Does it scrape NSFW or private communities? Private, banned and quarantined communities are not visible to logged-out visitors. Found a problem or want a field added? Open an Issue on the Actor's Issues tab.

Does Reddit have an official API? Why use this instead? Reddit's Data API needs an approved app, has strict rate limits, and charges for commercial use. This Actor reads the public pages any logged-out visitor sees, so there is no app approval or API key, and you pay only for the posts and comments you collect.

What are the alternatives to this Actor? You can read threads by hand, use a social listening tool, or work with the Data API. Listening tools charge monthly and often cover Reddit poorly. This Actor gives you the raw posts and comments with filters and optional AI tags.

Privacy

To see which searches are useful, this Actor sends anonymous run inputs (such as keywords, hashtags and usernames) and a hashed account ID to the developer. Tokens, cookies and proxy settings are never sent. Nothing from your results is collected.