Reddit Lead Finder — Buyer-Intent Posts

Turn Reddit into a lead list. This actor scans the subreddits you care about for buyer-intent posts — people actively asking "looking for a CRM", "alternative to HubSpot?", "recommendations for a cold email tool" — and returns each as a clean lead you can act on: the subreddit, the Reddit user, the post title, a direct link to the thread, and — optionally — the poster's company website (premium).

It's built for founders, marketers, agencies and sales teams who want to find demand, not just scrape posts.

Why this instead of a generic Reddit scraper?

Most Reddit scrapers hand you everything and leave you to dig for the few posts that matter. This one is opinionated: it filters to purchase intent first, so the output is a short, high-signal list. Every lead is a person who just raised their hand — you decide whether to reply in-thread, DM them, or add them to your research list. You can also extend the matcher with your own phrases for niche-specific buying language.

It reads Reddit's public RSS feeds, so it needs no login, no API key, and no proxy, and it's polite by design.

What it does

• Scans one or more subreddits (new, hot, rising, or top).
• Keeps only posts whose titles signal buying intent (a curated set, extendable).
• Returns a tidy dataset: the matched intent phrase, subreddit, author, post title, a link to the post, and when it was posted.
• Premium: optionally resolves the poster's company website by mining their own Reddit activity for the sites they've shared (Reddit blocks the profile bio to scrapers, but a user's public feed is readable). Best-effort — set when a confident non-social domain is found.

Who it's for

• B2B founders & marketers finding people who need exactly what you sell.
• Agencies sourcing prospects in client niches (SaaS, e-commerce, local services).
• Sales teams building warm, intent-based lists to engage.
• Community & social teams finding threads worth replying to.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
subreddits	array	["SaaS","marketing","Entrepreneur","smallbusiness"]	Subreddits to scan (with or without r/).
sort	string	new	new, hot, rising, or top. new surfaces the freshest intent.
maxLeads	integer	100	Stop after this many leads (caps your spend).
extraIntentPhrases	array	[]	Extra case-insensitive intent phrases to match.
resolveWebsites	boolean	false	Premium. Mine each poster's activity feed for their company website. Adds one request per lead.
maxConcurrency	integer	4	Parallel feed requests (kept low to be polite).

Example input

{
  "subreddits": ["SaaS", "PPC", "digital_marketing"],
  "sort": "new",
  "maxLeads": 50,
  "extraIntentPhrases": ["need a tool", "any suggestions for"]
}

How to run

1. Click Try for free (or open the actor in your Apify Console).
2. Enter the subreddits you want to scan and pick a sort (new is best for fresh intent).
3. Set maxLeads to cap your spend.
4. (Optional) Add your own extraIntentPhrases for niche-specific buying language.
5. Click Start. When the run finishes, open the Dataset tab and export to JSON/CSV/Excel, or pull it via the API (below).

Run it on a schedule (Apify Schedules) to get a fresh intent list every morning, or call it from Make / Zapier / n8n via the Apify integrations.

Output

Each item in the dataset:

{
  "type": "lead",
  "subreddit": "marketing",
  "author": "specialchar123",
  "intentPhrase": "looking for",
  "title": "Looking for marketing SOPs",
  "body": "We just hired two juniors and need documented processes…",
  "postUrl": "https://old.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/1trov7o/looking_for_marketing_sops",
  "createdAt": "2026-06-01T18:22:00.000Z",
  "website": null,
  "businessName": null,
  "score": null
}

Field notes:

• author is the Reddit username — engage them in-thread via postUrl, or DM them.
• intentPhrase is the exact phrase that matched (built-in or one of your extraIntentPhrases).
• website / businessName are filled when resolveWebsites is on and a confident company domain is found in the poster's activity; otherwise null (we never fake it). businessName is the website's domain.
• score is always null — RSS doesn't expose engagement counts, and we don't fabricate them.

Export & API

# Last run's dataset items as JSON
curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/<DATASET_ID>/items?format=json&token=<APIFY_TOKEN>"

Or use the run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint to run-and-wait in a single call — handy for embedding the actor in your own backend.

Limitations

• Intent is matched on the post title. A buying signal buried only in the body may be missed — add extraIntentPhrases to widen the net.
• RSS depth. Each subreddit feed returns its most recent ~25 posts, so scan more subreddits (or run on a schedule) for broader coverage rather than expecting a full historical export.
• No engagement metrics. RSS doesn't expose upvote/comment counts (we never fake them).
• Website enrichment is best-effort. It depends on the poster having shared their site in their public activity; expect it on a meaningful share of leads, not all.

Compliance

This actor reads public Reddit RSS only, identifies itself with a descriptive User-Agent, runs at modest concurrency, and does not log in, post, vote, or message. You are responsible for using the output in line with Reddit's terms and any outreach/marketing rules that apply to you.

FAQ

Do I need a Reddit account, API key, or proxy? No — it reads public RSS feeds directly.

How is it priced and how do I control cost? Apify Pay-Per-Event — you're charged per lead returned. Set maxLeads to cap spend; non-matching and duplicate posts are never charged.

Can I add my own intent phrases? Yes — extraIntentPhrases are matched alongside the built-in set, and the matching phrase is recorded in each lead's intentPhrase.

Which subreddits work best? Niche, buyer-heavy communities (e.g. r/SaaS, r/PPC, r/digital_marketing, r/smallbusiness) tend to produce the highest-intent leads.

How fresh is the data? It reads the live feed on each run. Use sort: "new" plus a schedule to catch intent as it's posted.

Can I get the poster's company website? Yes — turn on resolveWebsites (premium). Reddit blocks the profile bio to scrapers, so we mine the sites a poster has shared in their own public activity feed instead. It's best-effort: you get a website when there's a confident signal, null otherwise — never a fabricated one.

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Want this fully automated?

This actor finds the intent. If you'd like the whole loop — intent discovery, contact enrichment, AI-personalised outreach, and reply handling — done for you, that's what we build at SignalEngine. This actor is a taste of the engine that powers it.