Reddit Search & Customer Pain Monitor

Find Reddit posts that match your exact terms, get quoted match evidence, and track new IDs or content edits across runs. The output includes simple, transparent phrase rules for questions, problems and comparison requests. It is useful for customer research, competitor monitoring and product feedback workflows.

The live source is a fixed, tested harshmaur/reddit-scraper build, running in your own Apify account and billed separately. This Actor adds strict local text semantics, content comparisons, safe snapshot state and a shared input budget. It is independent of Reddit and that collector's developer.

Start with a small live search

{
  "mode": "live",
  "collectorCostAcknowledged": true,
  "searchQuery": "python",
  "subreddit": "python",
  "maxRecords": 5,
  "maxSpendUsd": 0.10
}

The prefilled example collects at most five real posts. searchQuery controls source discovery. To strictly filter the returned text, add matchTerms: ["document", "parsing"] and matchMode: all. This requires both literal substrings in the title/body. any accepts either, while phrase accepts exactly one term containing the required phrase. matchEvidence provides matching excerpts.

Save SNAPSHOT after a successful run and provide it as previousSnapshot next time. Initial records have event: initial, new IDs are new, and changes to title/body/edit timestamp produce updated with before/after evidence. Score fluctuations do not masquerade as content edits. Live collection returns posts only; supplied records can also be Reddit comments.

Transparent pricing

This monitor costs $0.008 per run + $0.0005 per distinct valid record inspected, including unchanged or filtered records. Invalid records and duplicates are not charged as inspections. Its platform usage is included.

Live collection adds a separate collector run. The tested Free-plan ceiling is $0.02 start + $0.002 per source result. Five posts have a modeled combined price of $0.04050 ($0.01050 monitor + $0.03000 collector). Collector plan discounts may reduce that amount. A replay with no new changes still pays to collect and inspect the records.

maxSpendUsd reserves this monitor's start and all maxRecords inspections before allocating the collector's cap. Apify's run maximum charge alone caps only the monitor; the input budget controls the combined reservation. Live mode requires collectorCostAcknowledged: true. The collector is fixed, limited-permission, pinned to a tested build and constrained to512MB,60seconds and a price cap. Upstream pricing or permission changes fail before collection. AI enrichment, comment expansion and external delivery are disabled in the collector.

Process an existing export

Set mode: inputRecords and pass up to100 exported post/comment objects. No source collector starts. Required IDs are Reddit fullnames such as t3_abc123 or t1_def456. Accepted fields include title, body/selftext, createdAt, editedAt, score, commentsCount, subreddit/parsedCommunityName and postUrl/permalink.

What the signals mean

painSignals are literal phrase rules, not AI judgments or proof of buying intent. Examples include “looking for”, “not working” and “alternative to”. Every label carries the matching excerpt and method: literal_phrase_rule. Context, irony and negation can change meaning; review the source before acting. This Actor never contacts people automatically.

publishedAfter/publishedBefore filter inclusive exact UTC instants after collection. Use a date (midnight UTC) or an ISO timestamp with timezone. Missing dates are excluded when date filtering is requested. Source results rejected by filters may still incur collection and inspection fees.

Limits, failures and privacy

• One query, optionally restricted to one subreddit, up to100 posts from the last week per live run. It is a bounded newest search window, not complete Reddit history or a guaranteed relevance ranking.
• The monitor enforces your local match rule on collected rows. It cannot force Reddit to discover posts absent from the source result set.
• Empty or unsuccessful live collection fails visibly and preserves prior state. SUMMARY explains source coverage and the separate collector receipt is in COLLECTOR_RUN.
• Missing records are never labeled deleted. The snapshot retains at most500 IDs; oldest entries are evicted and counted in snapshotEvictions.
• All inspected observations are retained, including filtered records. A previously matching post that no longer matches produces no_longer_matches. Snapshot filters must stay identical; changing them requires a fresh baseline.
• Author identity is excluded from normalized output. Post text can still contain personal information; collect/use data only for authorized purposes.
• Snapshot chaining requires passing the newest snapshot each run. Scheduling a task with a fixed old snapshot repeats that old comparison.
• Resurrect is disabled once work begins to avoid duplicate collector calls. Start a fresh run with the last successful snapshot.
• No account cookies, arbitrary collector inputs, notifications or external writes are accepted.

Working tutorial and API example

Call through the Apify API, SDKs or MCP. For support, share the run ID, query and expected output through Issues. Keep your API token private.