Lemmy Community Posts & Feedback Scraper

Scrape recent public posts from the Lemmy communities you choose, without an API key or login. The Actor reads each community's public RSS feed and exports one structured row per post. Use the results to monitor product mentions, questions, complaints, and feature requests in those communities.

Use cases

• Follow public product or brand mentions in selected communities with keyword filters.
• Review recent community questions, bug reports, complaints, and feature requests.
• Export post metadata to JSON, CSV, or Excel for research and reporting.

What you get

Each row includes the post title, available body text, author, community, publication time, points, comment count, source link, and a feedback category. Categories are simple English-language keyword rules and should be reviewed before making decisions. The original post URL is always included so you can verify the context.

The Actor reads public posts only. It does not collect private content, login-only pages, comments, or historical pages beyond the posts currently in each feed. A feed normally exposes about 20 recent posts; pinned posts may also appear. Repeated runs can be compared by postId to identify new posts.

Input

Paste public Lemmy community URLs ending in /c/name. The Actor accepts 1 to 100 communities and reads up to 20 recent posts from each feed. maxPostsPerCommunity limits posts considered from each feed; maxItems limits rows returned across the whole run. A short feed or filter may produce fewer rows than either limit. includeKeywords and excludeKeywords are case-insensitive phrases searched in the post title and available body text. feedbackOnly keeps posts labeled bug_report, feature_request, complaint, or question; use keywords as well when you need feedback about a specific product. Sort options are New, Hot, Active, TopDay, and TopWeek.

Run in Apify Console

1. Enter one or more public community URLs, for example https://lemmy.world/c/selfhosted.
2. Leave the sort as Newest for regular monitoring.
3. Optionally add include or exclude keywords and enable Feedback only.
4. Set the per-community and total row limits, then start the Actor.
5. Export the default dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel. Open Run statistics for failed feeds and counts.

Example input:

{
  "communityUrls": ["https://lemmy.world/c/selfhosted"],
  "includeKeywords": ["docker", "backup"],
  "feedbackOnly": true,
  "maxPostsPerCommunity": 20,
  "maxItems": 20,
  "sort": "New"
}

Output

Example output row:

{
  "postId": "https://lemmy.world/post/123",
  "postUrl": "https://lemmy.world/post/123",
  "community": "selfhosted",
  "title": "Docker backup is broken after update",
  "bodyText": "Docker backup fails on startup.",
  "points": 15,
  "commentCount": 4,
  "feedbackType": "bug_report",
  "feedbackSignals": ["broken", "failure"],
  "matchedKeywords": ["docker"]
}

Run through the Apify API

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("thescrapelab/lemmy-community-feedback-monitor").call(run_input={
    "communityUrls": ["https://lemmy.world/c/selfhosted"],
    "includeKeywords": ["docker"],
    "maxItems": 20,
})
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(row["title"], row["feedbackType"], row["postUrl"])

Limits

This Actor uses public RSS feeds, not Lemmy's API. Instance availability and feed formats can differ. An instance can disable or change its feed. The Actor reports individual feed failures in RUN-STATS and fails the run if every feed fails. A successful feed with no matching keywords can produce zero dataset rows.

Feedback categories are heuristic and currently tuned to English. They do not express sentiment scores or make claims about a product. Public post text is truncated to 20,000 characters in the output. The Actor follows no external article links and does not fetch comment threads.

Troubleshooting

If a run fails or returns fewer rows than expected, inspect the RUN-STATS record for feed failures, posts seen, and rows written. An instance may disable its feed or return a temporary error. Verify the community URL in a browser, then try a different community or rerun later. If the feed succeeds but no rows match, remove keyword filters and turn off feedbackOnly to inspect its recent posts.

Pricing

This Actor uses all-in pay-per-event pricing: $0.0005 when a run starts, $0.004 for each community feed checked, and $0.0003 for each post delivered. Apify platform usage during the run is included. A feed check is charged even when the feed is empty or unavailable; the RUN-STATS record shows how many feeds were checked and which failed. Repeated community URLs are checked once. The minimum selectable spending limit is $0.01, but your actual charge can be lower: checking one community and returning five posts costs about $0.006. A large run returning 1,000 posts from 50–100 communities costs about $0.5005–$0.7005. Set a run spending limit if you want the Actor to stop before more feeds or posts are charged.