Reddit Post Comments Scraper

Collect the comment tree under a Reddit post. Every row carries its depth and parentId, so you can rebuild the thread exactly as it appears on the page.

Input

Field	Use it for
post_id	Post ID or full permalink. Required.
sort_type	CONFIDENCE (default), NEW, TOP or OLD.
maxItems	Caps the run. Default 100. Set 0 for no limit.
addonCommentReplies	Expand collapsed reply threads. Off by default.

{
  "post_id": "https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1uw2gep/some_slug/",
  "sort_type": "TOP",
  "maxItems": 500
}

One request, one tree

Worth knowing up front: this is a single request, not a pagination loop. Reddit's comment response carries no top-level cursor -- there is nothing to page with. What you get is the comment tree Reddit serves for that post and sort order, which is deep but not infinite.

The only way further is addonCommentReplies, below.

Output

One row per comment.

Field	Contents
id	Comment ID
post_id	The post the comment belongs to
author	Username
created_at	Creation timestamp
score	Net score
upvotes	Upvote count, where reported separately
depth	Nesting level -- 0 is top-level
parentId	The comment or post this one replies to
comment_detail	Expanded reply payload. Only with addonCommentReplies

Rows come back flat with a depth field rather than nested inside each other, which is what makes them straightforward to load into a table. Sort by the order they arrived and the thread reads top to bottom.

{
  "id": "t1_ll9q2xk",
  "post_id": "t3_1uw2gep",
  "author": "transit_nerd",
  "created_at": "2026-07-14T10:44:02.000Z",
  "score": 1284,
  "depth": 0,
  "parentId": "t3_1uw2gep"
}

Collapsed threads, and the "load more" markers

Reddit does not send every reply. Deep or heavily downvoted branches arrive as "load more replies" markers -- entries with no comment in them at all: no ID, no author, no body, just a cursor for fetching the rest.

By default those markers are skipped, and the run log tells you how many were dropped. Saving them would cost you a dataset row of nulls and a slot under maxItems for something that is not a comment.

Turn on addonCommentReplies and each marker is saved and expanded instead, with the fetched thread attached as comment_detail.

So: leave it off for the visible discussion, turn it on when you need the branches Reddit collapsed.

Questions

How do I rebuild the thread structure? Group on parentId. A comment whose parentId is the post's own ID (t3_...) is top-level; anything pointing at a t1_... ID is a reply to that comment. depth gives you the same information as a single number if you just want indentation.

Why did I get fewer comments than the post shows? Because collapsed branches were not expanded, and because there is no pagination beyond the tree Reddit returns in one response. A post showing 900 comments will not yield 900 rows with the add-on off. The run log reports how many markers were skipped, which tells you how much is hiding.

What does sort_type change? Which comments Reddit puts in the tree, and in what order. CONFIDENCE is Reddit's own default ranking. NEW and OLD are chronological and the most reproducible between runs; TOP re-ranks as votes move.

Can I do several posts in one run? No, one post per run. Get IDs from the Subreddit Posts Scraper and run this once per post.

Related Actors

Actor	Purpose
Reddit Post Scraper	The post itself, batched cheaply for a whole list
Reddit Subreddit Posts Scraper	Find posts worth reading the comments of
Reddit User Comments Scraper	One person's comments across all of Reddit