Reddit Scraper — Posts, Comments, Users & Communities

Capture the conversations behind a market: posts, comment trees, users, communities, sentiment, and media.

Scrape Reddit at scale without login: posts, comment threads, user profiles, and communities — from URLs, keyword search, or whole subreddits. Sentiment, media downloads, and monitoring included.

All examples below use fictional DEMO-* identifiers, reserved .test domains, and masked contact details. They do not represent real people, listings, products, or companies.

🚀 What this Actor does

• Flexible collection: Direct URLs, Keyword search, Subreddit collection, Incremental collection.
• Structured output: clean JSON records organized into overview, posts, comments, users, communities views.
• Production-ready: concurrency, retries, proxy support, limits, and source-aware diagnostics are exposed through the Actor input.
• Easy automation: run from the Apify Console, API, schedules, webhooks, Make, Zapier, or any HTTP client.

🎛️ Modes and workflows

Mode or workflow	What it does
Direct URLs	Resolve exact posts, comments, users, or communities.
Keyword search	Search posts, comments, communities, and users with sort and time filters.
Subreddit collection	Collect posts and optional comment trees from selected communities.
Incremental collection	Use onlyNewerThan plus deduplication for repeatable feeds.

💡 Common use cases

• Community and audience research
• Brand, issue, and sentiment monitoring
• Training, research, and content datasets

📥 Input schema

Configure the Actor in the Input tab or send the same JSON through the API. Fields not needed for your workflow can be omitted.

Field	Type	Description	Default
startUrls	array	Direct Reddit URLs — posts, subreddits, user profiles, or search pages. Each is auto-detected.	—
searches	array	Keywords or phrases to search across Reddit (use quotes for exact phrases).	—
subreddits	array	Subreddits to scrape in full — accepts a name, r/name, or full URL.	—
searchWithinSubreddit	string	Limit keyword searches to one subreddit (name or r/name). Leave empty to search all of Reddit.	—
searchPosts	boolean	Include posts in search results.	true
searchComments	boolean	Include comments in search results.	false
searchCommunities	boolean	Include subreddits in search results.	false
searchUsers	boolean	Include user profiles in search results.	false
sort	string	Ordering for listings and search. Allowed: relevance, hot, top, new, rising, comments.	new
time	string	Time window for Top / Controversial / search results. Allowed: all, hour, day, week, month, year.	all
includeNSFW	boolean	Include adult / over-18 content.	false
scrapeComments	boolean	For every post found, also collect its comment thread (deep, with collapsed replies expanded).	false
maxCommentsPerPost	integer	Cap on comments collected per post.	10
commentSort	string	Ordering used when collecting a post's comment thread. Allowed: top, new, controversial, old, qa, confidence.	top
skipUserPosts	boolean	When scraping a user profile, skip their post/comment history (keep profile only).	false
skipCommunityInfo	boolean	When scraping a subreddit, skip the community info/rules record.	false
postedAfter	string	Keep only posts created on/after this date (YYYY-MM-DD or ISO-8601).	—
postedBefore	string	Keep only posts created on/before this date.	—
commentedAfter	string	Keep only comments created on/after this date.	—
commentedBefore	string	Keep only comments created on/before this date.	—
onlyWithFlair	boolean	Keep only posts that have a link flair.	false
strictKeywordMatch	boolean	For searches, keep only results whose title/body contain every keyword.	false
maxItems	integer	Global cap across all sources and data types. 0 = unlimited.	100
maxPostsPerSource	integer	Posts pulled per subreddit / search / user (Reddit lists cap near 1000).	25
sentiment	boolean	Add a sentiment score and label to posts and comments.	false
downloadMedia	boolean	Save post images/videos to storage and add permanent links (Reddit media URLs can rotate).	false
downloadAvatars	boolean	Save user avatars to storage and add a permanent link.	false
dedupe	boolean	Save each post/comment/user/community only once per run.	true
onlyNewerThan	integer	Skip items created at/before this Unix timestamp — useful for scheduled monitoring.	0
proxyConfiguration	object	Defaults to fast, low-cost datacenter proxies. The scraper automatically escalates to residential IPs only if Reddit rate-limits the run.	{"useApifyProxy": true}
maxConcurrency	integer	Sources processed at once.	8
maxRetries	integer	Retries for a failed Reddit request.	5
requestTimeoutSecs	integer	Maximum time for one request.	30

▶️ Example input

{
  "searches": [
    "customer onboarding"
  ],
  "searchPosts": true,
  "scrapeComments": true,
  "maxItems": 50,
  "maxCommentsPerPost": 20,
  "sentiment": true
}

📦 Output schema

Each successful item is written to the default dataset. Select a dataset view in the Apify Console or export the full dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS.

overview — Overview

A compact table for fast scanning and export.

Fields: dataType, title, name, username, author, subreddit, score, numComments, membersCount, totalKarma, url, createdAt

posts — Posts

Post-level content and engagement records.

Fields: title, author, subreddit, score, upvoteRatio, numComments, flair, postType, over18, sentimentLabel, url, contentUrl, createdAt

comments — Comments

Comment-level conversation records.

Fields: body, author, subreddit, score, depth, isSubmitter, sentimentLabel, postTitle, url, createdAt

users — Users

Public user-profile records.

Fields: userIcon, username, totalKarma, linkKarma, commentKarma, verified, followersCount, description, url, createdAt

communities — Communities

Community metadata and audience size.

Fields: communityIcon, name, title, membersCount, onlineUsersCount, over18, subredditType, description, url, createdAt

📤 Example output

{
  "title": "Demo discussion about onboarding",
  "author": "demo_user",
  "subreddit": "demo_community",
  "score": 142,
  "upvoteRatio": 0.94,
  "numComments": 37,
  "postType": "text",
  "over18": false,
  "sentimentLabel": "positive",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/demo_community/comments/DEMO-POST-01/"
}

Missing source values are returned as null, empty arrays, or documented availability/status fields; the Actor does not invent unavailable source data.

🔌 API example

Replace the placeholder with an Apify token and send the same input used in the Console:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/trakk~reddit-scraper/runs?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searches": ["customer onboarding"], "searchPosts": true, "scrapeComments": true, "maxItems": 50, "maxCommentsPerPost": 20, "sentiment": true}'

For synchronous integrations, use the run-sync-get-dataset-items API endpoint. For larger jobs, start an asynchronous run and consume its default dataset when the run succeeds.

🧩 Automation and exports

• Schedule recurring runs from the Apify Console.
• Trigger downstream systems with webhooks when a run succeeds or fails.
• Reuse named monitoring keys or stores where the selected workflow supports change tracking.
• Export dataset views to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS, or access items through the Apify API.

❓ FAQ

Do I need a login or browser session?

Use only the inputs shown in the Actor schema. If authentication or cookies are supported, the relevant encrypted field is explicitly available in the Input tab; otherwise no account is required.

Why can some fields be empty?

Source pages vary by region, content type, privacy settings, and availability. Optional enrichment also depends on the selected mode. Empty values are preserved honestly instead of being guessed.

How should I run this at scale?

Start with a small representative input, inspect the dataset and cost, then raise item limits and concurrency gradually. Use Apify Proxy when the schema exposes it, and use schedules plus monitoring keys for recurring collection.

Is the example data real?

No. Every example in this README is intentionally fictional and uses demo identifiers, reserved domains, or masked contact values.