Lemmy Community Discovery, Posts & Comments

Use this to scrape Lemmy, the open Reddit-style fediverse network: community posts sorted Hot, New or Top, the full comment tree of any post, a searchable directory of communities, keyword search across posts, and a user's posts. It reads the official public Lemmy HTTP API of any instance you name (lemmy.world by default). No login, no cookies, no API key, no proxy.

Every post row carries 36 fields (title, body, link and link domain, score, upvotes, downvotes, comment count, author, community, published and edited time, adult-content flag, language, thumbnail, pinned and locked state, instance). Every comment row carries 28 fields including depth, parent comment and reply count. Every community row carries 24 fields including subscribers, posts, comments and daily, weekly and monthly active users.

Run in 30 seconds

1. Open the Input tab. The prefilled values (mode Community posts, community technology, instance lemmy.world, 25 results) are a ready-to-run test.
2. Click Start. A first dataset is normally ready in under 15 seconds.
3. Open the Posts table in the Output tab, or download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.
4. Change What to scrape to switch to comments, community search, keyword search or a user's posts.

What it does

Lemmy is a federated, open-source link aggregator. Every instance exposes a public, read-only HTTP API that returns the same data you see on the site. This Actor wraps that interface into one pay-per-result tool with five modes:

Mode	Input	Returns
Community posts	Community names, name@instance or URLs	Posts sorted Hot, New, Active, Top (hour to all time), Most Comments, Controversial
Comments of a post	Post URLs	The whole comment tree with depth, parent and score
Search posts	Keywords, optional community filter	Matching posts across the instance's federated content
Community directory	A search query, or nothing for the biggest communities	Communities with subscribers, activity and description
User posts	Usernames	The posts a user has submitted

Remote communities work too: ask lemmy.world for fedigardening@lemmy.ml or paste a full https://lemmy.ml/c/... URL and the Actor reads it from the right place. If an instance has moved to the newer API path, the Actor detects that and switches automatically.

What you get

Price per 1,000 results (Free plan)	$0.279
Start fee	$0.00005 per run
Plan discounts	Bronze $0.258, Silver $0.219, Gold and above $0.168
Modes	posts, comments, communities, search, users
Adult-flagged rows	skipped by default and never charged
Login or API key needed	no

Input

• What to scrape: the mode.
• Lemmy instance: lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, sh.itjust.works, programming.dev, lemm.ee or any other public instance.
• Communities: technology, technology@lemmy.world or https://lemmy.world/c/technology.
• Post URLs: https://lemmy.world/post/53755117, or a numeric ID on the chosen instance.
• Search terms: one search per term; Limit search to a community narrows it.
• Community search query: for the directory; leave empty to list the biggest communities.
• Users: username or username@instance.
• Sort, Comment sort, Directory sort: ordering for each mode.
• Max results: total rows across all targets, shared evenly.
• Include adult-flagged content: off by default.

Example input

{
  "mode": "communityPosts",
  "communities": ["technology", "selfhosted@lemmy.world"],
  "instance": "lemmy.world",
  "sort": "TopWeek",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Output sample

{
  "recordType": "post",
  "id": 53755117,
  "url": "https://lemmy.world/post/53755117",
  "title": "Bluesky blocks links to leaked DHS employee data as government seeks takedowns",
  "externalUrl": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/bluesky-blocks-links-to-leaked-dhs-employee-data-as-government-seeks-takedowns/",
  "externalDomain": "techcrunch.com",
  "score": 61,
  "upvotes": 64,
  "downvotes": 3,
  "commentCount": 12,
  "authorName": "example_user",
  "communityName": "technology",
  "published": "2026-10-29T23:37:47.151851Z",
  "adultFlagged": false,
  "language": "en",
  "instance": "lemmy.world"
}

Values above are illustrative. Fields that do not apply to a row (for example subscribers on a post) are null, so every row has the same shape and exports cleanly to CSV.

Use cases

• Community and brand monitoring: track mentions of a product, a competitor or a topic across Lemmy and the wider fediverse.
• Trend research: pull Top Day, Top Week or Most Comments for communities in your niche and see what the audience engages with.
• Sentiment and discussion analysis: export full comment trees with scores and depth for NLP work.
• Community discovery: find the largest and most active communities on a topic, with subscribers and active-user counts, before you post or advertise.
• Datasets: build research corpora from open, federated discussion.

Tips for good results

• Use Max results as your budget: you are charged per row returned, and the run stops cleanly when your maximum cost per run is reached.
• Sort Top Day returns only what was posted in the last 24 hours, so small communities can return fewer rows than you asked for.
• Search is run by the instance you pick, so results depend on what that instance has federated.
• Comments of a post returns the tree flattened; use depth and parentCommentId to rebuild it.

Field reference

Posts: id, apId, url, title, body, externalUrl, externalDomain, thumbnailUrl, embedTitle, embedDescription, score, upvotes, downvotes, commentCount, authorName, authorDisplayName, authorActorId, authorIsBot, communityName, communityTitle, communityActorId, published, updated, newestCommentTime, adultFlagged, language, locked, featuredCommunity, featuredLocal, removed, deleted, instance, query, source, scrapedAt. Comments add postId, parentCommentId, depth, replyCount. Communities add subscribers, subscribersLocal, postCount, usersActiveDay, usersActiveWeek, usersActiveMonth, usersActiveHalfYear, bannerUrl.

Pricing and cost control

Pay per event: one record-returned event for each post, comment or community row delivered, plus a tiny platform start event of $0.00005 per run. Free plan $0.279 per 1,000 rows, Bronze $0.258, Silver $0.219, Gold and above $0.168. Adult-flagged rows, duplicates and empty runs are never charged. Set Maximum cost per run in the run options for a hard ceiling.

Integrations and scheduling

Schedule runs on the Apify platform for daily or hourly monitoring, call the Actor from the API, or connect to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, webhooks and the Apify MCP server. Every run's dataset can be downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML.

API example (returns the rows directly):

$curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/transparent_meteorite~lemmy-communities-posts-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"   -H "Content-Type: application/json"   -d '{"mode":"communityPosts","instance":"lemmy.world","communities":["technology"],"maxItems":25}'

Field reference

Posts: id, apId, url, title, body, externalUrl, externalDomain, thumbnailUrl, embedTitle, embedDescription, score, upvotes, downvotes, commentCount, authorName, authorDisplayName, authorActorId, authorIsBot, communityName, communityTitle, communityActorId, published, updated, newestCommentTime, adultFlagged, language, locked, featuredCommunity, featuredLocal, removed, deleted, instance, query, source, scrapedAt. Comments add postId, parentCommentId, depth, replyCount. Communities add subscribers, subscribersLocal, postCount, usersActiveDay, usersActiveWeek, usersActiveMonth, usersActiveHalfYear, bannerUrl.

Pricing and cost control

Pay per event: one record-returned event for each post, comment or community row delivered, plus a tiny platform start event of $0.00005 per run. Free plan $0.279 per 1,000 rows, Bronze $0.258, Silver $0.219, Gold and above $0.168. Adult-flagged rows, duplicates and empty runs are never charged. Set Maximum cost per run in the run options for a hard ceiling.

Integrations and scheduling

Schedule runs on the Apify platform for daily or hourly monitoring, call the Actor from the API, or connect to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, webhooks and the Apify MCP server. Every run's dataset can be downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML.

Limits

• Reads only what each instance serves publicly; private, removed and login-only content is not available.
• Large comment trees are capped by Max results; an oversize request ends cleanly with a not-checked note instead of timing out.
• Instances may rate limit; the Actor backs off and keeps what it already delivered.
• Data freshness equals the instance: this is a live read, not an archive.

Fair use and data

The Actor reads only public data that Lemmy instances serve to anyone without authentication, through their documented HTTP API, at a polite rate with automatic back-off on rate limits. It does not log in, bypass access controls or collect private messages. Posts and comments are public content written by their authors; check each community's rules and applicable privacy law (such as GDPR) before storing personal data or republishing it. adult-flagged content is excluded unless you switch it on.

FAQ

Do I need a Lemmy account or API key? No. Only public, unauthenticated read endpoints are used.

Which instances work? Any public Lemmy instance that serves the standard API. Enter its domain in Lemmy instance.

Can I scrape a community hosted on another server? Yes. Use name@home.instance or paste the community URL.

Why did I get fewer rows than Max results? The community, search or time window simply had fewer matching rows, or adult-flagged rows were filtered out.

Are removed and deleted posts included? The instance normally hides them; the removed and deleted fields tell you if one slips through.

What happens if an instance is down or rate limits me? The Actor retries with back-off, then ends the run cleanly with a status message and keeps what it already delivered.

Is there a free trial? New Apify accounts include free monthly credit, enough for thousands of rows at this price.

Related Actors

• Mastodon Posts & Hashtags Scraper: the same kind of public fediverse data from Mastodon.
• Bluesky Posts & Profiles Scraper: public Bluesky posts and profiles.
• Hacker News Search Scraper: tech discussion search to pair with Lemmy tech communities.

Support

Found a bug or need a field? Open an issue on the Issues tab with the run URL and we will reply there.

Changelog

• 0.1: first release. Community posts, post comments, community directory, post search and user posts.