Reddit Scraper

Scrape Reddit posts, comments, user profiles, and search results. No API key or login required. Fast, reliable, and cost-effective alternative to the official Reddit API.

What does Reddit Scraper do?

This actor extracts structured data from Reddit using public JSON endpoints. It supports 4 scraping modes:

• Subreddit posts — scrape any subreddit sorted by hot, new, top, rising, or controversial
• Search — search Reddit globally or within a specific subreddit
• User profiles — scrape posts or comments from any Reddit user
• Specific posts — scrape a post and all its comments by URL

All data is returned as clean, structured JSON with rich metadata including scores, awards, flairs, timestamps, and media URLs.

Why use this instead of the Reddit API?

Feature	Reddit API	This Scraper
API key required	Yes	No
Cost	$0.24/1,000 calls	~$0.50/1,000 posts on Apify
Rate limits	60 req/min (OAuth)	Built-in rate limiting
Setup time	Register app, OAuth flow	Zero — just run
Comments depth	Limited	Full comment trees

Features

• No API key or login required
• Scrape unlimited posts from any public subreddit
• Full comment thread extraction with nested replies
• Search Reddit globally or within subreddits
• User profile scraping (posts and comments)
• Media URL extraction (images, videos, thumbnails)
• Proxy support for high-volume scraping
• Proper rate limiting to avoid blocks
• Clean JSON output with 18+ fields per item

Input examples

Scrape subreddit posts

{
    "scrapeType": "subreddit",
    "subreddits": ["technology", "programming"],
    "sort": "top",
    "timeFilter": "week",
    "maxItems": 50
}

Search Reddit

{
    "scrapeType": "search",
    "searchQueries": ["web scraping python", "apify tutorial"],
    "sort": "relevance",
    "maxItems": 100
}

Scrape post with comments

{
    "scrapeType": "post",
    "postUrls": [
        { "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/example123/some_post_title/" }
    ],
    "maxCommentsPerPost": 200
}

Scrape user profile

{
    "scrapeType": "user",
    "usernames": ["spez"],
    "userContentType": "posts",
    "maxItems": 50
}

Output

Each item in the dataset contains:

Post fields

Field	Type	Description
id	String	Reddit post ID
type	String	Always "post"
subreddit	String	Subreddit name
title	String	Post title
author	String	Author username
url	String	Link URL
permalink	String	Full Reddit permalink
selftext	String	Post body text (self posts)
score	Integer	Upvotes minus downvotes
upvoteRatio	Number	Percentage of upvotes (0-1)
numComments	Integer	Total comment count
isNsfw	Boolean	NSFW flag
isSpoiler	Boolean	Spoiler flag
isPinned	Boolean	Pinned/stickied flag
flair	String	Post flair text
awards	Integer	Total awards received
thumbnail	String	Thumbnail image URL
mediaUrl	String	Direct media URL (image/video)
createdAt	String	ISO 8601 timestamp
scrapedAt	String	ISO 8601 timestamp

Comment fields

Field	Type	Description
id	String	Comment ID
type	String	Always "comment"
postId	String	Parent post ID
author	String	Author username
body	String	Comment text
score	Integer	Comment score
parentId	String	Parent comment/post ID
depth	Integer	Nesting depth (0 = top-level)
isSubmitter	Boolean	Is the post author

Cost estimation (PPE pricing)

This actor charges per event:

Event	Description
post	Each post pushed to dataset
comment	Each comment pushed to dataset

Example costs:

Scenario	Posts	Comments	Total events
1 subreddit, 100 posts	100	0	100
5 subreddits, 100 posts each	500	0	500
100 posts + 50 comments each	100	5,000	5,100
Search 10 queries, 100 each	1,000	0	1,000

Tip: Start with includeComments: false (cheaper), then use the post mode with specific URLs to fetch comments only for posts you need.

Use cases

• Market research — monitor product mentions and sentiment
• Competitor analysis — track brand mentions across subreddits
• Content research — find trending topics and popular content
• Lead generation — find people asking for solutions you offer
• Academic research — collect discussion data for analysis
• SEO — find content ideas from real user questions
• Sentiment analysis — gauge public opinion on topics

Limitations

• Only public subreddits and profiles (no private/quarantined content)
• Reddit may rate-limit requests; the actor handles this automatically
• Very old posts may have limited comment availability
• Media from external hosts (Imgur, etc.) returns the link, not the media itself

Changelog

v1.0 (2026-03-22)

• Initial release
• Subreddit, search, user, and post scraping modes
• Full comment tree extraction
• Proxy support
• PPE pricing ($0.50/1,000 results, first 100 free)