Reddit Scraper: Posts, Keyword Mentions & New-Post Alerts

For brand researchers, product teams and analysts who need public Reddit discussions and a repeatable way to find new mentions. Search keywords, follow communities or supply known post URLs. Each delivered record includes a plain intent label and the text around a literal keyword match.

About $0.0032 per post and $0.0015 per comment, plus $0.0025 per GB to start ($0.005 at the default 2 GB). Twenty posts cost $0.069 including the default start, before plan discounts. A run with 100 posts and 500 comments costs about $1.08. No login or API key is required. Failed requests, duplicate IDs, note rows and summaries have no post or comment charge.

What you get

The Actor reads Reddit's own public search, community and discussion surfaces. Search, community feeds and post URLs use new anonymous sessions. Post retrieval is independent of comment access. Listings can fall back to public HTML and an anonymous browser. It does not depend on RSS feeds, a paid data provider, a signed-in account or your cookies.

Use keyword searches for brand research, community feeds for market monitoring, and known post URLs for ongoing discussions. Named watches return previously undelivered IDs. Local intent labels help triage questions, recommendation requests, complaints and praise.

The default 2 GB memory allows browser fallback; a 512 MB run uses HTTP only. Reddit controls search ranking and accessible result windows. Comment threads may be unavailable, including on residential proxy. Optional comments use the existing public HTML route; refusals return free note rows and keep delivered posts. It skips private and quarantined source records, advertisements, and comment bodies marked deleted or removed. A value missing from the source stays null.

Start in three steps

1. Enter one or more searchTerms, such as coffee grinder, Notion or project management. Leave subreddits empty for a Reddit-wide search.
2. Choose sort: "new" and start with maxItems: 20. Leave includeComments off for the quickest first run.
3. Start the Actor, open the Overview or Mentions dataset view, then export JSON, CSV or Excel. The Output tab also links to the run summary.

Earlier validation included 41 varied cloud inputs, 10 live page checks, and a real reboot with 100 unique rows and matching charges. A measured 20-post prefill completed in 8.043 seconds. It returned 20 distinct posts with full source bodies, scores, upvote ratios, comment totals, available flair and match labels. Results and timing vary with Reddit availability, selected sources and comment depth.

{
  "searchTerms": ["coffee grinder"],
  "sort": "new",
  "timeRange": "all",
  "includeComments": false,
  "maxItems": 20
}

Input reference

Input	What it controls
searchTerms	Keyword strings or Reddit search expressions. Search Reddit-wide or within every selected subreddit. At most 25 terms.
subreddits	Public community names, such as Coffee, espresso or SaaS. With no search terms, collect community posts directly. At most 25 names.
startUrls	Optional HTTPS Reddit community, post or search links. Supply an array of URL strings or objects containing url. At most 50 links.
sort	new, hot, top or relevance. Relevance applies to search; community-only relevance uses new. Default: new.
timeRange	all, hour, day, week, month or year. Passed to Reddit search and top listings. It does not exclude replies on an older post.
includeComments	Also read accessible comments for discovered posts. Default: false. Adds requests and output rows.
maxCommentsPerPost	Maximum comment candidates considered per post, from 1 to 500. Default: 50. Previously delivered comment IDs are still part of this source window.
maxItems	Maximum unique delivered posts plus comments across the entire run, from 1 to 10,000. Default: 20. It is a ceiling, not a guaranteed result count.
onlyNewSinceLastRun	Use a persistent ID history for this watch. The first run establishes its history by delivering the current accessible window.
watchId	Stable watch name using letters, digits, underscores or hyphens, up to 80 characters. Default: default.
proxyConfiguration	Apify proxy settings or a custom proxy. Default datacenter access retries on US and UK residential where required. Explicit custom or disabled proxy choices are respected.

Sources are combined in input order and deduplicated across the run. A small global maxItems may be exhausted before later sources are visited. Invalid supported inputs become a free note and summary. The platform can also reject incorrectly typed input before creating a run.

Communities and replies

{
  "subreddits": ["Coffee", "espresso"],
  "sort": "new",
  "includeComments": true,
  "maxCommentsPerPost": 20,
  "maxItems": 100
}

For a known discussion, supply its full public post URL:

{
  "startUrls": [
    {"url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Coffee/comments/1xifs1s/mod_the_daily_question_thread/"}
  ],
  "includeComments": true,
  "maxCommentsPerPost": 50,
  "maxItems": 100
}

Post fields

Field	Meaning
verdict	A short readable label leading each row.
type	post for post records.
postId	Stable Reddit post ID without the t3_ prefix.
subreddit	Public community name.
title, text	Source post title and body. HTML search fallback may expose only a snippet; textIsSnippet identifies that case.
author	Public Reddit username as shown by the source. No identity enrichment.
createdAt, scrapedAt	Creation and observation timestamps in UTC.
score, upvoteRatio	Source vote metrics. Hidden or unavailable values remain null. Reddit may fuzz scores.
numComments	Reddit's displayed comment total, including inaccessible replies.
flair	Available post flair text.
url, permalink, domain	Destination URL, Reddit discussion link and source domain.
isSelf	Whether the source identifies the post as a text/self post.
media	Available image or video URLs with a type. Not a download or a guarantee of every media variant.
matchedTerms	Input terms found literally in the title or available body.
matchSnippet	Text around the first literal match, or null when there is no literal match.
intent	One of question, recommendation request, complaint, praise or other.
isNewSinceLastRun	True for records delivered by an enabled watch; null when watch history was not requested.
source	Identifies the public surface used for that row.

Intent labels use transparent text rules, not a language model; sarcasm, mixed opinions and non-English text can be mislabeled.

A real output example

Selected fields from the 29 October 2026 cloud prefill:

{
  "type": "post",
  "postId": "1xilw6i",
  "subreddit": "espresso",
  "title": "Suggestions for espresso automation [1500USD]",
  "score": 0,
  "upvoteRatio": 0.5,
  "numComments": 0,
  "matchedTerms": [],
  "intent": "recommendation request",
  "createdAt": "2026-10-29T14:42:35.000Z",
  "permalink": "https://www.reddit.com/r/espresso/comments/1xilw6i/suggestions_for_espresso_automation_1500usd/"
}

Comment fields

Comment rows use type: "comment", commentId, postId, parentId, depth, author, text, score, createdAt, permalink, subreddit and scrapedAt, together with the same matching, intent and watch fields. Parent IDs retain Reddit's t3_ post or t1_ comment prefix. Top-level replies have depth 0. If an expansion omits the parent or depth and it cannot be resolved from observed records, the value remains null.

An earlier expanded-thread test returned 75 comments. Availability has since varied. When Reddit refuses the existing route, the Actor keeps posts, writes a free NOTE, and skips further refused threads in that run. Available comments retain their hierarchy. Inspect commentCoverage and failures in the summary.

Monitor new mentions every day

Create a task with a stable watchId, enable onlyNewSinceLastRun, and schedule that task in Apify Console. A daily schedule works; a busy topic may need a shorter interval to keep overlap between accessible result windows. Connect your own webhook, Make, Zapier, n8n or spreadsheet workflow to each completed dataset.

{
  "searchTerms": ["Notion"],
  "sort": "new",
  "includeComments": true,
  "maxCommentsPerPost": 25,
  "maxItems": 100,
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true,
  "watchId": "notion-product-watch"
}

Run watches sequentially. An unfinished prior run blocks reuse of its watch ID until that run is resumed, or you choose a different watch ID. Do not launch overlapping runs for the same watch. Different watch IDs maintain independent histories. The history is scoped to the Actor and the running account and survives ordinary builds and task edits.

Posts and comments have separate stable ID keys. With comments enabled, the Actor revisits accessible replies on posts in the current discovery window, even if the post itself was delivered before. This catches new replies on those revisited posts; it does not monitor every post ever seen indefinitely. To keep watching a specific old thread, retain its URL in startUrls. Edits to an already delivered ID are not new records. Removing the named watch store resets its history.

Pricing and spending limits

Delivered data	Base price	Example
Post	$0.0032	100 posts: $0.32
Comment	$0.0015	1,000 comments: $1.50
Mixed run	Both rates	100 posts and 500 comments: $1.07

Bronze receives 5% off data prices, Silver 10%, and Gold and higher tiers 20%. Start costs $0.0025 per GB, minimum one GB; the default 2 GB costs $0.005. Data is saved before its charge. Duplicate IDs within a run, already delivered watch IDs, source failures, retries, notes and the summary do not generate data charges. The Actor stops cleanly when the next record exceeds your spending limit and keeps what it has saved.

A SUMMARY record is written to both the dataset and the key-value store. Filter dataset exports to type == "post" or type == "comment" if you want only paid data rows. The summary reports totals, labels, communities, watch exclusions, source failures and comment coverage. This distinguishes a valid empty search from a source that refused access.

API use

Start the Actor asynchronously using its Apify API endpoint and your Apify token:

curl -X POST \
  'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/vant47~reddit-keyword-alerts/runs' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"searchTerms":["coffee grinder"],"sort":"new","maxItems":20}'

Poll the returned run ID, then read defaultDatasetId through the dataset items API. Use the run's default key-value store to fetch SUMMARY.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Connect an authorized Apify account to https://mcp.apify.com. Ask your agent to find Reddit posts or comments, inspect the Actor input schema, estimate the number of posts and comments, then run a small sample. For example: “Search public Reddit for coffee grinder recommendations, newest first, return 20 posts and include literal match snippets.”

Labels and snippets are deterministic extraction aids; use the original post or comment as the evidence for a business decision.

Limits and FAQ

Will this return every matching Reddit post? No. Reddit supplies ranked and bounded windows. Pagination cannot turn those windows into a complete historical database. The run also limits pages and comment expansions to keep work bounded.

Are comments always available? No. Reddit may refuse entire threads even through residential proxy. This produces free notes, not a failed run. Available replies and supported expansions remain bounded by your limits; missing comments have no data charge. The standard platform start fee still applies.

Does the watch send notifications itself? It produces a dataset of newly delivered IDs and a summary. Add your own schedule and delivery integration in Apify. No messages are sent to other services automatically.

Why is a field null? The particular public source did not supply it. Search HTML can omit full text, ratio, flair or media. The Actor does not estimate missing values or copy a score from a different observation time.

Can I use my account cookies? They are neither requested nor supported. Private, quarantined and login-only content is outside this Actor's scope. Verification challenges are recorded as refused routes and are never solved.

What happens during a reboot? Saved dataset IDs form a durable delivery ledger. The Actor resumes cached work, reconciles accepted per-record charges and avoids delivering or charging the same saved ID again. An interrupted run can be resumed before its watch is reused.

Independent tool, not affiliated with Reddit.