Lemmy Scraper: Posts, Comments, Communities & Users

Collect data from any Lemmy instance in the fediverse through that server's own official API. No login, no API key, no HTML parsing.

Mode	What you get
Posts	Title, body, link, score, up/down votes, comment count, community, author and timestamps
Comments	Comment text with its thread depth, score, author, community and parent post
Communities	The instance's community directory with subscriber counts and weekly/monthly active users
Search	Posts, comments, communities and users matching a query
Users	Profile, bio, post and comment counts, join date

Why use this one

• Any instance, not just one. The server is an input, so the same Actor reads lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, sh.itjust.works or your own private server. Most Lemmy tools are hard-wired to a single host.
• Official API. Lemmy publishes and documents these endpoints; nothing here depends on the look of the web front end.
• Federated or local. Choose whether to include content federated in from other servers or only what this instance hosts.
• Clear failure messages. Lemmy instances run different versions. If a server doesn't answer the /api/v3 path, the log says so and names the instance, instead of returning an empty dataset with no explanation.
• Flat output. Posts, comments, communities and users come back as plain rows ready for a spreadsheet or a database.

How to use it

1. Choose What to scrape.
2. Set the Lemmy instance (defaults to lemmy.world).
3. Optionally narrow to Communities, or fill in Search terms or Users.
4. Pick a Sort order and a cap, then click Start.

Communities are accepted in any of these forms:

technology
!technology@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/c/technology

Example input: hot posts in one community

{
  "mode": "posts",
  "instance": "lemmy.world",
  "communities": ["technology"],
  "sort": "Hot",
  "maxItemsPerTarget": 100
}

Example input: one post's whole discussion

{
  "mode": "comments",
  "instance": "lemmy.world",
  "postId": "https://lemmy.world/post/53225445",
  "sort": "Old",
  "maxItemsPerTarget": 500
}

Example input: biggest communities on an instance

{
  "mode": "communities",
  "instance": "lemmy.ml",
  "sort": "TopAll",
  "maxItemsPerTarget": 200
}

Output

Every row has a type field: post, comment, community or user. The dataset ships with a table view for each.

Post

{
  "type": "post",
  "id": 53225445,
  "title": "A new release is out",
  "url": "https://example.com/release",
  "score": 39,
  "upvotes": 40,
  "downvotes": 1,
  "commentCount": 6,
  "communityName": "technology",
  "creatorName": "someone",
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-16T22:31:13Z",
  "nsfw": false,
  "postUrl": "https://lemmy.world/post/53225445",
  "instance": "https://lemmy.world"
}

Community

{
  "type": "community",
  "rank": 1,
  "name": "technology",
  "title": "Technology",
  "subscribers": 88826,
  "postCount": 22232,
  "commentCount": 968547,
  "usersActiveMonth": 14686,
  "url": "https://lemmy.world/c/technology"
}

Pricing

Pay only for results:

Result	Price
Post or comment	$1.00 per 1,000
Community	$3.00 per 1,000
User profile	$3.00 per 1,000

Set a maximum spend per run in the run options and the Actor stops cleanly when it's reached.

Limits to know about

• Instances run different Lemmy versions. This Actor targets /api/v3, which the great majority of servers still serve. A server that has moved on will answer 404; the log then names the instance so you know to switch servers rather than wonder why the run was empty.
• Volunteer-run servers rate-limit hard. The default of 2 parallel requests is deliberate. Raising it is the fastest way to get temporarily blocked, and lemmy.world in particular returns HTTP 429 quickly.
• Field coverage varies by version and by instance. Optional fields such as a user's display name, avatar or banner are omitted entirely by some servers; those come back as null rather than breaking the run.
• Only public, logged-out data. Subscribed listings need an account, so that listing type returns nothing without one.
• Comment depth is derived from Lemmy's path field. On instances that don't populate it, depth is null.
• Votes are the instance's own tallies and can differ between servers for the same federated post.

FAQ

Do I need a Lemmy account? No. Everything here is public, logged-out data.

Can I scrape more than one instance in a run? Not in a single run — set the instance per run. Create one Apify task per instance and schedule them separately.

Why did my run return nothing? Check the log. Either the instance didn't answer the /api/v3 path, the community name was wrong, or a rate limit was hit. The message says which.

Can I monitor a community? Yes. Use Posts with sort New, set a schedule in Apify Console, and connect the dataset to Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier or Make.

Is this allowed? Lemmy's API is open by design and these are the same endpoints its own apps use. Keep the concurrency low out of courtesy to volunteer-run servers. Output contains public usernames and post text, so handle it in line with any privacy law that applies to you.

Feedback

Found a bug or need a field that's missing? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab.