Reddit Buying-Intent Lead Monitor

Find people on Reddit who are actively looking to buy — asking for product recommendations, hunting for an alternative to a competitor, or venting about a tool they're tired of — and turn every match into a scored lead row. Scans both posts and comments, so you catch intent wherever it surfaces.

Why use this actor

• Real buying signals, not noise — matches intent phrases like "looking for a tool that", "any recommendations for", and "alternative to", then scores and labels each hit (high / medium / low) so you can work the hottest leads first.
• Posts and comments — buying intent often hides in a reply ("has anyone tried an alternative to X?"). This actor reads comment threads too and treats each qualifying comment as its own lead.
• Category tagging — every lead is tagged recommendation-request, switching-intent, or pain-point, plus the exact phrase that triggered it and a short context snippet.
• Built for monitoring — remembers what it already delivered, so a scheduled run only surfaces new leads each time. Point it at your target subreddits and let it run daily.
• No account, no login, no API key required — works out of the box.
• Stable JSON output — every row carries _input, _source, and _scrapedAt envelope fields plus the full Reddit post/comment object, ready for spreadsheets, CRMs, and databases. Export to JSON, CSV, or Excel.

How it works

1. You give the actor a list of intent phrases (a strong starter set is prefilled), optionally a list of subreddits to watch and extra keywords to narrow to your product area.
2. For each phrase it searches the freshest matching posts in your chosen time window, then (optionally) opens each active post's comment thread.
3. Every post and comment is scored for buying intent, labelled, and tagged with a category and the matched phrase.
4. Leads below your minimum score are dropped; the rest stream into your dataset as one row each.
5. Already-delivered leads are skipped on later runs, so a scheduled monitor keeps giving you only fresh prospects.

You do not need to manage scrapers, browsers, logins, or blocks — it is all handled for you.

Input

{
  "phrases": [
    "looking for a tool that",
    "any recommendations for",
    "alternative to",
    "is there a way to",
    "what do you use for",
    "tired of using",
    "recommend a",
    "best tool for"
  ],
  "subreddits": ["SaaS", "Entrepreneur"],
  "keywords": [],
  "includeComments": true,
  "timeWindow": "week",
  "maxPostsPerQuery": 100,
  "maxCommentsPerPost": 50,
  "maxItems": 200,
  "minIntentScore": 1,
  "dedupeAcrossRuns": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Field	Type	Description
phrases	array	Intent phrases to search for and score against. Strong phrases (recommendation requests, competitor alternatives, pain points) score highest. Required.
subreddits	array	Communities to monitor (without r/). Leave empty to search all of Reddit.
keywords	array	Optional product/topic terms combined with every phrase to focus results (e.g. CRM, email marketing).
includeComments	boolean	Also scan the comment threads of active posts. Default true.
timeWindow	string	hour, day, week (default), month, year, or all. Use day/week for a live monitor.
maxPostsPerQuery	integer	Posts to pull per phrase, per subreddit. Default 100.
maxCommentsPerPost	integer	Comments read per post when comment scanning is on. Default 50.
maxItems	integer	Overall cap on lead rows per run. Default 200.
minIntentScore	integer	Keep only leads scoring at least this. Default 1. Raise to 2–3 for higher-confidence leads.
dedupeAcrossRuns	boolean	Skip leads already delivered on previous runs. Default true.
redditClientId	string	Optional Reddit app ID for a higher rate limit on heavy jobs. Leave blank for the public path.
redditClientSecret	string	Optional secret for the app ID above. Not needed for the default path.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy settings. Residential recommended for the most complete results.

Output

Every lead is one row. Below are two real rows from a live run against r/SaaS (long text truncated to ~300 characters; each row also carries Reddit's full set of native fields — awards, flair, media, etc. — passed through unchanged).

A post lead

{
  "_source": "S2-webauth",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-07-10T19:28:27Z",
  "_input": "any recommendations for",
  "type": "post",
  "id": "1ushr4x",
  "fullname": "t3_1ushr4x",
  "subreddit": "SaaS",
  "author": "prasadpilla",
  "author_fullname": "t2_10axkh",
  "title": "Looking for RB2B Alternative",
  "selftext": "Looking for a good alternative to RB2B for my startup\n\nRB2B looks great, but it's a bit too expensive for us right now\n\nIf you've used any solid alternatives (especially for B2B SaaS)\n\nI'd love to hear your recommendations and experiences.",
  "body": null,
  "contextSnippet": "Looking for RB2B Alternative Looking for a good alternative to RB2B for my startup RB2B looks great, but it's a bit too expensive for us right now If you've used any solid alternatives (especially for B2B SaaS) I'd love to hear your recommendations and experiences.",
  "score": 1,
  "ups": 1,
  "upvote_ratio": 1.0,
  "numComments": 1,
  "createdUtc": 1783672519.0,
  "createdISO": "2026-07-10T08:35:19Z",
  "permalink": "https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1ushr4x/looking_for_rb2b_alternative/",
  "matchedPhrase": "alternative to",
  "intentScore": 3.0,
  "intentLabel": "high",
  "intentCategory": "switching-intent"
}

A comment lead

{
  "_source": "S2-webauth",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-07-10T19:28:15Z",
  "_input": "looking for a tool that",
  "type": "comment",
  "id": "owinlp7",
  "fullname": "t1_owinlp7",
  "subreddit": "SaaS",
  "author": "EmbarrassedBuddy9743",
  "author_fullname": "t2_1zb7sb27ty",
  "title": "I checked whether AI actually recommends challenger tools or just parrots the same two incumbents…",
  "selftext": null,
  "body": "Good question, and it's honestly neither pure SEO nor just hoping web search picks you up. From what I keep seeing, the biggest lever is legibility: your site has to describe the actual job a buyer is trying to do, in the words they'd use… The \"for small teams\", \"cheapest\", \"X vs Y\", \"alternative to Z\" phrasings are where challengers get named…",
  "contextSnippet": "…seem to actually move it. One, build pages around real buyer intents, not your category name. The \"for small teams\", \"cheapest\", \"X vs Y\", \"alternative to Z\" phrasings are where challengers get named, especially in frozen categories where the generic slot is already taken. Two, corroboration off…",
  "score": 2,
  "ups": 2,
  "numComments": null,
  "createdUtc": 1783613721.0,
  "createdISO": "2026-07-09T16:15:21Z",
  "permalink": "https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1urtdxa/i_checked_whether_ai_actually_recommends/owinlp7/",
  "link_id": "t3_1urtdxa",
  "parent_id": "t1_owiiolf",
  "depth": 1,
  "matchedPhrase": "alternative to",
  "intentScore": 3.0,
  "intentLabel": "high",
  "intentCategory": "switching-intent"
}

Field	Type	Description
_source	string	Internal tag for the data path used.
_scrapedAt	string	ISO-8601 UTC time the row was collected.
_input	string	The phrase (plus any keywords) whose search surfaced this lead.
type	string	post or comment.
id	string	Reddit short ID.
fullname	string	Reddit "fullname" (t3_ for posts, t1_ for comments) — the stable dedupe key.
subreddit	string	Community the lead is in (without r/).
author	string	Username of the person expressing intent — your prospect.
title	string	Post title. For a comment, the title of the post it lives under.
selftext	string | null	Post body (posts only).
body	string | null	Comment text (comments only).
contextSnippet	string	~300 characters of text centred on the matched phrase, for quick triage.
score	integer	Reddit score (upvotes).
numComments	integer | null	Comment count (posts only).
createdUtc	number	Creation time as a UNIX timestamp.
createdISO	string	Creation time as ISO-8601 UTC.
permalink	string	Full https://www.reddit.com/... link to the post or comment.
matchedPhrase	string	The highest-weight intent phrase found in the text.
intentScore	number	Summed weight of all intent phrases found. Higher = stronger intent.
intentLabel	string	high, medium, or low.
intentCategory	string	recommendation-request, switching-intent, pain-point, or general.

Each row also carries Reddit's full native fields (awards, flair, media previews, and — for comments — link_id, parent_id, depth), streamed through unchanged.

Error and notice rows

Failures and empty-but-legitimate runs emit structured rows instead of crashing:

{ "_source": "none", "_input": "alternative to", "_warning": "all_matches_deduped",
  "_warningDetail": "7 intent match(es) found but all were already emitted on previous runs (dedupeAcrossRuns=true)." }

Filter on _error or _warning to triage.

Notes / limits

• Search coverage — Reddit search returns roughly the first couple hundred results per phrase. For thorough coverage use several narrow phrases plus a tight time window (day/week) rather than one broad phrase.
• Comment scanning cost — reading comment threads is slower than posts alone. Lower maxCommentsPerPost, or set includeComments to false, for faster/cheaper runs.
• Deduplication — with dedupeAcrossRuns on, a scheduled monitor only returns new prospects. If a run finds matches but all were seen before, it records a notice row (it does not fail).
• Proxy — Residential is recommended; results from datacenter addresses can be incomplete.
• Tune your phrases — add phrases specific to your product ("switching from Salesforce", "Notion but for…") for sharper, higher-converting leads.

Other Reddit Actors

Actor	Best for
Reddit Search Scraper	Plain keyword search across Reddit or one subreddit.
Reddit Buying-Intent Lead Monitor	(this actor) Scored buying-intent leads from posts + comments, de-duplicated for scheduled monitoring.