Reddit Scraper - Posts, Comments, Search & Subreddits

Scrape Reddit posts and optional top comments from subreddits and keyword searches using Reddit's official API. Export structured Reddit data for social listening, brand monitoring, market research, community research, sentiment analysis, and AI workflows.

This Actor uses each user's own free Reddit API credentials. That keeps access stable, avoids shared-rate-limit problems, and is more reliable than brittle public-page scraping.

Why use this Reddit Scraper?

• Reliable official API access - uses oauth.reddit.com instead of fragile public pages.
• Subreddit scraping - collect posts from r/technology, r/Entrepreneur, r/MachineLearning, and more.
• Keyword search - monitor brand, product, competitor, and topic mentions across Reddit.
• Top comments - optionally attach top-level comments to each post.
• Clean exports - JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, API, webhooks, Make, Zapier, n8n, and AI pipelines.
• Low-cost HTTP runtime - no browser needed, 512 MB default memory.

Setup: free Reddit API credentials

Reddit requires API authentication for reliable automated access. Setup takes about 2 minutes:

1. Go to reddit.com/prefs/apps.
2. Click create another app...
3. Choose script.
4. Set redirect URI to http://localhost:8080.
5. Copy the short Client ID under the app name.
6. Copy the value labelled secret.
7. Paste them into redditClientId and redditClientSecret.

Credentials are secret input fields and are not written to the dataset.

Quick start

{
  "redditClientId": "YOUR_CLIENT_ID",
  "redditClientSecret": "YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET",
  "subreddits": ["technology", "Entrepreneur", "MachineLearning"],
  "searchQueries": ["AI tools", "best CRM"],
  "sort": "hot",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "includeComments": false
}

With top comments:

{
  "redditClientId": "YOUR_CLIENT_ID",
  "redditClientSecret": "YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET",
  "subreddits": ["SaaS", "Entrepreneur"],
  "searchQueries": ["stripe alternative", "best crm"],
  "sort": "top",
  "time": "month",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "includeComments": true,
  "maxComments": 5
}

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
redditClientId	string	required	Reddit app Client ID
redditClientSecret	string	required	Reddit app secret
subreddits	string[]	sample list	Subreddits without r/
searchQueries	string[]	sample list	Reddit search keywords
sort	string	hot	hot, new, top, or rising
time	string	week	Time window for top sorting
maxItems	integer	50	Max posts per subreddit or query
includeComments	boolean	false	Attach top comments to each post
maxComments	integer	10	Top comments per post
proxyConfiguration	object	optional	Usually not needed for official API

Output

Each dataset row is one Reddit post.

{
  "id": "1abcd23",
  "subreddit": "technology",
  "title": "New AI product launches",
  "author": "example_user",
  "score": 1423,
  "upvoteRatio": 0.97,
  "numComments": 312,
  "createdIso": "2026-08-21T07:33:20+00:00",
  "url": "https://example.com/article",
  "permalink": "https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1abcd23/...",
  "selftext": "",
  "flair": "AI",
  "domain": "example.com",
  "matchedSource": "r/technology",
  "comments": [
    {
      "author": "commenter1",
      "body": "This is useful for research workflows.",
      "score": 88
    }
  ]
}

The comments array appears only when includeComments is enabled.

High-value use cases

• Reddit social listening
• Brand and product mention monitoring
• Competitor research
• Community trend discovery
• Voice-of-customer mining
• Sentiment and NLP datasets
• Lead and pain-point research
• AI/RAG pipelines from Reddit discussions
• Launch monitoring and feedback analysis

Notes

This Actor uses Reddit's official API and only collects public Reddit data. You are responsible for using the data responsibly and following Reddit's terms, Apify's policies, and applicable laws.

Run with the Apify API

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/groupoject~reddit-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "redditClientId":"YOUR_REDDIT_CLIENT_ID",
    "redditClientSecret":"YOUR_REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET",
    "subreddits":["technology","Entrepreneur"],
    "searchQueries":["AI tools"],
    "sort":"new",
    "maxItems":50
  }'

Search and monitoring patterns

• Brand mentions: product names, company names, and common misspellings.
• Competitor research: alternatives, comparisons, switching, pricing, and support terms.
• Voice of customer: recommendation requests, frustrations, workflows, and desired features.
• Community trends: run the same subreddit list by new, hot, or top depending on the goal.

FAQ

Why are Reddit credentials required?

Reddit's official OAuth API provides more stable access than anonymous page scraping. Each user supplies their own free application credentials and receives their own API quota.

Are credentials included in output?

No. Client ID and secret are secret input fields and should never be written to datasets or logs.

Does the Actor scrape private communities?

No. It collects public posts available to the authenticated Reddit application under Reddit's permissions and API rules.

Are comments separate result rows?

Top comments are nested in each post when includeComments is enabled. The dataset remains one row per Reddit post.

Can it perform sentiment analysis?

This raw Reddit scraper returns structured content for downstream analysis. Use the Reddit Lead Finder and Sentiment Monitor when built-in intent labels and scoring are required.