Reddit Scraper

Introduction to Reddit Data Extraction

Reddit is a goldmine of organic discussions, niche communities, and unfiltered sentiment. A Reddit scraper lets you access structured data from public threads, posts, subreddits, and user comments — ideal for market research, social listening, content analysis, and academic research.
Whether you're tracking discussions about your brand, gathering public sentiment on a topic, or exploring community trends, scraping Reddit gives you access to user-generated content at scale. With the right tool, you can extract Reddit data without writing code and turn conversations into actionable insights.

What Can You Scrape from Reddit?

You can extract structured data from:

Subreddits: Name, title, description, subscriber count, creation date, and NSFW status.

Posts (submissions): Title, text, URL, author, upvotes, downvotes, awards, comment count, creation date, and media (images, links).

Comments: Comment body, author, timestamp, score, parent ID (for reply threads), and depth level.

Users (limited): Username, account age, karma, and posting history (if public).

Search results: Keyword-based discovery of posts, subreddits, or users, with filtering by time and popularity.

All scraped data comes from publicly accessible Reddit content. Private messages, deleted content, and quarantined subreddits are out of scope.

Common challenges in web scraping

Rate limits and Reddit’s anti-bot systems. Reddit enforces API quotas and monitors for scraping behavior. Unthrottled access may trigger bans.

Pagination and nesting. Reddit comment trees can go deep with multiple levels. Handling threading and pagination accurately is critical.

Deleted or edited content. Content may change quickly. Capturing timestamps and diffs is useful for analysis.

Regional access or restrictions. Some content may be geoblocked or restricted by subreddit rules.

API vs. HTML. Reddit’s API is limited for certain fields, requiring hybrid scraping approaches for full fidelity.

How It Works

1. Select scrape target. Choose subreddit, post URL, search query, or username.
2. Define parameters. Set filters like timeframe (e.g. past week), sort order (hot/new/top), result count, and depth of comment capture.
3. Data retrieval. Scraper fetches API and/or HTML content with pagination and thread expansion.
4. Parsing & formatting. Extracted content is normalized into structured JSON with fields by entity type.
5. Exporting. Results are saved to files (JSON, CSV) or streamed to webhooks/DBs.

Features

Supports subreddit, post, comment, search, and user scraping.

Nested comment tree expansion with depth control.

Advanced filtering: sort by top/hot/new, filter by date range.

Geo-targeting and language headers.

Proxy rotation and smart retries.

Hybrid mode (API + HTML) for full data capture.

Scheduled scraping support and webhook output.

Export formats: JSON, CSV, Excel, or direct webhook delivery.

Optional text analysis: sentiment tagging, keyword extraction, topic labeling.

Is It Legal to Scrape Reddit?

Scraping public Reddit data is generally legal when done ethically and within Reddit's published guidelines. Key considerations:

• Respect Reddit’s API terms and robots.txt. Don’t overwhelm servers.
• Only collect public content. Avoid private messages, gated subs, or deleted threads.
• Don’t store personal data unnecessarily. Avoid harvesting usernames or link them to identity.
• Follow local privacy laws. Compliance with GDPR/CCPA is critical for storing comment content.
• Use for legitimate research or internal analysis. Avoid reselling raw data or spamming.

How to use data scraped from Reddit

• Sentiment monitoring: Track public opinion on products, politics, or crises across threads.
• Market analysis: Discover organic conversations around brands, services, or competitors.
• Community research: Study how ideas spread, moderate, or polarize within Reddit.
• Content strategy: Find trending formats, viral posts, and common audience pain points.
• Language/NLP datasets: Build large corpora of real-world user-generated content.

FAQ

Can I scrape deleted comments or posts?

No — if content is deleted, it is no longer accessible through any scraping method.

Can I scrape private subreddits?

No — access is restricted to content visible without authentication.

Can I get vote counts and timestamps?

Yes — score (upvotes), creation time, and comment count are available where public.

Do I need proxies?

For light usage, not always. For heavy use or scraping across multiple regions, proxies are strongly recommended.

How many posts per minute?

With proper concurrency and proxy rotation, hundreds to thousands of items per minute are possible depending on Reddit's limits and scraper design.