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Best Reddit Scrapers 2026 [No-Code + API Edition]

I tested 7 Reddit scrapers on 4 jobs. lobstr.io wins: cheapest full threads at scale ($0.50/1K results), fastest runs, and deep threads. SociaVault 2nd.

By Nathan Eshetu

Writer @ lobstr.io

Updated 27 Sept 2026
29 min read

Contents
  1. ⚑ 30-Second Summary
  2. Just tell me which one
  3. Is Reddit scraping legal?
  4. How I tested the Reddit scrapers
  5. The best Reddit scrapers
  6. The scrapers that didn't make the list
  7. FAQ
  8. Conclusion

lobstr.io is the best Reddit scraper I tested. It's the cheapest at scale ($0.50 per 1,000 results), collected 784 comments 5 levels deep, and led every post-collection test on speed. SociaVault ranks 2nd: cheapest for bulk posts and the only other tool that keeps deleted comments, but it's API-only and slower.

⚑ 30-Second Summary

  • I tested seven Reddit scrapers across four jobs, including Reddit-wide search, subreddit search, subreddit collection, and full threads.
  • lobstr.io ranks 1st (8.98/10). It had the lowest scale price for full threads, fastest runs, and deep threads, but search misses post body and ads bill as rows.
  • SociaVault ranks 2nd (7.60/10). It's cheapest for bulk posts and keeps deleted comments, but it's API-only and threads cost more.
  • Bright Data ranks 3rd (6.51/10). It adds useful post context like subreddit size and related posts, but threads stop at two levels and recency is weak.
  • Apify ranks 4th (6.00/10). It found the most posts across the most subreddits, but search is slow, threads stop at two levels, and pricing is the highest of the four.
  • Outscraper, ScraperAPI, and SerpApi stay unranked because they only handled narrower parts of the benchmark.

Getting Reddit data used to be pretty simple.

You had the official API. Or, for something quick, you could add .json to a Reddit URL and get structured data back.

Yeah... not anymore.

Reddit user asking for a no-BS anonymous scraping solution after getting rejected by the official API and rate-limited on the .json endpoint

The official API is harder to rely on for scraping, and the old .json route isn't the easy fallback it used to be.

If you want the full breakdown of the API, .json, and other ways to get Reddit data:

πŸ‘‰ How to Scrape Reddit: Posts, Comments & Subreddits (No Login)

So now you're probably looking at Reddit scrapers.

The question is which ones actually work.

I tested seven Reddit scrapers across four jobs: full threads, Reddit-wide search, subreddit search, and subreddit posts.

Four were good enough to rank.

Here's what happened.


What matters lobstr.io SociaVault Bright Data Apify
User rating 5.0/5 (33 Capterra) 5.0/5 (1 G2) 4.7/5 (68 Capterra) 4.6/5 (39 Apify Store)
Full thread (comments collected) 784 live 784 live + 6 deleted 397 200
Full thread (reply depth) 5 levels 5 levels 2 levels 2 levels
Reddit-wide search (posts found) 221 232 232 325
Full-thread cost (entry, per 1,000) $2.00 $1.80 $1.50 $3.80 + run fee
Full-thread cost (at scale, per 1,000) $0.50 $0.75 $1.30 $3.40 + run fee
Access No-code + API + MCP API + MCP No-code + API + MCP No-code + API + MCP
Exports CSV, Excel, JSON, JSONL JSON only JSON, NDJSON, CSV, XLSX, Parquet CSV, Excel, JSON, JSONL, XML
Built-in scheduling βœ… ❌ ❌ βœ…
Full thread (1,183-comment post, comments/min) 308 93 11 389*
Reddit-wide search ("Elon Musk", posts/min) 308 50 22 15
r/politics keyword search ("Elon Musk", posts/min) 369 219 33 11
Latest r/politics posts (up to 1,000 posts, posts/min) 638 431 13 14
Projected subreddit volume/month 27.6M results 18.6M posts 578K posts 577K posts
Support Live chat + email Email Email + ticket Apify Issues
Overall score 8.98/10 7.60/10 6.51/10 6.00/10

Note: Apify returned 200 comments where lobstr.io returned 784 and SociaVault 790, so its thread rate isn't comparable to theirs.


Just tell me which one

If you want... Go with Why
Best overall lobstr.io Deepest threads, fastest collection, cheapest at scale
Fastest collection lobstr.io Led all 3 post tests at 308–638 posts/min
Largest subreddit collection lobstr.io Returned 943 organic posts, vs 834 for SociaVault and ~50 for the others
Cheapest full threads at scale lobstr.io $0.50 per 1,000 results, vs $0.75 SociaVault, $1.30 Bright Data, $3.40+ Apify
Best thread structure SociaVault 5 levels deep, with deleted branches preserved
Cheapest bulk posts SociaVault As low as $0.10/1,000 posts in testing
Best post context Bright Data Subreddit size + related posts were consistently populated
Broadest Reddit discovery Apify Found 325 posts across 175 subreddits
Strongest support lobstr.io Live chat + email, 5.0/5 Capterra support rating

⚠️ Disclaimer

Not legal advice. Laws vary by country and change over time. For your situation, check with a qualified lawyer.

Yes, under the right conditions.

Reddit's User Agreement says you can't scrape the platform without permission.

Reddit's User Agreement, which prohibits scraping without written consent

But Reddit's rules and the law aren't the same thing. In the U.S., the Ninth Circuit has held that scraping publicly accessible data does not necessarily violate the CFAA.

Ninth Circuit court ruling on web scraping and the CFAA

That doesn't make every scraping use case legal.

Republishing copyrighted posts at scale or profiling identifiable users can still create copyright and privacy risks.

How to stay on the right side:

  • Collect data internally, for research, analysis, or model training
  • Don't republish Reddit content on a public-facing surface
  • Don't combine it with PII for profiling without a legal basis
  • Respect rate limits and don't hammer the platform

For a deeper breakdown, see the legal series.

πŸ‘‰ Is data scraping illegal?


How I tested the Reddit scrapers

I tested each scraper across four Reddit workloads:

  • Reddit-wide search: Elon Musk, requesting up to 1,000 results with sort=new where supported, comparing relevance, freshness, and ordering.
  • Scoped search: the same Elon Musk search within r/politics, focused on scoped retrieval and newest-first ordering.
  • Subreddit collection: up to 1,000 new r/politics posts, testing duplicates, errors, and larger-job handling.
  • Full conversation: the same r/politics post with 1,183 Reddit-reported comments, comparing comment retrieval, reply structure, and data quality.
The r/politics test post with 1,183 Reddit-reported comments, used as the full-thread benchmark

This comparison covers posts, search, subreddits, and threads. For Reddit topics:

πŸ‘‰ Upvote the Reddit Topics Scraper idea

What I compared

I scored the tools across six criteria:

  • Data: retrieval, reply structure, useful fields, search quality, and data-quality issues.
  • Cost: published entry and scale pricing, normalized where possible to cost per 1,000 results.
  • Usability: setup, controls, output, and workflow options.
  • Speed: measured benchmark runtimes, with like-for-like results compared where possible.
  • Scalability: projected monthly throughput, parallel concurrency.
  • Support: available support channels plus evidence of response or issue resolution.

How I chose the tools

I built the longlist from Google, Reddit, developer discussions, review sites, and AI recommendations.

I then kept tools with a dedicated Reddit workflow capable of handling the benchmark jobs.

I excluded abandoned or poorly maintained products, general-purpose scrapers where a dedicated Reddit tool was available, and search-only tools that couldn't handle full thread collection.

How the scores landed

Criterion (weight) lobstr.io SociaVault Bright Data Apify
Data (2.2) 9.0 8.8 7.5 6.5
Cost (2.2) 8.5 9.0 7.0 4.5
Usability (1.8) 9.0 5.5 8.0 9.5
Speed (1.8) 9.5 8.0 3.5 4.0
Scalability (1.0) 9.0 7.5 6.0 6.0
Support (1.0) 9.0 5.0 6.5 5.5
Weighted overall /10 8.98 7.60 6.51 6.00
Score summary: data, cost, usability, speed, scalability and support across the four ranked Reddit scrapers, with weighted overalls

Each criterion is scored from 0 to 10 and weighted by its importance to the buying decision:

Data 2.2 Β· Cost 2.2 Β· Usability 1.8 Β· Speed 1.8 Β· Scalability 1.0 Β· Support 1.0

Overall = Ξ£(criterion score Γ— weight) Γ· 10

The overall score doesn't mean one tool wins every category. SociaVault scored highest on cost, while Apify scored highest on usability.


The best Reddit scrapers

What matters lobstr.io SociaVault Bright Data Apify
User rating 5.0/5 (33 Capterra) 5.0/5 (1 G2) 4.7/5 (68 Capterra) 4.6/5 (39 Apify Store)
Full thread (comments collected) 784 live 784 live + 6 deleted 397 200
Full thread (reply depth) 5 levels 5 levels 2 levels 2 levels
Reddit-wide search (posts found) 221 232 232 325
Full-thread cost (entry, per 1,000) $2.00 $1.80 $1.50 $3.80 + run fee
Full-thread cost (at scale, per 1,000) $0.50 $0.75 $1.30 $3.40 + run fee
Access No-code + API + MCP API + MCP No-code + API + MCP No-code + API + MCP
Exports CSV, Excel, JSON, JSONL JSON only JSON, NDJSON, CSV, XLSX, Parquet CSV, Excel, JSON, JSONL, XML
Built-in scheduling βœ… ❌ ❌ βœ…
Full thread (1,183-comment post, comments/min) 308 93 11 389*
Reddit-wide search ("Elon Musk", posts/min) 308 50 22 15
r/politics keyword search ("Elon Musk", posts/min) 369 219 33 11
Latest r/politics posts (up to 1,000 posts, posts/min) 638 431 13 14
Projected subreddit volume/month 27.6M results 18.6M posts 578K posts 577K posts
Support Live chat + email Email Email + ticket Apify Issues
Overall score 8.98/10 7.60/10 6.51/10 6.00/10

Note: Apify returned 200 comments where lobstr.io returned 784 and SociaVault 790, so its thread rate isn't comparable to theirs.


1. lobstr.io β€” Reddit Scraper

  • User rating: 5.0/5 from 33 reviews on Capterra, as of September 19, 2026
  • My rating: 8.98/10
  • Type: No-code + API + MCP
  • Pricing: Starts at $2.00, scales to $0.50 per 1,000 results
  • Strongest at: deep Reddit conversations, the lowest full-thread cost at scale, and consistently fast runs.
Pillar Score /10
Data 9.0
Cost 8.5
Usability 9.0
Speed 9.5
Scalability 9.0
Support 9.0
Overall 8.98

lobstr.io is a French web scraping platform with 70+ ready-made scrapers. Its Reddit scraper is the only one here you can drive from a no-code app, a REST API, a CLI, and an MCP server.

lobstr.io Reddit scraper β€” no-code interface with API access for structured Reddit data collection

Try the Reddit Scraper

Pros Cons
784 live comments across 5 levels Missed some deleted comments
Cheapest full threads at scale, $0.50/1,000 results No post body in either search
Fastest on all three post-collection tests Includes ads
Collected 943 subreddit posts in one run, the most here

Data

lobstr.io returned 38 populated post fields and 12 comment fields in the thread test.

Data What you get
Post ID, URL, shortlink, title, body, post type
Author Name, ID, premium flag
Comments ID, body, score, author, timestamp
Reply structure Parent ID, depth, post ID
Engagement Score, comment count, upvote ratio, awards, crossposts
Subreddit Name, ID, subscriber count, flair
Media Media URL, thumbnail, video and gallery flags
Status Promoted, locked, archived, stickied, NSFW, spoiler, edited
Time Created at
Derived Score/hour, age, comment-to-score ratio, high-engagement flag

Full thread

On the 1,183-comment thread it returned 784 live comments through five reply levels, with a parent ID on every one. You can see who replied to whom, so a long argument stays readable instead of arriving as a flat list.

Honestly, it isn't complete. Five deleted comments that had replies were dropped, leaving 7 replies pointing at a parent that isn't in the file.

Reddit-wide search

Every one of the 221 posts came from the last 24 hours, the newest 6 minutes old. There's no older tail to filter out, which is what you want for monitoring.

The gap is body text. No post body came back on any of the 221. You get titles and metrics, not what the post actually said.

Keyword search within r/politics

252 posts, 100% in newest-first order, zero duplicates. Reliable ordering means you can stop at the first post you've already seen instead of re-reading the set.

Latest posts from r/politics

943 organic posts in one run, alongside 56 promoted posts and a metadata row. Ads are labelled IS PROMOTED so they filter out in one step.

Overall, lobstr.io is strongest on deep thread collection and recent, correctly ordered search. Its main data gap is missing post body text in search results.

Cost

lobstr.io bills 1 credit per returned result, and a result is one row: one post, or one comment. Posts and comments cost exactly the same, so the price is just your credit rate:

  • Free: 100 results/month
  • Starting: $2.00 per 1,000 results
  • At scale: $0.50 per 1,000 results
lobstr.io pricing tiers for the Reddit Scraper

Usability

The interface is simple. It accepts post, subreddit, and search URLs individually or in bulk.

If you need the whole thing from start to finish, here's the full guide:

πŸ‘‰ How to Scrape Reddit: Posts, Comments & Subreddits (No Login)

Controls include sorting, time range, content filters, result limits, comment depth, and concurrency Slots.

Results export as CSV, Excel, JSON, or JSONL. Delivery supports Google Sheets, Amazon S3, SFTP, email, and webhooks.

Runs can also be scheduled with completion alerts.

It also supports integrations with tools like Make and n8n.

lobstr.io integration options

lobstr.io ships an MCP server, so you can run the Reddit scraper straight from an AI client. Ask Claude or ChatGPT to pull a thread or a subreddit, and it launches the scraper and hands the data back.

Add it to Claude in one line:

claude mcp add --transport http lobstr https://mcp.lobstr.io/mcp
Running the lobstr.io Reddit scraper from Claude through the MCP server

Prefer the terminal? There's a CLI too:

pip install lobstrio
lobstr go reddit-scraper "<your Reddit URL>" -o reddit.csv

And a well-documented REST API for building it into your own stack.

So you can start in the dashboard and move to an AI tool, the CLI, or the API later without switching platforms.

Speed

lobstr.io returned 785 rows from the full-thread test in 2:33, or 308 rows/min.

lobstr.io run time for the 1,183-comment thread test

It was faster on the other three workloads:

  • Reddit-wide search: 221 posts in 0:43, or 308 posts/min
  • r/politics keyword search: 252 posts in 0:41, or 369 posts/min
  • Latest r/politics posts: 1,000 rows in 1:34, or 638 rows/min
lobstr.io run times across the four Reddit tests

Across all four tests, lobstr.io processed 308–638 rows/min, without a major slowdown on the larger collection job.

Scalability

lobstr.io scales through concurrency Slots. You can add up to 20 Slots per scraper to run jobs in parallel, which raises real throughput.

At a single Slot, its measured rate projects to about 27.6M results a month. That's a projection at one Slot, not a tested monthly volume.

Customer support

lobstr.io offers live chat and email support. Capterra rates its Customer Service 5.0/5 from 33 reviews.

Capterra reviews highlighting lobstr.io customer support

Its published incident history showed 100% of recent incidents resolved, with a 295-minute median resolution time.

lobstr.io Reddit scraper incident history showing resolved incidents and median resolution time

That's resolution time, not first-response time.

This was the strongest support evidence among the tools tested.

Best for: scraping deep Reddit threads and lots of posts quickly, especially if you don't want to write code. Just know that search results don't include the post body.

2. SociaVault

  • User rating: 5.0/5 from 1 review on G2, as of September 10, 2026
  • My rating: 7.60/10
  • Type: API + MCP
  • Pricing: Starts at $0.23–$1.80, scales to $0.10–$0.75 per 1,000 results (posts cheapest, full threads priciest)
  • Strongest at: preserving complete Reddit conversations and low-cost bulk post collection.
Pillar Score /10
Data 8.8
Cost 9.0
Usability 5.5
Speed 8.0
Scalability 7.5
Support 5.0
Overall 7.60

SociaVault is a dedicated social media data API that returns structured Reddit data in real time via simple REST endpoints.

SociaVault Reddit scraper β€” structured post and comment data returned via REST API
Pros Cons
784 live comments across 5 levels, with deleted branches preserved No no-code interface, so you need the API or MCP
Very cheap for bulk posts, down to $0.10/1,000 in testing JSON only, with no built-in scheduling or delivery
100% newest-first in r/politics keyword search Reddit-wide search returned duplicates and inconsistent body text
Collected 834 clean subreddit posts in 1:56

Data

SociaVault returned 22 populated post fields and 16 comment fields in the thread test.

Data What you get
Post ID, URL, permalink, title, body
Author Name, author ID
Comments ID, body, HTML body, author, score, vote fields, collapsed flag
Reply structure Parent ID, nested replies
Engagement Score, comment count, upvote ratio, awards
Subreddit Name, ID, flair
Status Archived, locked, NSFW, spoiler, video
Time Timestamp

Full thread

On the 1,183-comment thread, SociaVault returned 784 live comments plus 6 deleted comments across five reply levels. Every reply still connected to its parent, so you can follow the conversation even when someone deleted a comment.

Reddit-wide search

SociaVault returned 232 recent posts, 94% from the last day, and it brought back the post body too.

The trade-off is cleanup: in my test, more than half (129 posts) arrived with no body, and 17 rows were duplicates.

SociaVault Reddit-wide search output, showing duplicate rows and partial post-body coverage

Keyword search within r/politics

SociaVault returned 252 posts in 100% newest-first order. That's useful if you're tracking new posts and want to work through them in order.

The main gap was author data. 16 posts had no author, so searches based on who posted something won't always be complete.

Latest posts from r/politics

SociaVault returned 834 posts with no duplicates. The results were clean, but it stopped at 834 even though I asked for 1,000, so you may not always get as many posts as you request.

Overall, SociaVault is strongest at keeping long Reddit conversations intact and returning clean, correctly ordered search results. The main drawbacks are duplicates in Reddit-wide search and not always returning as many subreddit posts as you ask for.

Cost

SociaVault uses a one-time credit model, with no monthly subscription. Credits don't expire.

SociaVault pricing β€” one-time credit packs, no monthly subscription
  • Starts at: $29 / 6,000 credits ($0.0048/credit)
  • Scales at: $399 / 200,000 credits ($0.0020/credit)

SociaVault charges 1 credit per request, not per post or comment returned.

That means the real cost depends on how many posts or comments you get back from each request.

In my tests:

Test Requests Records returned Starting / 1,000 At scale / 1,000
Full thread 297 790 $1.80 $0.75
Reddit-wide search 36 232 $0.74 $0.31
Keyword search within r/politics 36 252 $0.69 $0.29
Latest posts from r/politics 40 834 $0.23 $0.10

SociaVault was cheapest for collecting subreddit posts, at $0.10 per 1,000 posts at scale in my test. Full threads cost more, at $0.75 per 1,000 comments.

So there isn't one fixed cost per 1,000 results. SociaVault gets cheaper when each request gives you more data, which is why it worked out much cheaper for bulk posts than for full threads.

Usability

SociaVault is easy to get started with if you're comfortable with APIs.

There's no no-code interface.

You work through the API or its MCP server, and the output is JSON only.

If you want CSV or Excel exports, scheduling, or automatic delivery, you'll need to handle those separately.

Speed

SociaVault returned 790 comments from the full-thread test in 8:32, or 93 comments/min.

It was faster on the other three workloads:

  • Reddit-wide search: 232 unique posts in 4:37, or 50 posts/min
  • Keyword search within r/politics: 252 posts in 1:09, or 219 posts/min
  • Latest posts from r/politics: 834 posts in 1:56, or 431 posts/min

SociaVault was much faster at collecting posts than full threads. The thread took more than eight minutes, while its two subreddit tests finished in under two minutes.

Scalability

SociaVault returned 834 posts in 1:56, or 431 posts/min.

At that rate, continuous collection projects to roughly 18.6M posts a month. That's a projection, not a tested monthly volume.

SociaVault has no concurrency control.

Customer support

SociaVault provides email support, with no live chat or ticket dashboard.

SociaVault support is a single email link, with no chat or ticket dashboard

There is no public response-time or resolution data.

Best for: getting deep Reddit threads or lots of posts cheaply if you're comfortable using an API. There's no no-code interface, and you only get JSON.

3. Bright Data β€” Reddit Scraper API

  • User rating: 4.7/5 from 68 reviews on Capterra, as of September 10, 2026
  • My rating: 6.51/10
  • Type: No-code + API + MCP
  • Pricing: Starts at $1.50, scales to $1.30 per 1,000 results
  • Strongest at: post records with subreddit size and related posts already included
Pillar Score /10
Data 7.5
Cost 7.0
Usability 8.0
Speed 3.5
Scalability 6.0
Support 6.5
Overall 6.51

Bright Data is an enterprise data collection platform with a dedicated Reddit Dataset API that delivers structured post and comment data at scale.

Bright Data Reddit Dataset API β€” enterprise-grade post and comment collection at scale
Pros Cons
Subreddit size on every post; related posts on 94–97% Threads reached only 2 levels
Full 252-post search, no duplicates Slowest on the full-thread test
Weak recency and newest-first ordering
Only 50 of 1,000 requested posts returned

Data

Bright Data returned 26 populated fields in Reddit-wide search and 24 in the r/politics search.

Data What you get
Post ID, URL, title, body, embedded links
Author Username and profile details
Comments ID, text, author, upvotes, reply count
Reply structure Nested replies and relationship fields
Engagement Upvotes, comment count
Community Name, member count, description
Related posts Related-post suggestions
Media Photos, videos, links
Status Pinned, locked, moderator and other status flags
Time Post and comment timestamps

Bright Data's strength is the extra context around each post. In Reddit-wide search, it returned subreddit size on all 233 posts, related posts on 219, photos on 106, and videos on 25.

That extra data isn't consistent across every search, though.

Full thread

Bright Data returned 397 comments across two reply levels. You get top-level comments and direct replies, but deeper conversations are missing.

Posts and comments also come separately, so you'll need to combine them yourself if you want the full thread with its post.

Reddit-wide search

Bright Data returned 233 unique posts, but only 3 were from the last 24 hours. There's no newest-first option here, so it's much better at giving you richer posts than recent posts.

Keyword search within r/politics

It returned 252 posts, but the newest post appeared 6th, and only just over half (51%) were correctly ordered newest-first.

The richer data also dropped off here: only 2 posts had body text, with no photos or videos returned.

Latest posts from r/politics

Bright Data returned just 50 posts when I asked for up to 1,000, with no option to increase that limit in this test.

Overall, Bright Data is strongest when you want more context around individual posts. The trade-off is shallower threads, weaker recency, and smaller subreddit collections.

Cost

Bright Data charges per returned record (one result), so the cost is easier to predict than request-based pricing.

Bright Data pricing β€” pay-as-you-go and monthly subscription plans
  • Starting (pay as you go): $1.50 per 1,000 results
  • At scale: $1.30 per 1,000 results
  • Free tier: None

Bright Data doesn't bill every comment as a separate record. In the full-thread test it returned 397 comment objects but billed 291 records. You pay for billed output, not every backend request.

Usability

Bright Data uses separate scrapers for posts, comments, profiles, search, and subreddit discovery.

Bright Data's separate Reddit scrapers for posts, comments, profiles, keyword search, subreddit discovery and author discovery

Inputs include URLs, keywords, subreddits, authors, profiles, and bulk CSV uploads.

Comment controls include time range, replies, limits, and sort order.

Bright Data comment controls: time range, replies, comment limit and sort order

Results export as JSON, NDJSON, CSV, XLSX, or Parquet. Delivery includes S3, Google Cloud, Azure, Snowflake, SFTP, email, webhooks, and Pub/Sub.

The main friction is that posts and comments require separate collections and downstream joins.

Speed

Bright Data returned 397 comments from the full-thread test in 34:40, or about 11 comments/min.

Its post workloads were faster:

  • Reddit-wide search: 232 unique posts in 10:23, or 22 posts/min
  • Keyword search within r/politics: 252 posts in 7:43, or 33 posts/min
  • Latest posts from r/politics: 50 posts in 3:44, or 13 posts/min
Bright Data benchmark collection times across the four Reddit tests

Bright Data was slowest on the full-thread test, taking more than half an hour.

Scalability

Bright Data returned 50 posts in 3:44, or about 13 posts/min.

At that rate, continuous collection projects to roughly 578,000 posts a month. That's a projection, not a tested monthly volume.

It has no concurrency control, and it caps each input at up to 4,000 posts or 500 comments, plus replies.

Bright Data per-input limits: up to 4,000 posts and 500 comments per request

Customer support

Bright Data provides email and support tickets.

Bright Data support options: direct email or a support request form

There was no comparable public response-time or resolution data in this test.

Best for: getting posts with subreddit size and related posts already included. It's less useful for deep threads or tracking the newest posts.

4. Apify β€” trudax/reddit-scraper-lite

  • User rating: 4.6/5 from 39 reviews on the Apify Store, as of September 10, 2026.
  • My rating: 6.00/10
  • Type: No-code + API + MCP
  • Pricing: Starts at $3.80, scales to $3.40 per 1,000 results, plus a fee on each run start
  • Strongest at: finding posts across a broad range of subreddits
Pillar Score /10
Data 6.5
Cost 4.5
Usability 9.5
Speed 4.0
Scalability 6.0
Support 5.5
Overall 6.00

Apify is a cloud-based scraping platform with a large marketplace of community-built actors, including several Reddit scrapers.

Apify home page β€” cloud scraping platform with a marketplace of community-built actors
Pros Cons
Broad Reddit-wide discovery Threads limited to 2 levels deep
Lots of controls and automation options Slow search performance
Most expensive ranked scraper
Slow support

Data

Apify returned 10 populated post fields consistently across the four tests.

Data What you get
Post ID, URL, title, body
Author Username, comment author flair
Comments ID, body, HTML body, author, timestamp
Reply structure Parent ID, depth, reply count
Engagement Upvotes, upvote ratio, comment count
Community Name, description, member and activity data
Media Image URLs, outbound link, content type
Time Created at

Full thread

Apify returned 200 comments across two reply levels from the 1,183-comment thread.

So you get the main comments and some replies, but not the deeper conversation underneath them.

Reddit-wide search

This is where it did best: 325 posts across 175 subreddits, more than anything else I tested.

The catch is cleanup: only 77% were from the last day, and 197 of 325 bodies held feed boilerplate, not text.

Apify Reddit-wide search output, showing populated body fields that hold only feed boilerplate instead of post text

Keyword search within r/politics

Apify returned 239 posts, just short of the 252 found by lobstr.io and SociaVault.

Ordering was strong: 96% were correctly sorted newest-first.

Latest posts from r/politics

This was much more limited. Apify returned only 53 posts.

Overall, Apify makes the most sense when you want to find posts across lots of subreddits. It's less useful when you need deep conversations, complete post text, or large collections from one subreddit.

Cost

Apify runs on a monthly subscription.

Apify pricing β€” per stored result plus a fixed fee on each actor start
  • Free plan: $5 of monthly platform usage
  • Starts at: $3.80 per 1,000 results
  • Scale: $3.40 per 1,000 results

There's also a run-start fee based on memory, so the final cost can be higher than the per-result price alone.

This was the most expensive scraper in the ranked group.

Usability

Apify supports Reddit URLs, bulk URLs, keyword search, and subreddit-scoped search.

Apify start URL input: adding Reddit URLs individually, in bulk, or from a text file

Its controls are the most extensive here. They cover extraction mode, scope, sorting, dates, NSFW content, and result limits.

Results export as CSV, Excel, JSON, JSONL, and other dataset formats.

Apify also supports APIs, webhooks, Make, Zapier, n8n, scheduling, and run monitoring.

Nothing else here gives you this much control, and nothing else asks for this much setup first.

Speed

Apify returned 200 comments from the full-thread test in 31 seconds, or about 389 comments/min.

Its post workloads were much slower:

  • Reddit-wide search: 325 posts in 21:23, or 15 posts/min
  • Keyword search within r/politics: 239 posts in 20:56, or 11 posts/min
  • Latest posts from r/politics: 53 posts in 3:57, or 14 posts/min
Apify benchmark run times across the four Reddit tests

Apify's 31-second thread run was fast, but shallow: it stopped at 200 comments across two levels. For finding posts, it was much slower, with both search tests taking around 21 minutes.

Scalability

Apify returned 53 posts in 3:57, or about 14 posts/min.

At that rate, continuous collection projects to roughly 577,000 posts a month. That's a projection, not a tested monthly volume.

Apify has no concurrency control. Instead you scale with memory. I tested at 2 GB; the Actor allows up to 4 GB, which could raise throughput.

Customer support

Support for this actor primarily runs through Apify Issues.

At the time of checking, 92 of 94 issues were closed. The listed response time was 3.5 days.

One open issue had waited four days without a reply.

Issues do get closed. Just not quickly, which matters when a scraper breaks mid-project.

Best for: finding posts across lots of subreddits and having plenty of control over the scrape. Search is slow and expensive, and threads only go two levels deep.

The scrapers that didn't make the list

These tools can still handle parts of a Reddit scraping workflow. I left them out because each missed something important.

Outscraper

Outscraper is a cloud-based data extraction platform that allows users to scrape public web data, including Reddit.

Outscraper Reddit scraper overview

It offers two separate Reddit tools: a Reddit Comments Scraper and a Reddit Search Scraper.

Outscraper Reddit Comments Scraper and Reddit Search Scraper tools

Why it didn't make the list

The comment output is flat. There is no parent ID or depth, so you cannot reconstruct who replied to whom.

It also returned zero posts in my search and listing tests.

Worth knowing

Its successful test returned 470 unique comments with all nine fields populated. If you only need comment text, author link, and score, and flat output is fine, it can do that job.


ScraperAPI

ScraperAPI is a general-purpose proxy tool, not a Reddit scraper. I don't recommend it for Reddit at any scale.

ScraperAPI, a general-purpose proxy tool rather than a dedicated Reddit scraper

Why it didn't make the list

The main problem is comments. It does not return parent IDs or comment depth, so the original conversation tree cannot be reconstructed.

That is too large a limitation for a Reddit scraper recommendation where comment threads matter.

Worth knowing

For simpler post scraping or flat comment collection, it is still useful. It has a straightforward API and can return basic Reddit fields without much setup.


SerpApi

SerpApi is a search engine results API that surfaces Reddit posts via Google's index. It searches Google, not Reddit directly.

SerpApi, a search engine results API that surfaces Reddit posts via Google's index

Why it didn't make the list

SerpApi is mainly a Reddit discovery tool.

It can find Reddit posts by keyword, but it does not scrape full comment threads, subreddit feeds, user profiles, or post body text.

That scope is too limited for this comparison.

Worth knowing

For finding Reddit posts, SerpApi is still useful. It supports Google-based discovery as well as a dedicated engine=reddit endpoint.

So if you only need to find relevant Reddit posts, rather than scrape complete Reddit data, it is worth considering.


FAQ

Which Reddit scraper is best for comments and replies?

lobstr.io for speed, SociaVault for thread structure.

Both returned 784 live comments across five levels. SociaVault also preserved six deleted placeholders, while lobstr.io finished much faster at 2 min 33 sec vs 8 min 32 sec.

Which Reddit scraper handles larger subreddit collections best?

lobstr.io went furthest in our test.

It returned 943 organic posts in one run, against 834 for SociaVault and roughly 50 for Bright Data and Apify.

Which Reddit scraper has the most predictable pricing?

lobstr.io.

It charges 1 credit per result (one post or comment), a flat $2.00 per 1,000 results starting and $0.50 at scale.

SociaVault charges per request, so its effective cost varies by workload. Bright Data charges per record, while the tested Apify actor charges per result plus a run fee.

Which Reddit scraper is cheapest?

It depends on the workload.

SociaVault was cheapest for post collection in our tests, at $0.10–$0.31 per 1,000 posts at scale.

For full threads, lobstr.io is $0.50 per 1,000 results at scale, compared with $0.75 per 1,000 comments for SociaVault at scale in our test.


Conclusion

The best Reddit scraper depends on what you're collecting.

  • lobstr.io owns deep, fast Reddit collection. It handled long threads and large subreddit runs without giving up much speed.
  • SociaVault owns cost. It was the cheapest for bulk posts and still preserved deep thread structure, but there's no no-code interface.
  • Bright Data owns post context. Subreddit size and related posts were its real advantage, but threads and recency were weaker.
  • Apify owns broad discovery. It found the most posts across the most subreddits, but search was slow and expensive.

Reddit and these tools will keep changing, so I'll keep this comparison updated.

Found something I should test? Ping me on LinkedIn.

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