How to Scrape Reddit — Best APIs, Tools, and Methods for 2026

Reddit contains some of the most valuable discussion data on the internet — product feedback, sentiment signals, niche expertise, AMAs, and trend detection. But Reddit's API changes in 2023-2024 made data access harder. This guide covers every realistic method for scraping Reddit in 2026, from the official API to search engine workarounds.

Key Takeaways

• Reddit's official API is free for 100 requests/minute with OAuth, but has limited historical data
• Pushshift — the former standard for historical Reddit data — shut down its public API in 2024
• Search engine APIs (Serper, SearchHive) can discover Reddit content through Google's index
• Jina AI Reader extracts Reddit threads as markdown for free (1M tokens/day)
• PRAW remains the best Python library for real-time Reddit data access
• Rate limiting is the primary challenge — Reddit aggressively throttles automated requests

Option 1: Reddit Official API + PRAW

The most reliable method. Reddit's REST API with OAuth2 authentication, wrapped in the PRAW Python library.

Cost: Free. 100 requests/minute rate limit.

import praw

reddit = praw.Reddit(
    client_id="your-client-id",
    client_secret="your-client-secret",
    user_agent="data-collector/1.0"
)

subreddit = reddit.subreddit("MachineLearning")
for post in subreddit.hot(limit=20):
    print(f"{post.title} (score: {post.score}, comments: {post.num_comments})")
    print(post.selftext[:200])
    print()

Pros: Free, reliable, official support, full comment trees, real-time data. Cons: 100 req/min limit, limited historical access (~1K posts per subreddit), no deleted content.

Option 2: Search Engine Discovery + Page Scraping

Use a search API to find Reddit threads, then scrape the full content. This bypasses Reddit's rate limits and gives access to Google's more comprehensive index.

Using Serper.dev

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://google.serper.dev/search",
    headers={"X-API-KEY": "your-key"},
    params={"q": "site:reddit.com best gpu for deep learning 2026", "num": 20}
)
reddit_urls = [r["link"] for r in response.json()["organic"] if "reddit.com" in r["link"]]
for url in reddit_urls:
    print(url)

Cost: $0.50-1.00/1K queries.

Using SearchHive (Search + Scrape Combined)

from searchhive import SwiftSearch, ScrapeForge

search = SwiftSearch(api_key="your-key")
scraper = ScrapeForge(api_key="your-key")

results = search.search(query="site:reddit.com rust vs go for backend", engine="google")
reddit_urls = [r["url"] for r in results["organic"] if "reddit.com" in r["url"]]

for url in reddit_urls[:5]:
    page = scraper.scrape(url=url, format="markdown", js_render=True)
    print(page["markdown"][:500])
    print("---")

Cost: $49/month for 100K credits (shared between search and scrape).

Why this works better than Reddit's API:

• Google indexes more Reddit content than Reddit's own search
• You can use advanced Google search operators (quotes, OR, minus)
• No Reddit rate limit — Google handles the indexing
• Full page content as markdown, not just API fields

Option 3: Jina AI Reader (Free)

Extract any Reddit thread as markdown for free.

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://r.jina.ai/https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/example/",
    headers={"Accept": "text/markdown"}
)
print(response.text[:1000])

Cost: Free (1M tokens/day). Limitations: No batch processing, no crawling, may miss dynamically loaded nested comments.

Option 4: Apify Reddit Scraper

Pre-built actor that handles pagination and rate limiting.

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("your-token")
run = client.actor("apify/reddit-scraper").call(run_input={
    "subreddits": ["Python", "MachineLearning"],
    "maxPosts": 100,
    "proxyConfiguration": {"useApifyProxy": True}
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item.get("title", ""), "-", item.get("score", 0))

Cost: From $49/month (Apify Starter). Pricing varies by compute usage.

Option 5: RapidAPI Reddit Data APIs

Third-party Reddit data APIs available through RapidAPI marketplace.

Cost: Varies by provider. Typically $10-50/month.

Quality varies. Some providers cache stale data, some have uptime issues. Test thoroughly.

Method Comparison

Best Practices

1. Combine methods. Use PRAW for real-time data, search engines for historical discovery.
2. Respect rate limits. Reddit bans aggressive scrapers regardless of method.
3. Deduplicate by URL. The same thread appears across Google, Bing, and Brave results.
4. Cache everything immediately. Reddit content changes and gets deleted permanently.
5. Use the official API when possible. Only scrape via search engines when the API can't meet your needs.
6. Monitor r/redditdev for API changes. Reddit has revised terms multiple times since 2023.

Get Started

For Reddit data collection, start with PRAW and Reddit's free API. When you need more than 100 req/min or deeper historical access, use SearchHive to search Google for Reddit content and scrape the full pages. The $49/month Builder plan gives 100K credits for the combined search-and-scrape workflow — no Reddit rate limits, no OAuth setup, markdown output ready for LLM processing.

Start free with 500 credits at searchhive.dev — no credit card required. See the docs for Python examples.