Is scraping Reddit legal?

SurfSense reads only public Reddit data, the same posts and comments any logged-out visitor can see. It never logs in and cannot access private or deleted content. As always, review Reddit's terms and your own compliance needs before you run at scale.

Does this bypass the official Reddit API?

It is an independent alternative, not a wrapper. You do not register an OAuth app or manage Reddit tokens. You call the SurfSense API with one key, or add the MCP server to your agent, and get structured posts and comments back without the official API's limits.

What are the rate limits?

Each call caps at 100 returned items across all sources, with up to 20 URLs or search queries per request. SurfSense manages the underlying request budget for you, so you scale reads without registering apps or watching an OAuth quota.

How much historical data can I pull?

You can scrape a subreddit, user, or search back through its available public history, then use post and comment date limits to run incremental, delta-only scrapes. That keeps repeat monitoring cheap: pull only what is new since your last run.

SurfSense

Connectors Pricing

SurfSense

Reddit connector

Reddit Scraper API for Brand Monitoring and Market Research

The SurfSense Reddit API extracts posts, comments, subreddits, and user data without the official Reddit API's rate limits or per-call pricing. Give your AI agents a live feed of what your market says about your brand, your competitors, and your category, so you hear it first.

Start for free Read the docs GitHub

agent · surfsense

reddit.scrape({ search_queries: ["competitor"], community: "webscraping",
  sort: "top", time_filter: "week", max_comments: 50 })

Switched off Competitor after the API price hiker/webscraping · 312 upvotes · 0.94 ratiopricing pain
Anyone got a Competitor alternative that does comments?r/webscraping · 148 upvotes · 61 commentsbuying intent
Competitor keeps rate-limiting my agent, helpr/webscraping · 89 upvotes · 44 commentschurn signal

37 posts · 1,204 comments · surfaced in 2.1s

What you can extract from Reddit

Every call returns structured items keyed by type: posts, comments, communities, and users. Point the API at a subreddit, a search query, a post, or a user profile.

Posts

Title, body text, upvotes, upvote ratio, comment count, flair, and permalink.

Comments

Full comment trees with body, vote counts, reply counts, and parent threading.

Communities

Subreddit name, member count, and listing metadata for any /r/ community.

Users

Public profile and authored posts or comments for any /user/ handle.

Media

Image and video URLs, thumbnails, and NSFW flags attached to each post.

Timestamps

Created and scraped times, with date limits for incremental, delta-only scrapes.

What teams do with the Reddit API

Brand and competitor monitoring

Track every mention of your brand, your competitors, and your category across Reddit. Feed the stream to an agent that flags churn signals, pricing complaints, and buying intent the moment they surface.

Voice-of-customer and pain-point mining

Mine real complaints and feature requests to find your next product idea. Reddit is where people say what they actually think, unfiltered by a survey or a support ticket.

Reddit sentiment analysis

Pull comment trees at depth and score them for sentiment, so you can measure how a launch, a price change, or a competitor's move actually landed with your market.

Community research for go-to-market

Map the subreddits, language, and objections of your buyers before you spend on ads. Turn community research into positioning your GTM team can act on.

Call it from your code or your agent

One typed endpoint, one API key. Or add the SurfSense MCP server and let your agent call reddit.scrape as a native tool.

curl -X POST "$SURFSENSE_API_URL/workspaces/$WORKSPACE_ID/scrapers/reddit/scrape" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SURFSENSE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "search_queries": [
      "your brand"
    ],
    "community": "webscraping",
    "sort": "top",
    "time_filter": "week",
    "max_comments": 50
  }'

Reddit API request and response schema

The exact contract behind POST /workspaces/{workspace_id}/scrapers/reddit/scrape. The same fields power the reddit.scrape MCP tool.

Request parameters

Provide at least one source: urls, search_queries, or community. Up to 20 sources per call.

Request parameters
Field	Type	Description
`urls`	`string[]` default `[]`	Reddit URLs to scrape: a post, a subreddit (/r/name), a user (/user/name), or a search URL. Max 20.
`search_queries`	`string[]` default `[]`	Search terms to run on Reddit. Each returns up to max_items results. Scope to one subreddit with community. Max 20.
`community`	`string`	Subreddit name without the r/ prefix, e.g. 'python'. Scopes search_queries to that subreddit; with no search_queries, its listing is scraped.
`sort`	`string` default `"new"`	Result ordering: relevance, hot, top, new, rising, or comments.
`time_filter`	`string`	Time window for top sorts: hour, day, week, month, year, or all.
`include_nsfw`	`boolean` default `true`	Include posts flagged over-18 in the results.
`skip_comments`	`boolean` default `false`	Skip fetching comment trees. Faster when you only need posts or listings.
`max_items`	`integer` default `10`	Max total items to return across all sources. 1 to 100.
`max_posts`	`integer` default `10`	Max posts to pull per subreddit, user, or search target.
`max_comments`	`integer` default `10`	Max comments to pull per post. 0 disables comments.
`post_date_limit`	`string`	ISO date. Only return posts newer than this, for incremental scrapes.
`comment_date_limit`	`string`	ISO date. Only return comments newer than this, for incremental scrapes.

Response fields

The response is { items: [...] } with one flat item per result, keyed by dataType. Fields that do not apply to a given dataType are null. One returned item is one billable unit.

Response fields
Field	Type	Description
`dataType`	`string`	What this item is: post, comment, community, or user.
`id / url / username`	`string`	Identity and provenance: the Reddit ID, permalink, and author username.
`title / body`	`string`	Post title and full text body (or comment text for comments).
`communityName`	`string`	The subreddit the item belongs to, plus numberOfMembers for communities.
`upVotes / upVoteRatio`	`integer / number`	Score and upvote ratio, the engagement signal for ranking what matters.
`numberOfComments`	`integer`	Comment count on a post; numberOfReplies for comments.
`flair / over18 / isVideo`	`string / boolean`	Post flair and content flags.
`thumbnailUrl / imageUrls / videoUrls`	`string / string[]`	Media attached to the post.
`postId / parentId`	`string`	Threading for comments: the parent post and parent comment IDs.
`createdAt / scrapedAt`	`string`	ISO timestamps for when the item was posted and when it was scraped.

A Reddit API alternative built for agents

Reddit's official Data API added rate limits and per-call pricing in 2023. If you are hitting the paywall or the throttle, here is how SurfSense compares.

Feature	Official Reddit API	SurfSense
Rate limits	Per-OAuth-app quotas that throttle bulk and agent use	Managed for you; scale reads without minding the throttle
Pricing	Per-call pricing since the 2023 changes	Pay per item returned, with a free tier to start
Comment depth	Paginated; deep trees are slow and quota-heavy	Full comment trees in one call, up to 100 items
Setup	Register an OAuth app and manage tokens	One API key, or add the MCP server to your agent
Agent-ready	No; you build the harness yourself	MCP server exposes reddit.scrape as a native tool

Reddit API: frequently asked questions

Point your agents at Reddit

The Reddit connector is one of many in the SurfSense competitive intelligence platform. Start free, no credit card required.

Start for free See pricing

SurfSense

Pages

Socials

Legal

SurfSense