Best Reddit Scrapers (2026): API, PRAW, Apify and Chrome Extensions

The best Reddit scraper depends on who you are: Reddit's official Data API is free up to 100 queries a minute but now needs Reddit's approval before you get access, and commercial use needs a separate agreement; PRAW is the standard free Python library on top of that API; Apify's Reddit Scraper Lite runs in the cloud for about $4 per 1,000 results on Apify's free plan; and for no-code exports of a thread's comments, Chrome extensions such as Adlicio's Reddit Comment Scraper (20 comments per thread free, $9.99 a month for up to 1,000) or InsightSocial (the reply tree with each comment's parent and depth, free up to 500 exported rows a month) work in your own signed-in browser. Whatever the tool, Reddit itself stops a subreddit listing at about 1,000 posts per sort and a search at about 250 results.

Checked November 2026. We make InsightSocial, so we are not neutral. This list starts with Reddit's own routes, says where cloud tools and the official API are the better choice, and quotes other tools' prices and limits from their own pricing pages, Apify listings, documentation and Chrome Web Store listings as we read them in November 2026. We have not benchmarked other vendors' tools.

Quick comparison

What makes Reddit hard to scrape

• Nested replies. A thread is a tree, many levels deep. A flat file is only useful if every row says which comment it answers.
• "Load more comments" and "continue this thread". Reddit sends only part of a big thread at first; each hidden branch needs another request.
• List ceilings. Reddit stops a subreddit listing at about 1,000 posts per sort, a user's comment history at about the newest 1,000, and a search at about 250 results. These are Reddit's own limits, and every tool that reads Reddit's lists runs into them.
• Access rules. Reddit now approves API access case by case (section 1).

How we put this list together

We covered the developer routes (the API, PRAW, the .json trick), the most used Reddit actors on Apify, and the Chrome extensions that show up for "reddit comment scraper chrome extension", reading each one's own documentation or listing in November 2026. We did not run other vendors' tools, so we do not rank them on speed or completeness.

1. Reddit's official Data API

Reddit's Data API Wiki (updated November 2026) says:

• The free rate limit is 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id, averaged over 10 minutes.
• Clients must authenticate with a registered OAuth token, and traffic without OAuth or login credentials is blocked.
• You must delete content you hold once it is deleted on Reddit, and Reddit recommends deleting stored user data within 48 hours.

Reddit's Responsible Builder Policy adds that approval is required before you access any Reddit data through the API. Non-commercial developers are pointed to Reddit's Developer Platform (Devvit) and researchers to the Reddit for Researchers program. Reddit's Data API Terms (revised July 2026) say commercial use, or research beyond the rate limits, needs a separate agreement with Reddit.

Best for: an app or research project that can wait for approval. For a commercial project that needs data today, the API is a process before it is a tool.

2. PRAW (Python Reddit API Wrapper)

PRAW is the standard Python library for the Reddit API: version 8.0.3, released August 2026, BSD licence, Python 3.10 or newer. A read-only script needs a client ID, a client secret and a user agent, which means the API access from section 1 first.

Its comment handling is the reason most tutorials use it. submission.comments.replace_more(limit=None) expands every "load more comments" and "continue this thread" link, and comments.list() flattens the tree. PRAW's docs warn that by default replace_more only replaces 32 of those links and drops the rest, and each replacement is one network request, so a very large thread takes many requests at 100 a minute.

Best for: Python developers who already have approved API credentials. The code is in our guide to exporting Reddit comments to CSV.

3. The .json URL trick

Add .json to the end of any Reddit thread, subreddit or profile URL and Reddit returns the page as data instead of HTML. It costs nothing and needs no code to look at. For a thread, the response holds the post and the first part of the comment tree; replies Reddit did not send come back as placeholders of kind more, which a script has to fetch separately.

Two catches. The file is raw JSON, not a spreadsheet, so you still need a short script to flatten it. And Reddit's API wiki says requests without OAuth or login credentials are blocked, so a script that fetches these URLs on its own, outside your signed-in browser, is likely to be refused. Opening the .json page in a browser where you are signed in to Reddit, then saving it, is the reliable version.

Best for: developers who want to look inside one thread, or save it for a script, without registering anything. A worked example is in how to export Reddit comments.

4. Apify Reddit actors

Reddit Scraper Lite (by trudax) is the most used Reddit actor on Apify: about 52,200 users, about 8,600 of them in the last 30 days, rated 4.35 out of 5 when we checked. It scrapes posts, comments, communities and user profiles without a Reddit login and exports JSON, CSV or Excel. It is priced per result: $0.004 each on Apify's free plan ($4.00 per 1,000), falling to $3.40 per 1,000 on higher plans, plus $0.02 per run start. Apify's free plan includes $5 of usage a month. Its listing notes that Reddit's 1,000-item ceiling applies to subreddit, profile and search lists, while comments inside one post are not capped that way.

Best for: bulk jobs across many subreddits or threads, on a schedule, through an API, without your own Reddit session.

5. Adlicio's Reddit Comment Scraper (redditcommentscraper.com)

Reddit Comment Scraper is a Chrome extension from the makers of Adlicio, and it owns the redditcommentscraper.com domain. Its site says the free plan exports 20 comments per thread, and Pro, $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year, lifts that to up to 1,000 comments per scrape, Reddit only. Its site claims 16,000+ users; its Chrome Web Store listing showed 6,000 users and 4.6 out of 5 from 44 ratings, updated November 6, 2026.

Above Pro sits Adlicio itself (tryadlicio.com): Starter $49 a month for 250 credits, Growth $99 for 600, Scale $199 for 1,200. A Reddit topic run costs 1 credit per 5 threads, and plans include "Reddit Radar" monitoring and a Claude and ChatGPT connector. Adlicio's angle is research for ad creative: it ranks comments into angles, objections and hooks.

Best for: quick CSVs of small threads for free, and marketers who want AI-ranked ad angles from Reddit. See our Adlicio comparison.

6. Other Reddit Chrome extensions

Smaller exporters, per their Chrome Web Store listings in November 2026:

• Reddit Exporter: 817 users, 5 out of 5 from 3 ratings. Exports your saved and upvoted posts, your own posts and comments, full comment trees, subreddit posts and search results to CSV, Markdown or ZIP, through your logged-in session. Offers in-app purchases.
• Reddit Comment Scraper & Comments Exporter: 1,000 users, 5 out of 5 from 12 ratings. Copies a thread's comments to the clipboard or CSV/JSON with permalinks. Offers in-app purchases.
• Reddit Comment Exporter (WallExt): 1,000 users, 3.6 out of 5 from 7 ratings. JSON and CSV, built for the old Reddit layout.

Best for: exporting your own saved posts (Reddit Exporter), or a one-off copy of a thread.

7. InsightSocial

InsightSocial is a Chrome extension that reads Reddit in your own signed-in browser: no developer app, no API key. It has three Reddit sources, all in the same extension:

• Reddit Comment Scraper for one thread. Every comment and reply is its own row with a Comment ID, Parent Comment ID and Depth (0 for a top-level comment), so the tree survives a flat file and can be rebuilt with a lookup in Excel. It follows "continue this thread" chains and, since Reddit began refusing the "load more replies" request on November 4, 2026, re-reads big threads under other sort orders to recover most hidden replies (1,231 of 1,728 comments in our test), saying when some are missing. It flags comments by the original poster and by moderators, and keeps the post's title, text and score with the run. In our tests (October 2026), a thread of 424 comments with eight levels of replies took 42 seconds.
• Reddit Subreddit Scraper for a community: up to 1,000 posts per sort, where Reddit's own list ends. Pick Posts and Comments to get 25, 50 or 100 posts with every comment under each in one file.
• Reddit User Comments Scraper for one profile: its comments newest first, each with the subreddit and the post it sits under, up to the roughly 1,000 Reddit lists. In our tests (October 2026), a profile returned 1,100 comments in 24 seconds.

Runs keep going in a background tab. When Reddit's rate limit is close, a run waits for it to reset instead of pushing through. Export to Excel, CSV, JSON or Google Sheets.

Price: collecting and reading results in the dashboard are free. Exporting uses one row per comment or post: Free includes 500 rows a month, Pro $9.99 a month (or $7.99 billed yearly) includes 10,000, Studio $49 includes 150,000, and one-time packs start at 1,000 rows for $5. Re-exporting a row is free.

Limits: you must be signed in to Reddit in the same browser. One thread, subreddit or profile per run; no list of URLs. It does not recover deleted comments, and a user export covers comments only, not their posts. For developers, our Reddit API returns the same kinds of data as JSON, priced per call in credits.

Best for: researchers and marketers who want threads with the nesting intact, or one user's history, in a spreadsheet without writing code.

Which one should you use?

• You are building an app or a funded research project: apply for the official Data API, and use PRAW if you write Python.
• You want to peek inside one thread as data: the .json URL in your signed-in browser.
• Thousands of posts across many subreddits, on a schedule: Apify's Reddit Scraper Lite.
• AI-ranked ad angles and Reddit monitoring: Adlicio.
• A small thread, once, free: Adlicio's extension covers 20 comments per thread.
• Comment trees or a user's history in Excel or Google Sheets, no code: InsightSocial.

FAQ

What is the best Reddit scraper? For developers with approved access, Reddit's own Data API with PRAW. For bulk cloud jobs, Apify's Reddit Scraper Lite at about $4 per 1,000 results. For no-code comment exports in your browser, a Chrome extension such as InsightSocial, which keeps every reply's parent and depth and is free up to 500 exported rows a month.

Is there a Chrome extension that scrapes Reddit comments? Yes. InsightSocial exports a thread with its nesting to Excel, CSV, JSON or Google Sheets. Adlicio's Reddit Comment Scraper exports 20 comments per thread free and up to 1,000 on its $9.99 Pro plan. Smaller ones include Reddit Exporter and Reddit Comment Exporter.

Can I scrape Reddit without code? Yes. Chrome extensions work in your browser with no API key: open a thread, subreddit or profile, click a button and download the file. Apify's actors also run without code from its web console.

Is the Reddit API still free? Reddit's Data API Wiki lists a free rate limit of 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id. Access now has to be requested and approved under Reddit's Responsible Builder Policy, and commercial use needs a separate agreement with Reddit.

Do I need a Reddit API key to scrape Reddit? Not with a browser extension, which reads Reddit in your own signed-in browser. PRAW and any direct API use need a client ID and secret from Reddit.

Why does my Reddit scraper stop at 1,000 posts? That is Reddit's own ceiling: a subreddit listing ends at about 1,000 posts per sort, and a search at about 250 results. To go further, combine sorts such as New and Top by year, month and week, then remove duplicates by post ID.

Is scraping Reddit legal? It depends on where you are and what you do with the data. Reddit's terms restrict automated access and commercial use of its data without its approval, and privacy laws such as GDPR and CCPA apply to usernames you store. Read Reddit's terms and get legal advice for commercial projects.

Related guides: how to export Reddit comments to CSV, how to scrape Reddit with Python, best ExportComments alternatives, InsightSocial vs Adlicio, and every Reddit scraper.