Reddit Communities Scraper

Reddit Communities Scraper: find subreddits by topic or name, no account needed

Give it topics or community names. You get one row per subreddit that Reddit's own community search returns for each term: the name, title, public description, link, id, creation date and icon.

What you will not get is a member count or an adult flag. Reddit's public community search does not publish either, so the rows do not carry them.

🔍 What Reddit Communities Scraper does

Each search term goes to Reddit's subreddit search on its own. The communities come back in Reddit's order until the term runs out or your limit is reached, and rank keeps that order on every row.

Two terms often find the same community. It is delivered once, under the first term that found it, so one run never charges you twice for the same subreddit.

Switch on exactNameOnly and it stops being a search and becomes a lookup. Give it the names you already have and you get back the one community per name whose name matches exactly, with its id, title, description and creation date. A name that does not come back on the first page of Reddit's results gets a free NOT_FOUND note instead.

📥 What you give it

{
  "queries": ["home espresso", "r/gardening", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/"],
  "maxCommunitiesPerQuery": 100,
  "exactNameOnly": false,
  "includeNsfw": false
}

queries is the only field you need. Start a run with no terms and you get one free example row instead of a search.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a run on the term gardening, exactly as the actor wrote it:

{
  "name": "GardeningUK",
  "title": "Gardening subreddit for the UK",
  "description": "GardeningUK is a subreddit for the discussion of gardens, gardening, tips, advice and successes with other gardeners here in the UK. Visit the Wiki for tips on where to buy seeds and what information to include when asking for advice.",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/GardeningUK/",
  "communityId": "t5_31s8w",
  "createdAt": "2014-05-15T16:24:31.000Z",
  "iconUrl": "https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/GqWu88Abb2ZB30Ng.jpg",
  "createdBy": "richards182",
  "nsfw": false,
  "query": "gardening",
  "rank": 3,
  "exactMatch": false,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-03T04:39:13.501Z"
}

How full the fields are, counted on 506 communities from three test runs: title and createdAt on every row, description on 96%, createdBy on 76% and iconUrl on 33%. Icons thin out the further down the results you go.

🧾 Reading the output

Three kinds of row can land in the dataset, and only the first kind is charged.

To keep only communities, drop every row that has _sample or _diagnostic. The example row carries a communityId and a rank just like a real one, so filtering on those keeps it.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open Reddit Communities Scraper and click Try for free. 2. Type your topics or community names into Search terms, one per line. 3. Set Communities per search term. 50 is a good first look, 250 is the most. 4. Optional: switch on Exact names only to look up names you already have, or Include adult (18+) communities. 5. Click Start, then download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read it from the API.

💰 How much does it cost?

$0.93 per 1,000 communities. Flat on every Apify plan, no volume tiers.

You pay per community delivered. The example row and every note row are free, a community that two of your terms both found is charged once, and a term that finds nothing adds nothing to the bill. The number of terms times maxCommunitiesPerQuery is the most a run can deliver, so it is also the most it can charge for.

💡 What people use it for

• Finding every place a niche talks, from the big subreddit down to the small regional ones, before deciding where to

post or what to read.

• Building the list of subreddits to watch. Run this first, then hand the names to a post or comment scraper.
• Turning a spreadsheet of community names into ids, titles, descriptions and creation dates with exactNameOnly.
• Spotting young communities in a topic by sorting the rows on createdAt.

🚧 What it does not do

• No member counts, online counts or adult flags. Reddit's public community search does not publish them, and the

rows do not guess.

• Reddit decides what matches. You get what its subreddit search returns for the term, in its order. A community

that never uses your word in its name, title or description may not show up.

• About 250 communities per term at most. That is where Reddit's own search stops, even for a word as broad as

music (243 in a test run). Narrow terms run out after a few dozen.

• No posts, rules, moderators or wiki pages. This lists communities. For what gets posted in them, use the scraper

linked below.

• Only what a visitor who is not signed in can see. Communities Reddit keeps out of its public search are not

found.

• No memory between runs. The same terms tomorrow return, and charge for, the same communities again.

🧭 Which Reddit scraper do you need?

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need a Reddit account or an API key? No. There is nothing to sign in to and nothing to paste.

Why is there no member count? Reddit's public community search does not include one, and the rows never make one up. If member counts are the point of your job, this is the wrong tool for that part of it.

Can I check a list of subreddit names I already have? Yes. Put the names in Search terms and switch on Exact names only. Each name gives one row, or a free NOT_FOUND note when Reddit's search does not return it.

Are adult communities included? Only if you switch on Include adult (18+) communities. They are then mixed into the results, and because the search does not mark them, every row says nsfw: null.

Why did a term return fewer communities than I asked for? Reddit had no more for it. Its search stops at about 250 for any term, and narrow topics stop after a few dozen: GardeningUK gave 28 and home espresso 43 in a test run.

Is scraping Reddit legal? This reads public community listings only, never private messages or accounts. A row can still name a person, the community's creator, and GDPR and similar laws cover that, so have a reason for keeping it. Apify's write-up on the legality of web scraping is a sensible starting point, and we are not lawyers.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Send the search terms you used and the run ID, and the log fills in the rest.