# RedditDataAPI.io — Complete LLM & AI Agent Technical Reference (llms-full.txt)

> Real-Time Reddit Posts, Comments Tree, Subreddit Feeds & Brand Mention Monitoring JSON API.
> Base URL: `https://api.redditdataapi.io` | Main Website: `https://redditdataapi.io`
> OpenAPI 3.0 Spec: `https://redditdataapi.io/openapi.json` | Compact Summary: `https://redditdataapi.io/llms.txt`

## 1. Authentication & Core Architecture

- **Base URL**: `https://api.redditdataapi.io`
- **Authentication Header**: Pass either `x-api-key: rd_live_your_api_key` OR `Authorization: Bearer rd_live_your_api_key` on every request.
- **No Reddit OAuth / No Cookies / No Proxies**: Works directly from AWS, GCP, Azure, Hetzner, Vercel, and Cloudflare Workers without Reddit developer review or 100 QPM token ceilings.
- **Free Trial**: Every new account receives **2,000 Free Credits** immediately upon sign-up at `https://redditdataapi.io/signup`.
- **Zero Charge on Errors or Empty Search**: Any failed lookup, 404 resource, or empty search result (`items.length === 0`) costs **0 Credits**.

## 2. Pricing & Unified Credit System ($1 = 10,000 Credits)

| Data Type / Endpoint | Credits | Base Cost | Effective Cost with Bonus | Page Size |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Subreddit Posts, Keyword Search, Popular, User Posts | 1 Credit / post (min 2) | $0.10 / 1,000 posts | $0.04–$0.06 / 1,000 posts | Up to 100 posts/call |
| Post Comment Tree & User Comments | 1 Credit / comment (min 2) | $0.10 / 1,000 comments | $0.04–$0.06 / 1,000 comments | Up to 200 comments/call |
| Subreddit Info, Post Detail, User Profile Lookup | 2 Credits / request | $0.20 / 1,000 lookups | $0.08–$0.12 / 1,000 lookups | 1 full entity object |

## 3. Complete Endpoint Reference & Code Samples

### Fetch Subreddit Posts Feed (hot / new / top / rising) (`GET /v1/subreddit/posts`)
- **Documentation URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/docs/subreddit-posts
- **Cost**: 2 Credits ($0.0002)
- **Description**: 
- **Parameters**:
  - `subreddit` (query, required):  
  - `sort` (query, optional):  
  - `time_filter` (query, optional):  
  - `limit` (query, optional):  
  - `cursor` (query, optional):  

```bash
curl "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/subreddit/posts?subreddit=" \
  -H "x-api-key: rd_live_your_api_key"
```

```python
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/subreddit/posts?subreddit=",
    headers={"x-api-key": "rd_live_your_api_key"},
    timeout=30,
)
print(res.json())
```

---

### Fetch Subreddit Metadata, Subscribers & Community Rules (`GET /v1/subreddit/info`)
- **Documentation URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/docs/subreddit-info
- **Cost**: 2 Credits ($0.0002)
- **Description**: 
- **Parameters**:
  - `subreddit` (query, required):  

```bash
curl "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/subreddit/info?subreddit=" \
  -H "x-api-key: rd_live_your_api_key"
```

```python
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/subreddit/info?subreddit=",
    headers={"x-api-key": "rd_live_your_api_key"},
    timeout=30,
)
print(res.json())
```

---

### Search Reddit Posts & Brand Mentions Globally or Within a Subreddit (`GET /v1/posts/search`)
- **Documentation URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/docs/posts-search
- **Cost**: 2 Credits ($0.0002)
- **Description**: 
- **Parameters**:
  - `query` (query, required):  
  - `subreddit` (query, optional):  
  - `sort` (query, optional):  
  - `time_filter` (query, optional):  
  - `limit` (query, optional):  
  - `cursor` (query, optional):  

```bash
curl "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/posts/search?query=" \
  -H "x-api-key: rd_live_your_api_key"
```

```python
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/posts/search?query=",
    headers={"x-api-key": "rd_live_your_api_key"},
    timeout=30,
)
print(res.json())
```

---

### Fetch Single Reddit Post Detail by ID or URL (`GET /v1/posts/detail`)
- **Documentation URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/docs/posts-detail
- **Cost**: 2 Credits ($0.0002)
- **Description**: 
- **Parameters**:
  - `post_id` (query, required):  

```bash
curl "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/posts/detail?post_id=" \
  -H "x-api-key: rd_live_your_api_key"
```

```python
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/posts/detail?post_id=",
    headers={"x-api-key": "rd_live_your_api_key"},
    timeout=30,
)
print(res.json())
```

---

### Fetch Post Comment Tree & Replies (`GET /v1/posts/comments`)
- **Documentation URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/docs/posts-comments
- **Cost**: 2 Credits ($0.0002)
- **Description**: 
- **Parameters**:
  - `post_id` (query, required):  
  - `sort` (query, optional):  
  - `limit` (query, optional):  
  - `cursor` (query, optional):  

```bash
curl "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/posts/comments?post_id=" \
  -H "x-api-key: rd_live_your_api_key"
```

```python
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/posts/comments?post_id=",
    headers={"x-api-key": "rd_live_your_api_key"},
    timeout=30,
)
print(res.json())
```

---

### Fetch Trending & Popular Reddit Posts (r/popular) (`GET /v1/posts/popular`)
- **Documentation URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/docs/posts-popular
- **Cost**: 2 Credits ($0.0002)
- **Description**: 
- **Parameters**:
  - `sort` (query, optional):  
  - `limit` (query, optional):  
  - `cursor` (query, optional):  

```bash
curl "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/posts/popular" \
  -H "x-api-key: rd_live_your_api_key"
```

```python
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/posts/popular",
    headers={"x-api-key": "rd_live_your_api_key"},
    timeout=30,
)
print(res.json())
```

---

### Fetch Reddit User Profile & Karma Breakdown (`GET /v1/users/profile`)
- **Documentation URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/docs/users-profile
- **Cost**: 2 Credits ($0.0002)
- **Description**: 
- **Parameters**:
  - `username` (query, required):  

```bash
curl "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/users/profile?username=" \
  -H "x-api-key: rd_live_your_api_key"
```

```python
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/users/profile?username=",
    headers={"x-api-key": "rd_live_your_api_key"},
    timeout=30,
)
print(res.json())
```

---

### Fetch Public Posts Submitted by a Reddit User (`GET /v1/users/posts`)
- **Documentation URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/docs/users-posts
- **Cost**: 2 Credits ($0.0002)
- **Description**: 
- **Parameters**:
  - `username` (query, required):  
  - `sort` (query, optional):  
  - `limit` (query, optional):  
  - `cursor` (query, optional):  

```bash
curl "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/users/posts?username=" \
  -H "x-api-key: rd_live_your_api_key"
```

```python
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/users/posts?username=",
    headers={"x-api-key": "rd_live_your_api_key"},
    timeout=30,
)
print(res.json())
```

---

### Fetch Public Comments Authored by a Reddit User (`GET /v1/users/comments`)
- **Documentation URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/docs/users-comments
- **Cost**: 2 Credits ($0.0002)
- **Description**: 
- **Parameters**:
  - `username` (query, required):  
  - `sort` (query, optional):  
  - `limit` (query, optional):  
  - `cursor` (query, optional):  

```bash
curl "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/users/comments?username=" \
  -H "x-api-key: rd_live_your_api_key"
```

```python
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/users/comments?username=",
    headers={"x-api-key": "rd_live_your_api_key"},
    timeout=30,
)
print(res.json())
```

---

### Gateway Health & Mirror Telemetry (`GET /v1/health`)
- **Documentation URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/docs/health
- **Cost**: 0 Credits (Free) ($0.00)
- **Description**: Zero-cost health probe returning real-time upstream pool status and total posts, comments, subreddits, and users cached in our local PostgreSQL 16 mirror.
- **Parameters**:
  - None

```bash
curl "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/health" \
  -H "x-api-key: rd_live_your_api_key"
```

```python
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.redditdataapi.io/v1/health",
    headers={"x-api-key": "rd_live_your_api_key"},
    timeout=30,
)
print(res.json())
```

## 4. Engineering Guides & Tutorials

### Unofficial Reddit API vs Official Reddit Data API: Complete 2026 Developer Guide
- **URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/guides/unofficial-reddit-api
- **Summary**: Compare the Official Reddit Data API and PRAW against RedditDataAPI.io. Fetch subreddit feeds, nested comment trees, and brand mentions without OAuth limits.
- **Key Takeaways**:
  - The Official Reddit Data API requires commercial OAuth pre-approval, enforces a 100 QPM per-token limit, and charges $0.24 per 1,000 API calls regardless of how many items are returned.
  - Self-hosted PRAW scripts running on AWS, GCP, or Hetzner datacenter IPs frequently encounter HTTP 403 blocks or 429 rate-limit walls when expanding comment trees.
  - RedditDataAPI.io provides 9 normalized REST endpoints (/v1/subreddit/posts, /v1/posts/search, /v1/posts/comments, /v1/subreddit/info, /v1/users/*) authenticated with a single x-api-key header.
  - Pricing is anchored at $1 = 10,000 Credits ($0.10 per 1,000 posts or comments, $0.20 per 1,000 entity lookups), with 0 Credits charged on failed or empty calls.

### How to Build Real-Time Reddit Brand Mention & Keyword Alerts in Python
- **URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/guides/reddit-brand-mention-monitoring-api
- **Summary**: Poll global Reddit keyword mentions with /v1/posts/search and incremental ?since= timestamps. Zero credits charged on empty polls.
- **Key Takeaways**:
  - GET /v1/posts/search supports global keyword queries (?query=...) as well as subreddit-scoped searches (?subreddit=saas) sorted by new, relevance, top, or comments.
  - Pass ?since=<unix_timestamp> to filter strictly for posts created after your last poll checkpoint.
  - Because RedditDataAPI.io charges 0 Credits when a search returns 0 items, you can poll high-intent keywords every 60 seconds without wasting credits.

### Scraping Nested Reddit Comment Trees for LLM & RAG Pipelines
- **URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/guides/reddit-comment-tree-scraper-api
- **Summary**: Extract up to 200 nested Reddit comments per request with depth, parent_id, score, and author metadata at $0.10 per 1,000 comments.
- **Key Takeaways**:
  - GET /v1/posts/comments extracts up to 200 comments per call with depth (0, 1, 2...) and parent_id (t3_... or t1_...).
  - Supports sorting by top, best, new, controversial, or old, plus offset cursor pagination for mega-threads.
  - Costs 1 Credit per returned comment ($0.10 per 1,000 comments base rate, or $0.0575 per 1,000 on Pro).

## 5. Competitor Benchmarks

### RedditDataAPI.io vs Official Reddit Data API (reddit.com/dev/api)
- **URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/compare/official-api
- **Headline**: $0.10 vs $0.24 / call per 1,000 posts or comments.
- **Summary**: Since Reddit's 2023–2026 API policy overhaul, the Official Reddit Data API requires commercial pre-approval, enforces a strict 100 QPM per-OAuth-token limit, and restricts commercial AI/LLM indexing. RedditDataAPI.io gives you instant REST access to all public subreddits, nested comment trees, and keyword search at $0.10 per 1,000 items.

### RedditDataAPI.io vs PRAW (Python Reddit API Wrapper) (praw.readthedocs.io)
- **URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/compare/praw
- **Headline**: ~180ms vs 403 / 429 on Cloud IPs from AWS, GCP, Hetzner & Vercel.
- **Summary**: Running PRAW from AWS, GCP, Azure, or Hetzner cloud IPs frequently triggers HTTP 403 blocks or 100 QPM OAuth throttling—especially when expanding MoreComments trees. RedditDataAPI.io routes all requests through residential pools and L1 Redis cache so your Python workers never get blocked.

### RedditDataAPI.io vs Apify Reddit Scrapers (apify.com)
- **URL**: https://redditdataapi.io/compare/apify-scrapers
- **Headline**: $0.10 vs $1.50+ per 1,000 Reddit posts.
- **Summary**: Container-based scraping platforms spin up a Docker actor per job, adding 20–60 seconds of cold-start latency and charging platform compute markups. RedditDataAPI.io is an always-hot REST gateway with L1 Redis caching that responds in ~180ms at 90% lower cost.

## 6. Frequently Asked Questions

### How does the Unified Credit System work?

$1 equals 10,000 Credits (1 Credit = $0.0001). Every endpoint deducts credits based on the records returned, with a minimum floor of 2 Credits ($0.0002) per non-empty call: 1 Credit per post ($0.10 / 1,000 posts), 1 Credit per comment ($0.10 / 1,000 comments), and 2 Credits ($0.20 / 1,000 calls) for single subreddit metadata, post detail, or user profile lookups.

### Do I need a Reddit OAuth client ID, app approval, or residential proxies?

No. Unlike the Official Reddit Data API—which requires commercial OAuth review, strict 100 QPM per-token caps, and $0.24 per 1,000 API calls—RedditDataAPI.io handles all upstream proxy rotation, session management, and multi-provider failover at the gateway layer. You simply make standard HTTPS GET requests with your x-api-key: rd_live_... header.

### How does /v1/posts/comments return nested Reddit comment trees?

GET /v1/posts/comments returns up to 200 comments per call with explicit depth (0 for top-level comments, 1+ for nested replies), parent_id (t3_... for root comments or t1_... for replies), author, score, is_submitter, and created_utc. You can reconstruct the full hierarchical thread in 5 lines of Python or feed the flattened array directly into an LLM / RAG vector index.

### Am I charged when a request fails, returns 404, or returns 0 results?

Never. We strictly enforce Charge-Before-Return & Zero-Charge on Error/Empty: only HTTP 200 responses with non-empty data deduct credits. Upstream errors, non-existent subreddits/posts (HTTP 404), rate-limited requests (HTTP 429), and empty search results cost 0 Credits.

### Should I choose a Monthly Plan or Pay-As-You-Go (One-Time Top-Up)?

Both credit your account with the exact same bonus credit packages (Starter 250,000 Credits, Pro 1,200,000 Credits, Business 5,000,000 Credits). Pay-As-You-Go top-ups have no recurring billing and your purchased credit balance never expires. Monthly subscriptions save up to 24% more for continuous subreddit and brand monitoring workloads.

### What are the concurrency, pagination, and RPM rate limits?

Free Trial accounts include 2,000 Credits, 60 RPM, and the first 2 pages per query for evaluation. Paid accounts unlock unlimited deep cursor pagination and scale from 120 RPM (Starter) and 600 RPM (Pro) up to 600 RPM (Business).

### What payment methods are accepted?

You can top up or subscribe instantly with 0%-fee Cryptocurrency via NOWPayments (USDT or USDC on Solana, Tron, Polygon, Arbitrum, BNB Smart Chain, and Ethereum, plus BTC, ETH, and SOL) with an automatic +5% bonus credit reward.

### Can I use RedditDataAPI.io inside Claude Desktop, Cursor, or LangChain?

Yes. Configure our MCP Server in Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Windsurf using your rd_live_... API key to give AI agents real-time subreddit feed inspection, keyword brand mention search, and comment tree sentiment analysis tools.

### How does RedditDataAPI.io compare to PRAW and the Official Reddit API?

PRAW requires an approved Reddit OAuth application, enforces strict rate limits per OAuth token, and blocks commercial AI/LLM scraping under Reddit's Data API terms. RedditDataAPI.io provides a drop-in REST JSON gateway with up to 600 RPM, L1 Redis caching, and a local PostgreSQL 16 mirror at $0.10 per 1,000 posts or comments.

### Is RedditDataAPI.io affiliated with Reddit, Inc.?

No. RedditDataAPI.io is an independent developer infrastructure provider for publicly available web data and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Reddit, Inc.

### How much does it cost to fetch 100,000 Reddit posts or comments?

At 1 Credit per post or comment ($0.10 / 1,000 items, up to 100 posts or 200 comments per call), 100,000 items cost $10.00 base PAYG (or $5.75 effective on the Pro plan and $3.98 effective on the Business plan) — up to 80% lower than legacy scraping platforms.

### What is your refund policy?

Payments made within the last 14 days can be refunded up to the unused purchased balance on your account. Promotional signup credits have no cash value.