How to search Reddit without logging in
Anonymous Reddit scraping from a server barely works any more. The JSON endpoints 403, the redesigned UI renders through JavaScript so there is nothing in the initial HTML to parse, and the residential IPs that do get through are rate-limited quickly. What is left is a residential-proxied scraper against old.reddit with a parser you keep alive, or an API that runs one for you.
What people try first
| approach | what happens |
|---|---|
| Reddit RSS | Public and login-free, but throttled to about one request per 30 seconds and it carries no scores or comment counts. |
| Pushshift | The public archive has been unavailable to general users since 2023. |
| Headless browser | Works until it doesn't. You are now maintaining a browser farm and paying for residential exit nodes anyway. |
| old.reddit HTML | The pragmatic path — small, stable markup — but only from a residential IP, and the parser needs looking after. |
The one-call fix
One request, unified JSON, no proxies or parsers to keep alive. 1 credit a call once you are on credits, and free for your first 5.
curl -H "x-api-key: $SS_KEY" \ "https://api.socialsearchapi.com/v1/reddit/search?query=llm+agents"
Signup is an email and a 6-digit code — no card — and gives you 5 free calls on any platform, so the command above runs as-is.
Real response from that endpoint, captured 2026-07-25:
{
"success": true,
"platform": "reddit",
"served_by": "native",
"data": {
"total": 3,
"items": [
{
"platform": "reddit",
"type": "post",
"title": "I tested every free LLM provider for AI agents. Here's the only 3 worth using.",
"url": "https://old.reddit.com/r/better_claw/comments/1tjuuem/i_tested_every_free_llm_provider_for_ai_agents/",
"author": "ShabzSparq",
"created_at": "2026-05-21T19:17:20Z",
"metrics": {
"comments": 63,
"score": 180
},
"extra": {
"url_path": "/r/better_claw/comments/1tjuuem/i_tested_every_free_llm_provider_for_ai_agents/",
"subreddit": "r/better_claw",
"created_at_raw": "2026-05-21T19:17:20+00:00"
}
}
]
},
"credits_used": 1
}Related
Last verified 2026-07-25. Platform terms and pricing change often — if something here has gone stale, tell us at [email protected].