What replaced Pushshift for Reddit data?
Nothing replaced Pushshift as one thing, which is why this question keeps getting asked. Reddit revoked Pushshift's public access on 2 May 2023, and the job it did split three ways. PullPush.io inherited the archive and serves it free, throttled to roughly 15 requests a minute soft and 30 hard, volunteer-run with no SLA. Arctic Shift rebuilds monthly dumps from December 2005 to the current month and sustains far higher throughput, which makes it the best free option for bulk historical work. Monthly torrent dumps remain the cheapest way to get a static research corpus. A maintained commercial API is the fourth path and the only one with an uptime commitment, live data and write access, but it reads what Reddit serves today rather than an archive: we measured a single listing at 983 items here against 940 on Reddit's own logged-in web client. Pick by job: archive depth goes to Arctic Shift or the dumps, and anything live, contractual or write-capable goes to a maintained API.
The five surviving sources, compared on what they actually serve
The reason no single name answers this question is that Pushshift did two jobs at once. It held a complete archive going back to 2005, and it exposed that archive through a query API anyone could call. When public access ended those jobs separated, and each survivor picked one. Reading the table by column rather than by row is what makes the choice obvious: coverage decides whether a source can answer your question at all, and the limits column decides whether it can answer it on a schedule.
| Source | Coverage | Limits | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pushshift (public)Cut off | 2005 to 2 May 2023 | None, public access revoked | Not available |
| PullPush.ioRate limited | Inherited archive plus ongoing collection | About 15 requests a minute soft, 30 hard, roughly 1,000 an hour | Free, volunteer-run |
| Arctic ShiftDump based | December 2005 to the current month, monthly releases | Around 120,000 requests an hour sustained | Free, torrent plus API |
| Academic dumps and torrentsStatic | Monthly snapshots, stale by weeks | Bulk download only, no live query | Free |
| Official Reddit Data APILive only | Live data, no historical backfill | 100 RPM base, scaling by payment tier | Commercial rate by negotiated agreement |
| Maintained commercial APISupported | Live plus search back through what Reddit serves | No platform-level cap, single listing ceiling applies | From $0.002 a read, no contract |
Reddit revoked Pushshift's public API access on 2 May 2023. PullPush and Arctic Shift figures are per their own published rate-limit and coverage documentation. Official Reddit pricing is per Reddit's 2023 commercial API pricing announcement, and the per-call arithmetic behind it is on the commercial tier answer. Community-run figures change without notice, so validate current numbers before depending on them in production.
That ceiling is ours and it is measured rather than assumed: 983 items from one listing through this API against 940 through Reddit's own logged-in web client (source: the same measurement published on our Pushshift alternative page). It is the single most useful fact when choosing between these options, and it is the one most comparisons leave out. A live API is reading the surface Reddit currently exposes, so it cannot hand you 2015 in bulk no matter what you pay. An archive can, because somebody already collected it. Any provider advertising a full historical backfill through a live endpoint is describing something Reddit does not serve, and the honest split is that archives own the past while APIs own the present and the ability to act on it.
Arctic Shift vs a paid Reddit API for bulk historical data
For bulk historical work Arctic Shift wins, and saying otherwise would be selling you something. It rebuilds monthly dumps covering December 2005 to the current month and sustains roughly 120,000 requests an hour, at no cost. If your question is what a subreddit talked about in 2017, or you need a training corpus spanning years, that is the tool, and a live API is the wrong shape of thing entirely.
The trade is everything an archive does not attempt. Ingestion is best-effort and live coverage lags, so it is not a production data path for anything time-sensitive. There is no uptime commitment, no support, and nothing to escalate when a release slips. And it cannot write: an archive reads by definition, so a workflow that finds a thread and then needs to reply in it has to change tools halfway. The practical answer for most teams is both, with the archive for backfill and an API for the live tail and any action.
GummySearch closed, and what a deeper-access replacement looks like
GummySearch closed as of 30 November 2025 according to its own site, which makes this a migration question rather than a comparison. It still appears in roundups and in older advice, so it is worth naming plainly instead of quietly omitting. What it did was audience research: a hosted dashboard over Reddit with saved searches, curated audience groupings and a workflow aimed at founders rather than engineers.
Replacing it splits by what you valued. If the dashboard was the product, another hosted monitoring tool is the honest recommendation and you should take it. If the phrase deeper data access is what brought you here, that means an API, because the ceiling on those products is always the vendor's own model of a keyword, a match and a retention window. On an API you define all three, keep the raw rows, and can change your mind about the analysis later without re-collecting. The monitoring-specific version of that choice is on the brand monitoring answer.
Alternatives to the official Reddit API, judged on the right axis
People usually reach for an alternative because of price, and price is rarely the binding constraint. The official API's free tier is generous on throughput and restricted to personal, non-commercial use, and its commercial tier is gated by a review rather than a checkout. So the question that sorts the alternatives is which of those two walls you are hitting. If it is the non-commercial clause, anything self-serve solves it. If it is the review queue, you need a provider that holds its own relationship to the data rather than reselling your access.
On that axis the categories sort cleanly. Community mirrors are self-serve and free with real throughput limits and no support. Marketplace actors are self-serve with variable billing. A dedicated REST API is self-serve, flat-billed, and the only category that also writes: here 29 of 52 endpoints are reads at $0.002 and the rest cover comments, votes and messages. The six-provider comparison is on the alternatives page, and the archive-shaped version of the question is on the historical data answer.
The cheapest Apify alternative for Reddit scraping
Apify is a general scraping marketplace and a legitimate one, so the comparison is about fit rather than quality. Its Reddit Scraper actor is priced at $45 a month plus usage, roughly $4 per 1,000 results in platform credits, and the free plan's $5 of monthly credits covers about a thousand results. Two things follow. The base fee is there whether you run anything or not, and because billing is per result rather than per request, a keyword that gets noisy costs more without you changing a line.
A flat per-call API inverts both: no base fee, and the bill tracks requests you control rather than results you do not. Whether that is cheaper depends on your volume, but it is materially easier to forecast, which is usually the actual complaint behind the question. If you are scraping many different sites through one platform, Apify remains the better tool and you should keep it. The Reddit-specific breakdown is on the Apify alternative page, and the at-scale collection mechanics are on the scraping at scale answer.
Frequently asked
What is the best replacement for Pushshift now that it is gone?
There is no single replacement, because Pushshift was both an archive and a query API and those split apart when it lost public access on 2 May 2023. For deep historical bulk, Arctic Shift is the strongest free option: it rebuilds monthly dumps from December 2005 forward and sustains far more throughput than PullPush. For live or recent data, an SLA, or anything you need to write back, a maintained commercial API is the only category that offers those at all.
Is PullPush a good Pushshift replacement?
For occasional lookups, yes, and it deserves credit for keeping the archive reachable at all. For a pipeline, its own published limits are the problem rather than its quality: roughly 15 requests a minute soft and 30 hard, with about a thousand an hour, all volunteer-run with no SLA and no support. That is enough to answer a question and not enough to fill a dataset on a schedule, and community-run figures can change without notice.
Arctic Shift vs a paid Reddit API, which is better for bulk historical data?
For bulk historical, Arctic Shift, and it is not close. It covers December 2005 to the current month in monthly releases and sustains around 120,000 requests an hour, free. A live API cannot compete on that axis at any price, because it reads what Reddit serves now and a single listing stops near a thousand items, which we measured at 983 here against 940 on Reddit's own web client. Where the paid API wins is everything Arctic Shift does not attempt: current data, an uptime commitment, support, and write endpoints.
What is the best GummySearch alternative with deeper data access?
GummySearch closed as of 30 November 2025 per its own site, so this is a migration rather than a comparison. It was an audience-research product: a dashboard over Reddit with saved searches and curated audiences. A like-for-like replacement is another hosted monitoring product; a deeper-access replacement is an API, where you define the keyword rules, the dedupe logic and the retention yourself instead of accepting a vendor's. The API route costs more setup and gives you data you own.
What are the best alternatives to the official Reddit API?
The official API's real constraints are the non-commercial clause on its free tier and the review that gates its commercial tier, so alternatives are judged on removing those rather than on price. Community mirrors remove both and add throughput limits and no SLA. Marketplace scraper actors remove both and bill by result volume. A dedicated REST API removes both and bills per call, which here is 29 read endpoints of 52 at $0.002, with writes as well as reads.
What is the cheapest Apify alternative for Reddit scraping?
Cheapest depends on billing shape. Apify's Reddit Scraper actor is priced at $45 a month plus usage, around $4 per 1,000 results in platform credits, so a noisy keyword multiplies spend on top of the base fee and the same job costs a different amount each run. A flat per-call API removes the base fee and the variance: at $0.002 a read, 10,000 calls is $20.00 whatever those calls return. Apify is a capable general platform; for Reddit specifically the trade is breadth against predictability.
A maintained endpoint for the live half
Keep the archive for backfill. Point the live tail, and anything that needs to write, at a supported API billed at $0.002 a read with $0.50 of credit to start.
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