Apify is a general scraping-actor marketplace billed as a monthly plan plus usage. Redditapis is a dedicated Reddit REST API, billed flat per call from $0.002, with no actor setup or monthly plan and real write, vote, and DM endpoints a scraper cannot offer.
Written by Emma, developer relations at Redditapis. We bill each Reddit call at a flat $0.002 per read (source: our published pricing), versus Apify's Reddit Scraper actor, which is priced at $45 a month plus usage (source: apify.com).
What is the best Apify alternative for Reddit data?
The best Apify alternative for Reddit data is a dedicated Reddit REST API like Redditapis. Apify is a capable general scraping-actor marketplace, but its Reddit Scraper is priced at $45 a month plus usage and is a read-only scraper you set up and maintain. Redditapis is built only for Reddit: it bills a flat rate per call from $0.002 a read, needs no actor setup, no monthly plan, and no Reddit developer-app approval, and adds write, vote, and DM endpoints over plain HTTPS that an Apify scraper does not offer.
Where it gets awkward
Apify is a genuinely strong platform for scraping hundreds of different sites through one marketplace. The friction shows up when Reddit is your actual target: the billing model, the actor upkeep, and the read-only scope all add cost and work that a dedicated Reddit API does not.
Apify's Reddit Scraper actor is priced at $45 a month plus usage, about $4 per 1,000 results in platform credits, so a noisy keyword or a large subreddit can quietly multiply your spend on top of the monthly cost. The free plan's $5 in monthly credits covers roughly 1,000 results, and the same job costs a different amount every run, which is hard to forecast against a fixed budget.
You pick a Reddit scraper actor, learn its input schema, and track its updates. When Reddit changes its markup or an actor goes unmaintained, the scraper breaks and you are debugging someone else's actor instead of shipping.
The main Reddit Scraper reads public pages only. Posting or commenting needs a separate community actions actor that runs pay per event and requires your own Reddit login cookies, which puts your account at risk. Even then it covers only posts and comments, with no vote or direct-message path.
Apify is a strong general scraping platform for hundreds of sites. Reddit is one target among many, so the tooling, docs, and support are not built around Reddit's specific objects and rate behavior.
One dedicated Reddit REST API with flat per-call pricing and the write paths a scraper cannot reach.
59 endpoints built only for Reddit: posts, comments, users, subreddits, search, votes, and DMs. One product, one set of docs, all shaped around Reddit's objects.
Pay a fixed price per request from $0.002 a read. No per-result surprise billing and no compute units, so the cost of a call is the same every time you make it.
No actor to pick or maintain, and no Reddit developer-app review. Sign up, get a bearer token, and make your first call in minutes against a stable REST surface.
Beyond reading, the API can comment, vote, and send direct messages. Workflows that an Apify scraper cannot do at all run over the same REST endpoints.
| Metric | Apify (Reddit actors) | RedditAPI |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Monthly actor plan + compute-unit usage | Flat per-call, from $0.002 a read |
| Reddit scraping cost | $45/month + ≈ $4 per 1,000 results in usage | $2.00 per 1,000 reads ($0.002 flat) |
| Compute-unit rate | $0.20/CU (Starter) down to $0.13/CU (Business), per apify.com/pricing | No compute-unit metering |
| Free monthly credit | $5.00 usage credit on the Free plan | $0.50 signup credit, no card |
| Concurrency / rate limit | 25 concurrent actor runs (Free) up to 256 (Business) | No platform-level rate caps |
| Setup | Pick, configure, and maintain a scraper actor | Bearer token, no actor, no dev-app approval |
| Write support | Read-only, no comment, vote, or DM paths | Read, search, write, vote, and DM |
| Endpoint coverage | Reddit is one target on a general marketplace | 59 endpoints built only for Reddit |
Apify compute-unit rates and concurrency limits per apify.com/pricing. Apify plan pricing changes over time; validate current figures before budgeting a production workload.
How it works
Instead of configuring a Reddit scraper actor and waiting on a dataset, you make a single HTTPS call with a bearer token. Search posts in a subreddit by keyword:
curl "https://api.redditapis.com/api/reddit/search?subreddit=python&q=async&limit=100" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"The response is JSON over HTTPS, so it drops into any language. Endpoint paths and parameters live in the API docs. Run the numbers for your volume with the cost calculator, or see the full per-endpoint rates on the pricing page.
Comparing every option, not just Apify? The full breakdown of scrapers, the official Reddit Data API, and pay-per-call providers lives on the alternatives page.
See all Reddit API alternativesA dedicated Reddit REST API like Redditapis. Apify's Reddit Scraper is a general marketplace actor priced at $45 a month plus usage. Redditapis is built only for Reddit, bills a flat rate per call from $0.002 a read, needs no actor setup or monthly plan, and adds write, vote, and DM endpoints that Reddit scrapers do not offer.
It is more predictable. Apify's Reddit Scraper actor costs $45 a month plus usage, so a single month's cost varies with volume and noise on top of that base fee. Redditapis charges a flat price per call from $0.002 a read with no monthly plan, so spend tracks request count exactly. Whether it is cheaper depends on your usage, but it is far easier to forecast.
There is a community reddit-actions-api actor on Apify that can create posts and comments. It runs as a pay-per-event actor and needs your own Reddit login cookies, and it has no vote or direct-message action. Redditapis covers post, comment, vote, and DM as first-class REST endpoints behind one bearer token, with no actor to run.
Yes. Apify's main Reddit Scraper is read-only, and writing on Apify means a separate actions actor on your own Reddit login cookies that covers only posts and comments. Redditapis exposes real write endpoints over one bearer-token REST API: post comments, cast votes, and send direct messages, with no personal login cookies to hand over.
No. There is no actor to choose, configure, or maintain. You call documented REST endpoints with a bearer token and get JSON back. When Reddit changes, the API is maintained for you, so you are not debugging a third-party scraper's input schema or its breakages.
Per-call pricing charges a fixed amount each request, so 1,000 reads always cost the same. Apify's monthly-plan-plus-compute-unit billing adds a base plan cost (Apify's Reddit Scraper actor lists at $45/month plus usage) on top of a rate that scales with how much data a run returns, which is flexible but variable. Flat per-call pricing is simpler to budget when you know your request volume.
No. Apify is a capable, legitimate platform and a good fit when you scrape many different sites through one marketplace. The wedge here is narrower: for Reddit data specifically, a dedicated flat-priced API with write and DM endpoints removes the actor setup and variable billing that a general scraper carries.
The best flat-priced Apify alternative for Reddit is Redditapis, a dedicated Reddit REST API billed at a flat $0.002 per read instead of Apify's Reddit Scraper, which is priced at $45 a month plus usage. There is no actor to run or monthly plan, and Redditapis adds real write, vote, and DM endpoints behind one bearer token that a read-only scraper and Apify's cookie-based actions actor do not match.
By the numbers
Every Redditapis figure resolves to our published per-call rates; every external figure links to its primary source.
Redditapis bills reads at $0.002 per call, votes at $0.005, writes at $0.012, and DMs at $0.025, one flat rate for every account with no minimum spend. (Redditapis pricing, 2026)
Apify's own Reddit Scraper actor is priced at $45 a month plus usage (about $4 per 1,000 results in platform credits), and its free plan's $5 in monthly credits covers roughly 1,000 results. (Apify, 2026)
Every new account starts with $0.50 in free credits and no card on file, enough for roughly 250 reads before any charge. (Redditapis, 2026)
Reddit's own commercial Data API is priced at $0.24 per 1,000 API calls, the rate that ended third-party apps like Apollo in 2023. (The Verge, 2023)
Reddit's free Data API tier is capped at 100 queries per minute per OAuth client, and 10 queries per minute without OAuth. (Reddit Data API Wiki, 2026)
Reddit signed a reported $60 million-a-year deal to license its data for AI training, a sign of how valuable structured Reddit data has become. (Reuters, 2024)
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