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Pushshift Alternative: Scrape Historical Reddit Posts & Comments (2026)

#webscraping #ai

Pushshift was the de facto way to pull historical Reddit data — until access got heavily restricted and it stopped being the easy public option it once was. If you need posts and comments older than what Reddit's API will give you, here's a working alternative in 2026.

Why the official Reddit API isn't enough

Reddit's API caps listings at roughly 1,000 items per endpoint, so you can't page back through a large subreddit's full history. That's fine for recent data, useless for backfilling months or years — which is exactly why people used Pushshift.

The alternative: Reddit Archive Scraper

The Reddit Archive Scraper on Apify pulls historical Reddit posts and comments from the community PullPush archive (Pushshift's successor) — by subreddit, date range, and keyword — reaching data the official API can't. For current/live data, the Reddit Scraper returns posts and comments as clean markdown for AI/RAG.

{ "subreddits": ["datascience"], "since": "2020-01-01", "until": "2022-12-31", "keyword": "career" }
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Pushshift vs. this

Pushshift (today) Reddit Archive Scraper
Access Restricted / limited Open, run on demand
History depth Was full archive Years, via PullPush
Setup API + auth hurdles No API key, run + export
Output Raw JSON Structured JSON / CSV
Live data No Pair with Reddit Scraper

Use cases

  • AI / RAG datasets — years of real Q&A and discussion as training context.
  • Academic & social research — longitudinal analysis of communities.
  • Trend & sentiment analysis — track how opinion shifted over time.
  • Brand/competitor history — every historical mention in a subreddit.

FAQ

What replaced Pushshift? The PullPush archive is the community successor; the Reddit Archive Scraper wraps it so you can query by subreddit, date, and keyword without managing access.

Why can't I just use the Reddit API for old posts? It caps listings at ~1,000 items, so deep history isn't reachable through it.

What format is the output? Structured JSON/CSV; the live Reddit Scraper outputs AI-ready markdown with token counts.

Is it legal? It reads publicly available Reddit data. Use responsibly and within applicable terms.

Need Reddit history beyond the API's limit? The Reddit Archive Scraper pulls years of posts by subreddit, date, and keyword.

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