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reddit

Reddit, from the command line

reddit is a single pure-Go binary that turns the public .json view of Reddit into clean, structured records. List a subreddit, read a comment tree, look up users and communities, search, and crawl in bulk, with no API key and nothing to sign up for.

Get started View on GitHub

Every Reddit page has a .json twin: add .json to a URL and the same content comes back as structured data instead of HTML. reddit is built on that. It reads the public JSON view, classifies what it found through Reddit's "thing" types (posts, comments, accounts, subreddits), and hands you records with real fields.

reddit posts golang --sort top --time week   # a subreddit listing
reddit comments 1abc23                        # a flattened comment tree
reddit user spez                              # a user profile as a record
reddit search "context deadline" --in golang  # search within a subreddit

It talks to www.reddit.com over plain HTTPS with no API key and no account. The binary is pure Go with no runtime dependencies. Output is a table on a terminal and JSONL when piped, with json, csv, tsv, url, raw, --fields, and --template when you want something else.

What you can do with it

  • Read listings. reddit posts walks a subreddit by hot, new, top, rising, or controversial, across as many pages as you ask for.
  • Read comment trees. reddit comments flattens a post's discussion into one record per comment, keeping depth and parent links, with --expand to follow the collapsed "load more" stubs.
  • Look up records. Fetch a post, a user, or a subreddit by id or URL and get a structured record with scores, timestamps, flair, and cross-references.
  • Search and discover. Search posts site-wide or inside one community, and discover subreddits and users by name.
  • Read community metadata. Pull a subreddit's rules, moderators, and wiki pages, and the duplicate discussions of any link.
  • Crawl in bulk. Seed post URLs from listings, queue them, crawl them into a local SQLite store, and export the records as JSONL.

Independent and public-data only

reddit is an independent, open-source tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Reddit, Inc. It reads only public pages, at a polite default rate (a two second gap between requests, two workers).

Where to go next

  • New here? Start with the introduction for the mental model, then the quick start.
  • Want to install it? See installation.
  • Looking for a specific task? The guides cover listings, comment trees, profiles and search, community metadata, bulk crawling, and output.
  • Need every flag? The CLI reference is the full surface.
Getting started Install reddit and pull your first subreddit listing and comment tree out of Reddit in under a minute. Guides Task-oriented walkthroughs for the things people actually do with public Reddit data.