Reddit Monitoring API — Track Keywords, Competitors & Mentions | FetchLayer
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Monitor Keywords · Brands · Competitors

Monitor Reddit for
keywords, competitors, and customer signals.

Track brand mentions, competitor discussions, buying intent, and market trends across Reddit — delivered as structured JSON through a simple API. No scrapers to maintain, no proxies to manage.

Need the context behind the shift away from official access? Read the field report: Reddit's API is officially dead in 2026.

Free tier included · No credit card required · Most monitoring costs <$10/mo

Founders

Track what users say about your product — complaints, praise, feature requests.

Growth marketers

Find buying-intent posts and competitor mentions before your competitors do.

Researchers

Monitor niche communities for trends, sentiment shifts, and emerging topics.

Agencies

Monitor Reddit for every client without building custom scrapers per account.

Monitoring use cases

Know what's being said — before everyone else.

Define your keywords, pick your subreddits, set your schedule. FetchLayer handles the data collection.

Brand mentions

Search for your brand across Reddit. Catch praise, complaints, and discussions as they happen.

Competitor intelligence

Track what users say about competing products. Spot weaknesses, find switching intent, win deals.

Keyword alerts

Monitor any keyword across Reddit. Get structured results sorted by newest — pipe into Slack, email, or a dashboard.

Buying intent signals

Find posts where people ask for recommendations, compare tools, or express frustration with existing solutions.

Market trends

Track rising topics, emerging pain points, and shifting sentiment in your market's communities.

Voice of customer

Use Reddit as a live customer research database. Find pain points, feature requests, and unfiltered opinions.

Inspiration

What should I monitor?

Not sure where to start? Pick the keywords that match your goal. These are real queries our users run.

SaaS founders

Find pain points, validate ideas, spot switching intent

[competitor] alternative
best tool for [problem]
frustrated with [competitor]
[category] recommendations
switching from [tool]

Growth marketers

Spot buying intent, track competitors, find content angles

[your brand name]
[competitor] vs [competitor]
looking for a tool that
anyone tried [product]
what do you use for [problem]

Researchers & analysts

Track trends, sentiment shifts, emerging topics

r/[niche subreddit] top posts
[industry] pain points
complaint about [category]
[emerging topic] discussion
hate [incumbent product]

How it works

Three steps to Reddit monitoring.

No scraping infrastructure. No proxy setup. No browser sessions.

1

Define what to monitor

Keywords, brand names, competitor names, subreddits. Search globally or scope to specific communities.

Search for

best CRM alternative

Sort by

Newest first

Results

25

2

Set your schedule

Run it once a minute, once an hour, or once a day — with any automation tool you already use.

Zapier

Schedule → Webhook → FetchLayer

Popular

Make

Schedule → HTTP Module → FetchLayer

n8n

Cron Node → HTTP Request → FetchLayer

GitHub Actions

Cron schedule → run script

3

Act on the data

Get alerts in Slack, email, or wherever your team works. New mentions appear as they're found.

#reddit-alerts 2m ago

New mention: "Anyone tried X? Looking for alternatives..."

r/SaaS · 23 upvotes · 15 comments

#reddit-alerts 14m ago

New mention: "Switching from Y to something else — recommendations?"

r/startups · 8 upvotes · 4 comments

Ready-to-use workflows

Start monitoring in minutes, not days.

Pick a template, plug in your keywords, and you're live. Each one is a copy-paste workflow.

Monitor a keyword

Search Reddit for any keyword, sorted by newest. Run hourly to catch mentions within minutes of posting.

~15 req/day · <$1/mo

Track a competitor

Monitor mentions of a competitor in relevant subreddits. Get alerts when people discuss switching or express frustration.

~30 req/day · <$2/mo

Find buying intent

Search for posts where people ask for recommendations or alternatives. "What's the best X?" is a buying signal.

~50 req/day · <$3/mo

Research a niche

Pull top posts from target subreddits weekly. Build a running log of pain points, questions, and discussions in your space.

~20 req/week · <$1/mo

No code required

Don't want to write code?
Just describe what you need.

FetchLayer Research Chat lets you monitor Reddit in plain English. Type your query, get structured results, export to CSV. No API key, no scripts, no cron jobs.

  • "Find posts about CRM frustrations in r/sales and r/startups"
  • "Who's mentioning [competitor] this week?"
  • "Export all posts asking for alternatives to X as CSV"
Open Research Chat
fetchlayer.dev/chat
Y

Find recent posts where people are looking for a Notion alternative. Focus on r/productivity and r/SaaS.

Found 23 posts from the last 7 days. Top signal: r/productivity thread with 89 comments comparing Notion vs Obsidian.

notion-alternatives-leads.csv

23 rows · ready to download

The opportunity

Why monitor Reddit?

Reddit is where people say what they actually think — before they fill out feedback forms, before they show up in your analytics.

People complain honestly on Reddit before they submit support tickets.

Buyers ask for recommendations on Reddit before they show up in your funnel.

Competitor weaknesses appear in public threads months before they become common knowledge.

Niche communities reveal trends before they hit mainstream channels.

Reddit comments contain raw voice-of-customer language you can use in ads, copy, and product decisions.

1.7 billion monthly visits. Every niche has an active community discussing exactly what you sell.

Why FetchLayer

You could build a scraper. Here's why you won't want to.

DIY scraping

  • Maintain proxy infrastructure
  • Handle rate limits and bans
  • Fix selectors when Reddit changes UI
  • Parse inconsistent HTML
  • Manage headless browsers
  • Debug at 2am when it breaks

FetchLayer

  • One API call, structured JSON back
  • No proxies, no browser sessions
  • We handle breakages, you get data
  • Consistent typed schema always
  • Works with AI agents via MCP
  • Most monitoring <$10/month

Connects to everything

Send alerts wherever your team already works.

FetchLayer is an API. Pipe the output into whatever tool you already use for notifications, dashboards, or automation.

Slack
Zapier
Make
Discord
Notion
Google Sheets
n8n
Any webhook

What monitoring costs

Most monitoring workflows cost less than $10/month.

Track a keyword hourly, monitor competitors daily, or research a niche weekly — pay only for the API calls you use. No monthly minimums, no contracts.

Hourly keyword scan

~$1.40/mo

3 competitors daily

~$5.40/mo

10 subreddits daily

~$9.00/mo

Pricing

Start free. Pay for what you use, or lock in a flat rate.

Credits for flexible, no-commitment usage. Subscriptions for a fixed monthly rate with built-in savings. Subscriptions+ for teams that want volume pricing at scale.

Free plan

30 free requests

A small test drive to verify the API, inspect real responses, and decide whether you want to stay on credits or move to a subscription.

Try free

Pay as you go

$1.99 per 1,000 requests

$0.00199 per request

How credits are counted

One credit = one request. No matter how many results come back — replies, comments, search pages — you pay for the call, not the output size.

Your first successful payment unlocks unlimited API keys on the account, including pay-as-you-go credits.

  • No monthly commitment — buy only what you need
  • Credits never expire — they stay until you use them
  • Same API, same MCP access, same data quality
  • ∞ req/min
Get API key

Credits never expire

Buy once, use whenever. There's no monthly reset, no pressure to hit a quota, no wasted credits at the end of a billing cycle.

No strings attached

No subscription to cancel, no seat minimums, no contract to negotiate. Start, pause, or scale whenever you want.

Full access from credit one

Every endpoint, MCP included, is available on credits. You're not on a limited tier — you get the same data as any subscriber.

FAQ

Common questions.

What does FetchLayer monitor?

FetchLayer monitors publicly available Reddit data — posts, comments, subreddits, and user activity. You define the keywords, communities, or topics, and the API returns structured JSON you can pipe into alerts, dashboards, or workflows.

Is this real-time monitoring?

FetchLayer is an API, not a polling service. You call it on your own schedule — every minute, every hour, once a day. Pair it with a cron job, Zapier, Make, or your own scheduler to get continuous monitoring.

Do I need to code?

Not necessarily. You can use FetchLayer Research Chat to run queries in plain English with no code at all. For automated monitoring, a simple script or no-code automation tool works. We provide templates to get started in minutes.

How is this different from a Reddit scraper?

A scraper gives you raw data. FetchLayer gives you structured, typed JSON from a hosted API — no proxies, no browser sessions, no maintenance. You focus on what to monitor, not how to scrape.

Can I monitor competitors?

Yes. Search for competitor names, track mentions in relevant subreddits, or monitor threads where people discuss alternatives to competing products.

What about brand mentions?

Search for your brand name across all of Reddit or within specific communities. Sort by newest to catch mentions as they happen. Run it on a schedule for continuous brand monitoring.

Can I export data as CSV?

The API returns JSON which you can convert to CSV with any tool. FetchLayer Research Chat can export directly to CSV with no code. The open-source SDK also makes this trivial in JavaScript/TypeScript.

Is this legal?

We access only publicly available information — the same data any browser can see without logging in. We do not bypass authentication, access private content, or violate any terms of service. If you have questions about your specific use case, consult your own legal counsel.

What does it cost?

Free tier includes 30 requests to test. Pay-as-you-go is $1.99 per 1,000 requests. Subscriptions start at $25/month for 15,000 requests. Most monitoring use cases cost less than $10/month.

Can I use this with AI agents?

Yes. FetchLayer has a native MCP server that works with Cursor, Claude, VS Code, and other AI IDEs. Your agent can search and monitor Reddit inline.

Know what your customers are saying before your competitors do.

Start monitoring Reddit in two minutes. Free tier included, no credit card.

FetchLayer is an independent, third-party service. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Reddit, Inc. "Reddit" is a registered trademark of Reddit, Inc. This service accesses only publicly available data — the same information visible to any unauthenticated browser. We do not access private content, bypass authentication, or store personal data beyond what is publicly displayed. Use of this API is subject to our Terms of Service and applicable law.