# Search Reddit from your agent without a Reddit developer account

Give your agent a keyword and it gets the public Reddit posts that match: the title, the opening of the body, the subreddit, the date and the link. RouterGrowth is an independent API, not Reddit's own, so there is no Reddit app, client id or rate limit of your own to manage.

HTML page: https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/reddit/api
Part of: [Reddit tools](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/reddit.md)

## The call

[`social.search`](https://www.routergrowth.com/catalog/social.search): Public posts matching a keyword on X, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook: brand mentions, category conversations, competitor chatter.

Price on this network: $0.002432 per post, $0.002 minimum a call. The exact quote is shown before every run.

## What a real run returned

Run on 2026-10-19: 5 records in 21.7 s for $0.012162. Personal fields are masked. Five public posts for crm for small business. They came from r/CRMSoftware and r/CRM, buyers asking what to pick and builders asking for feedback.

| text | community | posted |
|---|---|---|
| What CRM are you using for your small business? | r/CRMSoftware | 2026-10-14 |
| If You Had to Pick the Best CRM for Small Business Today, What Would It Be? | r/CRMSoftware | 2026-08-13 |
| Tiny local businesses don't want a CRM. Here's what they asked for instead, after hundreds of calls. | r/CRM | 2026-10-13 |

## How to do it

1. **Connect once.** Add RouterGrowth to your agent over MCP, or call the REST API with one key. There is no Reddit account or app in the loop.
2. **Pass a keyword.** social.search takes platform reddit, the query and a limit. The phrase is matched against public posts across subreddits.
3. **Get JSON back.** Each post comes with its URL, title, body, subreddit and date, in the same shape as the other networks social.search covers.
4. **Go deeper on a thread.** Hand a post URL to social.comments for the replies, or read a whole subreddit's recent posts with social.posts.

## Ask it like this

- Find Reddit posts from the last month where small business owners ask which CRM to use, and list the tools they mention. (`social.search`)
- Search Reddit for our category, open the three busiest threads and summarise what people complain about. (`social.search`, `social.comments`)

## Connect

MCP server: `https://api.routergrowth.com/mcp`

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http routergrowth https://api.routergrowth.com/mcp
```

```bash
npm install -g routergrowth && routergrowth setup
routergrowth run -c social.search -i '{"platform": "reddit", "query": "crm for small business", "limit": 5}'
```

```bash
curl -X POST https://api.routergrowth.com/v1/run \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ROUTERGROWTH_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"capability": "social.search", "input": {"platform": "reddit", "query": "crm for small business", "limit": 5}}'
```

## Worth knowing

- **Not the official Reddit API.** RouterGrowth reads public Reddit data through its own providers. It does not use or resell Reddit's developer API, and it cannot post, vote or reply.
- **Search rows can lack votes.** Search results sometimes come back without likes and reply counts. Read the subreddit with social.posts when you need engagement.
- **One format for every network.** The same fields come back for X, LinkedIn, YouTube and the rest, so one parser covers all of them.

## Questions

### Is this the Reddit API?

No. It is an independent API that returns public Reddit posts. Reddit's terms and limits for its own API do not apply to your RouterGrowth key, and RouterGrowth does not speak for Reddit.

### Do I need a Reddit account?

No. You need a RouterGrowth key or the MCP connector, nothing on Reddit's side.

### Can it read private or quarantined subreddits?

No. Only public posts are returned.

### Does a search return comments?

No. It returns posts. Pass a post URL to social.comments to get its replies.

## Related

- [A hosted Reddit scraper your agent runs by naming a subreddit](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/reddit/scraper.md)
- [Scrape the newest posts of any public subreddit into clean rows](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/reddit/post-scraper.md)
- [Read a subreddit's posts without registering a Reddit developer app](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/reddit/developer-api.md)
- [Scrape the comments on a Reddit thread by pasting its link](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/reddit/comment-scraper.md)
- [Search every public subreddit for a phrase, in one API call](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/reddit/search-api.md)
- [What Reddit data costs through RouterGrowth, and how a call is billed](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/reddit/api-pricing.md)
- [Read Reddit from a Python script with one HTTP request, no PRAW setup](https://www.routergrowth.com/tools/reddit/python.md)