How to find Reddit threads about your product without the Reddit API

TL;DR: Reddit's official API is free only up to 100 queries per minute per OAuth client, and anything commercial needs a separate paid license that Reddit prices per deal, not on a public rate card. You have three real paths to find Reddit posts about your product: search Reddit manually and set up a free alert tool like F5Bot, build and maintain your own script against the API and accept the rate limit and ban risk, or use a tool that reads licensed commercial data and hands you a draft to paste yourself. I built the third one. All three have different costs and risks.

I found out about Reddit's rules the expensive way. I got a 28-day ban from r/SaaS, then a permanent ban from r/startups on 4 September 2026, both for replies that were helpful but broke a rule I hadn't read. That's what pushed me to build Radar the next day. If you're trying to find Reddit threads where someone is asking for what you built, you have three real ways to do it, and each one costs you something different.

This isn't a "just use the API" post. For most founders, the official Reddit API stopped being the easy default a while ago.

Why the official API stopped being the default

Reddit's API used to be effectively free for anyone building a bot or a small tool. That changed in 2023, when Reddit announced commercial pricing of $0.24 per 1,000 API calls, a move that priced out third-party apps almost overnight. Apollo, the popular iOS client, calculated it would owe roughly $20 million a year at its usage level and shut down on 30 June 2023 rather than pay it (TechCrunch, MacRumors). That was the moment a lot of developers stopped treating the Reddit API as a free utility.

Where things stand as of 2026-09-14, based on Reddit's own developer documentation and coverage that quotes it directly:

• The free tier caps out at 100 queries per minute per OAuth client, averaged over a 10-minute window, with no allowance at all for unauthenticated requests.
• Commercial use needs a separate written license, negotiated with Reddit directly, priced well beyond casual hobby use.
• Reddit tightened developer access further with a Responsible Builder Policy, which as of June 2026 requires explicit approval before any new OAuth client can start pulling data at all, with review taking a couple of weeks.
• Reddit's own user agreement bars collecting data from Reddit "by any means (automated or otherwise)" outside what the API terms or a separate agreement allow, and treats scraping without written consent as a breach of contract, not just a guideline.

I read these terms on 2026-09-14. If a specific dollar figure or limit isn't in this list, it's because I couldn't verify it directly against Reddit's own pages or a source quoting them, and I'd rather leave a gap than guess.

The API still works fine for a personal script that stays under the rate limit and never touches a commercial use case. But the moment you want it to run reliably for your business, watch more than a handful of keywords, or feed a product you charge for, you're either negotiating a license or in a gray area you didn't plan to be in.

Your options: three paths, in order of least to most set-up work.

Path 1: Manual search, sorted by new, plus a free alert tool

This is the path that costs no money and no code. It's also the one most founders already half-do and give up on.

Reddit's own search supports operators that narrow results fast:

• title:"your keyword" restricts the match to post titles.
• subreddit:name scopes a search to one community.
• Sorting by New instead of Relevance shows you what people are asking right now, not what's been upvoted for a year.
• Combine them: subreddit:smallbusiness title:"invoicing" sorted by new gets you fresh, on-topic posts fast.

The problem isn't finding threads once. It's finding them again tomorrow, and the day after, without forgetting. That's where a free alert tool earns its place. F5Bot watches Reddit (and Hacker News and Lobsters) for a keyword and emails you the moment it appears, and its core tier has been free since 2017. I wrote a full comparison at /vs/f5bot if you want the detail, but the short version is: F5Bot tells you a keyword showed up. It doesn't tell you if the poster wants a tool like yours, or whether the subreddit allows you to say so.

The real cost isn't money. It's your time. You check every hit F5Bot sends, then read that subreddit's rules before you say anything, because "someone mentioned my category" and "this subreddit lets founders answer" are different questions. Get that wrong and you're banned from r/startups, like I was.

Path 2: DIY against the API

If you'd rather write code than read alerts, you can register a Reddit app, get OAuth credentials, and poll /search or a subreddit's /new endpoint on a schedule. This works if you're a developer with time to spend on infrastructure rather than money.

The shape of it:

get_oauth_token(client_id, client_secret)
for each subreddit in watch_list:
    posts = get("/r/" + subreddit + "/new", token, limit=25)
    for post in posts:
        if keyword in post.title or keyword in post.body:
            save_or_alert(post)
sleep_until_next_poll()  # stay under 100 req/min

Ten lines of code. Three things go wrong for people who take this route:

1. The rate limit is real. 100 queries per minute per OAuth client sounds generous until you're watching thirty subreddits and want fresh results more than once an hour. You end up building a queue and a backoff strategy for what started as a weekend script.
2. Maintenance never stops. Reddit's API and policies change. The Responsible Builder Policy is a 2026 example: a script that worked fine in 2025 can suddenly need an approval you don't have. Keeping a scraper alive is an ongoing job, not a one-time build.
3. Ban risk goes up sharply if the same script also posts. A script that reads is low-risk. A script that also logs into your Reddit account and posts replies on a timer looks exactly like the automated behavior subreddit mods and Reddit's own anti-spam systems are built to catch. If you value your account, keep reading and posting as two separate, human-gated steps.

This path is legitimate and plenty of people run it well. But it trades money for your engineering time, indefinitely, and it puts the ban risk squarely on the step where a bot pretends to be you.

Path 3: Licensed data, human paste

I built Radar, so this section is about my own product. I run it on my own other products too, ColorHer and SHIP FM, not just on Radar itself, so the pipeline below is the one I actually use, not just the one I sell.

Radar never logs into Reddit and never touches Reddit's official API. It reads through licensed commercial data providers instead. That matters for the reasons above: no OAuth client to rate-limit, no scraper account that can get banned, and no gray area around automated collection, because the data comes from a properly licensed provider.

The pipeline works like this:

1. Scan. You paste your site's URL. Radar reads it into a product brief: what you built, who it's for, what it does and doesn't do.
2. Label the communities. For every subreddit that could be a fit, Radar reads that subreddit's actual posted rules (or its sidebar description if there are no rules) and up to 30 recent post titles, and labels it: promote, soft, hang out, or skip. This step is why the audit numbers matter: across 999 subreddits Radar has checked since 5 September 2026, 393 ban promotion outright and only 165 clearly allow it. Guessing wrong here is how you get banned.
3. Screen and score threads. A cheap first pass throws out posts that obviously aren't a fit. A second pass scores what's left 0 to 100 against your specific product, and explains why in one sentence, quoting the poster's own words.
4. Draft a reply, checked before you see it. Radar writes a reply that answers the question first and mentions your product, if at all, only in the final third, with disclosure. A separate check rejects and rewrites any draft that names the product where it shouldn't, makes a claim your site doesn't back up, or states a price. Then it's yours: you read it, edit it, and paste it into Reddit under your own username. Nothing is ever auto-posted.

That's the whole design. Radar doesn't replace the moment where a human decides to hit reply. It does the thirty minutes of unpaid research before that moment: is this thread worth my time, and what would I say.

Try the scan for free at Scan my site free to see which communities fit your product.

Path 1 vs. Path 2 vs. Path 3

No path removes the human decision to post. The three differ in how much of the research before that decision gets done for you, and how much risk you carry while doing it.

Does this break Reddit's terms

Short answer: no, and this is worth being precise about. Radar doesn't access Reddit's API, doesn't log into Reddit, and doesn't automate anything on Reddit itself. It reads through licensed commercial data providers, the same category of arrangement Reddit's own user agreement carves out an exception for when it says collection is fine if it's permitted "in a separate agreement with Reddit" or through a properly licensed channel, as opposed to unlicensed scraping. The posting step, the only part that touches your Reddit account, is you, typing, in your own browser, under your own username. There's no bot account, no rented login, and no auto-post button. Every reply Radar shows you still needs a human to read it, decide it's worth sending, and send it.

That's also the more general answer for path 1 and path 2: reading public Reddit content manually or through your own low-volume OAuth app is fine under Reddit's terms as long as you stay under the free rate limit and don't scrape outside the API. What gets accounts and apps in trouble is scale without a license, or a script that posts on its own.

For the subreddit-level rules, which are a separate thing entirely from Reddit's own API terms, see /blog/reddit-self-promotion-rules. Every subreddit sets its own line on self-promotion, and it has nothing to do with which of these three paths you used to find the thread.

The three paths

Manual search and a free alert tool cost nothing but your ongoing attention. You read every subreddit's rules yourself, every time. A DIY script against Reddit's API costs your engineering time up front and forever, plus real ban risk the moment it starts posting. Licensed data with human paste, which is Radar, costs a flat monthly fee and gives you the research done, the rules already read, and the decision to hit reply entirely yours.

Scan my site free to see where your product fits. No card required. For how other Reddit marketing tools compare on ban risk, see /blog/reddit-marketing-tools-ranked-by-ban-risk.

FAQ

Is it legal to search Reddit for mentions of my product?

Yes. Reading public posts through Reddit's own search, whether in a browser or through a low-volume OAuth app under the free rate limit, is exactly what those tools are for. The legal and terms-of-service questions start when you scrape at scale outside the API, or automate posting.

What's the cheapest way to monitor Reddit for keywords?

A free alert tool like F5Bot plus manually checking each hit against the subreddit's rules before you reply. It costs nothing but your time, and the time adds up once you're watching more than a couple of keywords.

How much does the Reddit API cost in 2026?

The free tier is still free, capped at 100 queries per minute per OAuth client. Commercial use requires a separate written license from Reddit, priced well beyond casual use, on top of the Responsible Builder Policy approval process that now gates new OAuth clients.

Will Reddit ban me for using a script to find posts?

Reading posts with your own OAuth app under the rate limit is low-risk. The risk jumps sharply if that same script, or any tool, also posts to Reddit on a schedule using your account or a purchased one. That pattern is what subreddit mods and Reddit's own systems are built to catch.

Does Radar post to Reddit for me?

No. Radar never logs into Reddit and never posts anything automatically. It finds and scores threads, drafts a reply, and checks that draft against your product's real facts and the subreddit's rules, then you read it, edit it, and paste it yourself under your own username.