Community discovery

Try in Playground

Find public communities by topic with descriptions, member counts, images and pagination.

GET/v1/reddit/subreddits/searchx-api-key

Headers

Get your API key

x-api-keystringrequiredheader

Your ScrapeAtlas customer key. Create one on /account/ and set SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY.

Query parameters

querystringrequiredquery

Topic or keyword to find communities.

min 1 chars · max 500 chars

Examplesynthetic topic

limitintegerdefault: 25query

Number of communities per page, 1–25; defaults to 25.

default: 25 · 1 – 25

Example25

afterstringquery

Return the signed after token with the same inputs to continue.

max 5000 chars

Response fields

requestIdstring

Always included.

coverage.completeboolean

Always included.

coverage.reasonsstring[]

Always included.

accounting.httpRequestsinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.proxyBytesnumber

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.durationMsnumber

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.pageLoadsinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.challengeCountinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.rssRequestsinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.proxySessionIdstring

Always included.

successboolean

Always included.

statusenum

Always included.

one of: success, partial

Always included.

up to 25 items

subreddits.idstring

Always included.

subreddits.namestring

Always included.

subreddits.display_namestring

Always included.

subreddits.titlestringnullable

Always included.

subreddits.public_descriptionstringnullable

Always included.

subreddits.subscribersnumbernullable

Always included.

subreddits.icon_imgstringnullable

Always included.

subreddits.over18booleannullable

Always included.

subreddits.created_utcnumbernullable

Always included.

subreddits.urlstring

Always included.

afterstringnullable

Return the signed after token with the same inputs to continue.

HTTP 200 returns the success variant. Check status: partial means usable data with warnings, and failed or challenged requests carry a failure object described in Errors & responses.

Error codes

HTTP	failure.code	Meaning
400	`invalid_request`	The request failed validation.
401	`invalid_request`	The internal service secret is invalid.
503	`upstream_error` `breaker_open`	Proxy unavailable or thread retrieval temporarily paused.
502	`upstream_error`	Retrieval failed.
504	`timeout`	The deadline expired; available results are retained.
200	`partial` `challenged`	Inspect status and failure even when HTTP succeeds.

Code example

curl "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/reddit/subreddits/search?query=synthetic+topic&limit=25" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/reddit/subreddits/search?query=synthetic+topic&limit=25",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"
    }
  }
);

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.status, data);

type Result = {
  status: "success" | "partial" | "failed" | "challenged";
  requestId: string;
  [field: string]: unknown;
};

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/reddit/subreddits/search?query=synthetic+topic&limit=25",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": process.env.SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY!
    }
  }
);

const data = (await response.json()) as Result;
if (data.status === "failed" || data.status === "challenged") {
  throw new Error(`Reddit request failed: ${data.requestId}`);
}
console.log(data);

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/reddit/subreddits/search",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    params={
        "query": "synthetic topic",
        "limit": 25
    },
    timeout=60,
)
data = response.json()
print(data["status"], data)

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
)

func main() {
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/reddit/subreddits/search?query=synthetic+topic&limit=25", nil)
	req.Header.Set("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
	resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()

	var data map[string]interface{}
	json.NewDecoder(resp.Body).Decode(&data)
	fmt.Println(data["status"], data)
}

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        var client = HttpClient.newHttpClient();
        var request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .uri(URI.create("https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/reddit/subreddits/search?query=synthetic+topic&limit=25"))
            .GET()
            .header("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
            .build();
        var response = client.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
        System.out.println(response.body());
    }
}

Use your sa_live_… customer key at https://api.scrapeatlas.com.

Responses

Successful result. Synthetic example validated against the runtime contract.

{
  "requestId": "synthetic-request",
  "success": true,
  "status": "success",
  "coverage": {
    "complete": true,
    "reasons": []
  },
  "accounting": {
    "httpRequests": 1,
    "proxyBytes": 256,
    "durationMs": 100,
    "pageLoads": 0,
    "challengeCount": 0,
    "rssRequests": 0,
    "proxySessionId": "synthetic-session"
  },
  "subreddits": [
    {
      "id": "abc",
      "name": "t5_abc",
      "display_name": "Example",
      "title": "Example community",
      "public_description": "Synthetic community",
      "subscribers": 42,
      "icon_img": null,
      "over18": false,
      "created_utc": 1700000000,
      "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Example/"
    }
  ],
  "after": null
}

The request failed validation.

{
  "requestId": "string",
  "coverage": {
    "complete": true,
    "reasons": [
      "string"
    ]
  },
  "accounting": {
    "httpRequests": 0,
    "proxyBytes": 0,
    "durationMs": 0,
    "pageLoads": 0,
    "challengeCount": 0,
    "rssRequests": 0,
    "proxySessionId": "string"
  },
  "success": false,
  "status": "failed",
  "error": "string"
}