Community discovery

Try in Playground

Find public communities by topic with subscriber counts, descriptions, weekly visitors and contributions, 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.

order is relevance. Inspect complete and reasons on every response.

coverage.completeboolean

Always included.

coverage.reasonsstring[]

Always included.

coverage.orderenumoptional

Optional.

one of: newest_first, oldest_first, ranked, relevance, source_order

Optional.

coverage.window.sincestringoptional

Optional.

coverage.window.untilstringoptional

Optional.

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.weekly_visitorsnumbernullableoptional

Optional.

subreddits.weekly_contributionsnumbernullableoptional

Optional.

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": [],
    "order": "relevance"
  },
  "accounting": {
    "httpRequests": 2,
    "proxyBytes": 512,
    "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": 4821,
      "weekly_visitors": 1200,
      "weekly_contributions": 40,
      "icon_img": null,
      "over18": false,
      "created_utc": 1400000000,
      "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Example/"
    }
  ],
  "after": null
}

The request failed validation.

{
  "requestId": "string",
  "coverage": {
    "complete": true,
    "reasons": [
      "string"
    ],
    "order": "newest_first",
    "window": {
      "since": "2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
      "until": "2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
    }
  },
  "accounting": {
    "httpRequests": 0,
    "proxyBytes": 0,
    "durationMs": 0,
    "pageLoads": 0,
    "challengeCount": 0,
    "rssRequests": 0,
    "proxySessionId": "string"
  },
  "success": false,
  "status": "failed",
  "error": "string"
}