Retrieve threads

Try in Playground

Retrieve posts and nested comments from canonical HTTPS www.reddit.com post permalinks. Reaching a cap or leaving unloaded comments returns partial.

POST/v1/threadsx-api-key

Headers

Get your API key

x-api-keystringrequiredheader

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

Content-Typestringrequiredheader

Must be application/json.

Request body

permalinksstring[]requiredbody

Required. 1–10 canonical HTTPS Reddit post permalinks, without query parameters or fragments.

up to 10 items

Example["https://www.reddit.com/r/example/comments/abc123/topic/"]

maxCommentsPerThreadintegerdefault: 50body

1–100 comments per thread; defaults to 50.

default: 50 · 1 – 100

Example50

maxDepthintegerdefault: 5body

1–5 reply levels; defaults to 5.

default: 5 · 1 – 5

Example3

Response fields

requestIdstring

Always included.

min 1 chars · max 128 chars

Always included.

accounting.pageLoadsinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.httpRequestsinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.proxyBytesinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.challengeCountinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.durationMsnumber

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.proxySessionIdstring

Always included.

min 1 chars · max 128 chars

accounting.rssRequestsintegeroptional

Optional.

≥ 0

statusstring

Always included.

up to 10 items

Always included.

threads.post.idstring

Always included.

min 1 chars · max 128 chars

threads.post.subredditstring

Always included.

threads.post.titlestring

Always included.

min 1 chars · max 1000 chars

threads.post.permalinkstring

Always included.

max 2048 chars · absolute HTTPS URL

threads.post.urlstring

Always included.

max 4096 chars · absolute HTTPS URL

threads.post.authorstringnullable

Always included.

threads.post.createdAtstring

Always included.

threads.post.scoreintegernullable

Always included.

threads.post.upvoteRationumbernullable

Always included.

threads.post.commentCountintegernullable

Always included.

threads.post.flairstringnullable

Always included.

threads.post.selftextstring

Always included.

max 4000 chars

threads.post.retrievalStatusenum

Always included.

one of: success, partial, challenged, failed

Always included.

up to 100 items

threads.comments.idstring

Always included.

min 1 chars · max 128 chars

threads.comments.postIdstring

Always included.

min 1 chars · max 128 chars

threads.comments.parentIdstringnullable

Always included.

threads.comments.depthinteger

Always included.

0 – 5

threads.comments.authorstringnullable

Always included.

threads.comments.createdAtstring

Always included.

threads.comments.scoreintegernullable

Always included.

threads.comments.bodystring

Always included.

max 2000 chars

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 -X POST "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/threads" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"permalinks":["https://www.reddit.com/r/example/comments/abc123/topic/"],"maxCommentsPerThread":50,"maxDepth":3}'

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/threads",
  {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
      "Content-Type": "application/json"
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      "permalinks": [
        "https://www.reddit.com/r/example/comments/abc123/topic/"
      ],
      "maxCommentsPerThread": 50,
      "maxDepth": 3
    })
  }
);

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/threads",
  {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": process.env.SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY!,
      "Content-Type": "application/json"
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      "permalinks": [
        "https://www.reddit.com/r/example/comments/abc123/topic/"
      ],
      "maxCommentsPerThread": 50,
      "maxDepth": 3
    })
  }
);

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.post(
    "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/threads",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    json={
        "permalinks": [
            "https://www.reddit.com/r/example/comments/abc123/topic/"
        ],
        "maxCommentsPerThread": 50,
        "maxDepth": 3
    },
    timeout=60,
)
data = response.json()
print(data["status"], data)

package main

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

func main() {
	body := strings.NewReader(`{"permalinks":["https://www.reddit.com/r/example/comments/abc123/topic/"],"maxCommentsPerThread":50,"maxDepth":3}`)
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/threads", body)
	req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
	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/threads"))
            .POST(HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString("{\"permalinks\":[\"https://www.reddit.com/r/example/comments/abc123/topic/\"],\"maxCommentsPerThread\":50,\"maxDepth\":3}"))
            .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
            .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. Shape generated from the runtime contract; values are placeholders.

{
  "requestId": "string",
  "accounting": {
    "pageLoads": 0,
    "httpRequests": 0,
    "proxyBytes": 0,
    "challengeCount": 0,
    "durationMs": 0,
    "proxySessionId": "string",
    "rssRequests": 0
  },
  "status": "success",
  "threads": [
    {
      "post": {
        "id": "string",
        "subreddit": "string",
        "title": "string",
        "permalink": "https://example.com/",
        "url": "https://example.com/",
        "author": "string",
        "createdAt": "2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
        "score": 0,
        "upvoteRatio": 0,
        "commentCount": 0,
        "flair": "string",
        "selftext": "string",
        "retrievalStatus": "success"
      },
      "comments": [
        {
          "id": "string",
          "postId": "string",
          "parentId": "string",
          "depth": 0,
          "author": "string",
          "createdAt": "2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
          "score": 0,
          "body": "string"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

The request failed validation.

{
  "requestId": "string",
  "accounting": {
    "pageLoads": 0,
    "httpRequests": 0,
    "proxyBytes": 0,
    "challengeCount": 0,
    "durationMs": 0,
    "proxySessionId": "string",
    "rssRequests": 0
  },
  "status": "partial",
  "threads": [
    {
      "post": {
        "id": "string",
        "subreddit": "string",
        "title": "string",
        "permalink": "https://example.com/",
        "url": "https://example.com/",
        "author": "string",
        "createdAt": "2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
        "score": 0,
        "upvoteRatio": 0,
        "commentCount": 0,
        "flair": "string",
        "selftext": "string",
        "retrievalStatus": "success"
      },
      "comments": [
        {
          "id": "string",
          "postId": "string",
          "parentId": "string",
          "depth": 0,
          "author": "string",
          "createdAt": "2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
          "score": 0,
          "body": "string"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "failure": {
    "code": "invalid_request",
    "message": "Invalid request: missing, duplicate, unsupported or malformed parameters."
  }
}