Thirdwatch Reddit Scraper vs trudax Reddit Scraper Lite
Both actors scrape Reddit posts, comments, and subreddits and return title, body, score, author, and media URLs. trudax's Reddit Scraper Lite is the breadth leader on the Apify Store — roughly 320K runs / 30 days across ~29K users — the actor most people reach for first. Thirdwatch's Reddit Scraper targets richer per-item extraction (full comment trees, flair, awards) for research and B2B-signal use cases. This is the honest comparison: trudax wins on scale and userbase; Thirdwatch wins on depth per item.
Head-to-head
| Dimension | Thirdwatch Reddit Scraper | trudax Reddit Scraper Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pay per result, 4 volume tiers (FREE→GOLD). No subscription. See Apify Store for current rates. trudax is tuned for the cheapest large breadth pulls; compare the live per-result rate at your volume. | Pay per result. No subscription. Optimized for cheap high-volume pulls. |
| Search scope | Global search or within specific subreddits; posts + comments + subreddit metadata | Posts, comments, subreddits, search — broad coverage, 'lite' surface |
| Fields per item | Title, body, score, comment count, author, flair, awards, media URLs Thirdwatch returns flair and awards — useful for community/segmentation analysis. | Core post/comment fields: title, body, score, author, media |
| Comment depth | Full comment trees per post Thirdwatch is the pick when full thread context matters (sentiment, B2B buyer signals). | Comments supported; lite-oriented depth |
| Throughput / scale | Solid for targeted research pulls; Camoufox-backed, so per-item cost is higher trudax is the choice for cheap, very-large breadth crawls. | Very high volume — ~320K runs / 30 days; built for breadth |
| Reliability approach | Camoufox stealth browser (Reddit IP-gated the public .json API across residential pools in 2026) | High-volume infrastructure tuned for the lite surface |
| Userbase (Apify Store) | Newer listing, smaller userbase, growing trudax is far more battle-tested at scale. | ~29K users — category breadth leader |
| Multi-source from one vendor | One API + MCP across Reddit, Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Google News and 70+ sources Thirdwatch wins if you want one billing relationship across multiple social sources. | Reddit-focused suite |
Pick Thirdwatch if…
- You need full comment trees, flair, and awards — not just top-level post fields
- Your use case is research, sentiment, or B2B buyer-signal mining where per-item depth beats raw volume
- You want Reddit alongside Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Google News under one API + MCP
- You want an LLM agent to call Reddit data directly via the MCP server
Pick trudax Reddit Scraper Lite if…
- You need the cheapest possible cost on very large breadth crawls
- You want the most battle-tested, highest-volume Reddit actor with the largest userbase
- Top-level post/comment fields are enough and you don't need flair/awards/full trees
- Your pipeline is already built around trudax's output schema
Notes
trudax's Reddit Scraper Lite earns its position — it's the high-volume, low-cost breadth tool, and for 'pull a lot of Reddit cheaply' it's the default for good reason. Thirdwatch's Reddit Scraper goes the other direction: richer per-item extraction (full comment trees, flair, awards) for teams doing sentiment analysis, community research, or B2B buyer-signal mining where the depth of each thread matters more than the raw row count.
A note on reliability and cost: in 2026 Reddit IP-gated its public `.json` API across Apify's residential proxy pool, so we migrated the actor to a Camoufox stealth browser. That keeps it working but makes our per-item cost higher than a lite breadth tool — which is exactly why we don't position it as the cheapest-at-scale option. Match the tool to the job: trudax for breadth and price, Thirdwatch for depth per item and for consolidating Reddit with the rest of our social catalog under one MCP.
Legal note: both actors read publicly visible Reddit content. You're responsible for compliance with Reddit's terms and applicable data-protection law when storing or sharing output. We aren't lawyers.
Try the Reddit Scraper for free
Sign in to Apify, run a test query, see the data yourself. Free credits cover ~100 results.