Thirdwatch Reddit Scraper vs trudax Reddit Scraper Lite
Both actors scrape Reddit posts, comments, and subreddits. trudax's Reddit Scraper Lite is the established breadth leader. Thirdwatch uses anonymous read-only OAuth to return 48 post fields plus configurable nested comments without a browser, proxy, startup fee, or separate comment-row charge. It also has persistent fail-closed new-post monitoring, so unchanged scheduled checks write no billable result rows.
Head-to-head
| Dimension | Thirdwatch Reddit Scraper API | trudax Reddit Scraper Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | $1.00/1K posts at FREE down to $0.40/1K at GOLD; no startup fee; embedded comments are included Compare the live rate, but include comment-row and startup charges—not just the headline post price. | 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 | 48 post fields: identity, body, engagement, subreddit, flair, awards, gallery, crosspost, moderation and media metadata Thirdwatch returns flair and awards — useful for community/segmentation analysis. | Core post/comment fields: title, body, score, author, media |
| Comment depth | Up to 100 comments per post with configurable depth 0–10; initial public tree only Thirdwatch is strong when thread context matters and you do not want each comment billed as another result. | Comments supported; lite-oriented depth |
| Throughput / scale | 100 posts/request; validated 500 unique posts in 11 seconds at 256 MB trudax has more production history; Thirdwatch's new HTTP path is materially faster and cheaper than its old browser build. | Very high volume — ~320K runs / 30 days; built for breadth |
| Reliability approach | Anonymous read-only OAuth over direct HTTP; bounded retries; persistent monitoring state advances only after every target completes | High-volume infrastructure tuned for the lite surface |
| Incremental monitoring | Native new-post mode with durable post-ID history, zero unchanged result rows, and at-least-once delivery Thirdwatch is designed for recurring watches, not only snapshot exports. | Use the live input schema to verify whether persistent incremental state is available |
| 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 rich post metadata plus configurable nested comments without per-comment billing
- You want scheduled new-post alerts without rebuilding deduplication downstream
- 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 prioritize the longest production track record over the newer low-cost implementation
- You want the most battle-tested, highest-volume Reddit actor with the largest userbase
- Its existing output schema is already deeply integrated into your pipeline
- Your pipeline is already built around trudax's output schema
Notes
trudax's Reddit Scraper Lite earns its position as an established, high-volume breadth tool. Thirdwatch's previous browser-backed version could not honestly compete with that cost structure. On July 16 we replaced it with Reddit's anonymous installed-client OAuth flow: direct structured JSON, 100 posts per request, no browser, no residential proxy, and no startup event. A 500-post cloud validation completed in 10.9 seconds with all 500 IDs unique and a measured internal cost of $0.00162 per 1,000 posts.
Thirdwatch charges $1.00/1K posts at FREE and $0.40/1K at GOLD, while embedding up to 100 initial-tree comments in each post row at no extra result charge. Persistent new-post mode keeps a bounded post-ID history, emits a baseline once, and then writes only newly observed posts. State advances after output and only when every target completes, favoring a repeat alert over a silently lost one. The limitation is explicit: hidden `more` branches are not expanded, engagement changes on already-seen posts do not trigger new-post alerts, and the implementation has less production history than trudax. Match the tool to the job: trudax for maximum track record; Thirdwatch for rich recurring monitoring and predictable comment-heavy economics.
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 API for free
Sign in to Apify, run a test query, see the data yourself. Free credits cover ~100 results.