How to Scrape Reddit Without Getting Blocked: A 2026 Guide

Reddit killed its free API in July 2023. What used to be a simple praw call now requires OAuth approval that takes weeks, rate limits that make bulk collection useless, and pricing that starts at $0.24 per 1,000 API calls. But Reddit's data is still public. And there are still ways to collect it — legally, reliably, and at scale. Here's what actually works in 2026. Method 1: Reddit's Hidden JSON Endpoints This is the best-kept secret in web scraping. Reddit serves JSON for every single page. Just append .json to any URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/top.json?t=week&limit=25 No API key. No OAuth. No approval process. Just raw JSON. Here's a working Python example: import requests import time def scrape_subreddit ( subreddit , sort = " hot " , limit = 25 ): url = f " https://www.reddit.com/r/ { subreddit } / { sort } .json?limit= { limit } " headers = { " User-Agent " : " Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 " } response = requests . get ( url , headers = h