r/redditdev

Hola devs! 

Just a quick note on an upcoming change to how comment IDs will increase going forward. 

TL;DR:  if you have anything in your code that expects comment IDs to be fewer than 8 characters you will need to make an adjustment. 

Technical gibberish details:

• New comment IDs will continue to be 64-bit integers and base36-encoded, but will not be monotonically increasing anymore
• The key visible difference is that the new base36-encoded comment IDs will be up to 13 characters long (e.g. 19gsnavtu46ip), compared to the current 7-8 characters
• With the t1_ prefix, the new base36-encoded comment IDs will be up to 16 characters long (e.g. t1_19gsnavtu46ip)
• Older comment IDs are not changing, and referencing them will not break anything

This change will start rolling out the week of May 18th. Let me know if you have any questions about this change.

Mod Tools Hackathon!

Hi mods!

I’m u/Togapr33 with Reddit’s Community team, where I lead marketing for Reddit’s Developer Platform. 

In case you’re not familiar, Reddit’s Developer Platform gives developers a way to build apps that work directly on Reddit. As a moderator, you can bring these apps into your community – everything from mod tools to community experiences to games. (You can see a comprehensive list of apps for mods here!)

And as someone who has spent the last couple of years talking with mods about Developer Platform tools, I’ve seen firsthand how important effective tools are to running your communities. That’s why we're excited to announce a virtual Reddit hackathon from April 29 to May 27 focused entirely on building and upgrading moderation tools.

This is an opportunity to inspire developers to create new community tools or improve the ones you already rely on. If you’re a developer yourself, maybe you’ll throw your hat in the ring and build something too! 

What we're looking for

We’d love to see developers in this hackathon build tools with Reddit’s Developer Platform that directly help with day-to-day moderation, like:

• Better queue management
• Automated enforcement tools
• Creative community-building tools
• Anything that makes modding easier and improves community health

Did I mention we're offering a total of $45,000 in prizes? 

Prize categories

1. New Mod Tool: For brand-new tools built with Reddit’s Developer Platform that make moderation easier
   • Grand Prize: $10,000 for the most innovative tool that solves a significant moderator pain point
   • 5 Runner-Ups: $1,000 each
2. Ported App: For existing bots or tools migrated from the Data API to Devvit 
   • Grand Prize: $10,000 for the most successful migration of an existing, widely-used moderation bot. These apps can also be eligible for our new App Migration Program.
   • 5 Runner-Ups: $1,000 each
3. Moderator’s Choice: Chosen by experienced Reddit mods
   • Prize: $10,000.
4. Helper Award: For participants who help others through testing, support, troubleshooting, or collaboration 
   • 6 Winners: $500 each
5. Feedback Award: For thoughtful, actionable, constructive feedback on tools, resources, bugs and issues encountered during the event 
   • 10 Winners: $200 each

 

If you know a developer who has built an essential tool for your community, please share this with them! This is the perfect time for them to earn a cash prize while upgrading that tool for stability and ease of installation. Enrollment is open now!

Winning apps are also eligible for the Reddit Developer Funds and our App Migration Program.

We can't wait to see what gets built during this hackathon and how it makes moderation on Reddit better.

Lastly, if you have an idea for a mod tool that should be built and want to link up with a developer, check out our hackathon post on r/devvit or join our Devvit Discord.

I’m reworking my application and trying to understand what level of detail Reddit expects around:

• architecture/system design
• data usage explanations
• compliance/policy considerations
• rate limiting and storage practices

Also wondering what kinds of projects/use cases tend to get approved more consistently.

And are there other legitimate approaches developers use to obtain authorized Reddit API access for development or research-oriented purposes?

Would appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone through the process recently.

I mod r/GetMotivatedMindset. The sub runs on throwback questions and casual engagement posts different times, different days, spread across the whole month. Monday mornings get one type. Friday evenings get another. We're talking 100+ posts planned out in advance.

I was doing this manually.

Open Reddit. Write the post. Schedule it. Repeat. For every. Single. One. If the times were slightly off, engagement tanked. If I forgot one, the sub went quiet. Doing 100 posts took me literal hours and I still made mistakes.

What I actually wanted: write all my posts in a spreadsheet, export, upload, done.

So I built Samurai Salvo a Reddit-native post scheduler that lives inside your subreddit. No sketchy third-party tools. Runs on Reddit's own infrastructure.

The feature that changed everything for me: bulk import via JSON. I plan my entire month in a spreadsheet, export it, paste the JSON, hit import. All 100+ posts scheduled in under a minute.

json

[
  {"title": "Throwback Thursday: What's a habit that changed your life?", "scheduledAt": "2026-06-05T09:00", "flair": "Discussion"},
  {"title": "What are you working on this week?", "scheduledAt": "2026-06-07T18:00", "flair": "Check-in"},
  ...
]

Other things it handles:

• Flair picker pulls your sub's actual templates (copy-pasting flair text used to silently fail my posts)
• Recurrence weekly posts auto-reschedule after firing
• If a post fails, you see the exact error and can retry with one click
• Engagement stats at 24h and 7d per post

The sub is more consistent now than it's ever been. And I didn't spend my Sunday afternoon scheduling posts.

It's live at developers.reddit.com/apps/samurai-salvo — free to install on any sub you mod.

If you manage high-volume posting schedules, happy to answer questions.

Hi all, I’m currently trying to gather posts and comments from Reddit but since they’ve now closed their public api, it’s becoming quite a challenge. My aim is to gather the top 50 posts of about 15 subreddits each month along with their comments. From what I’ve found out my options are using the undocumented .json on the endpoint for each subreddit, using old.reddit or using playwright to automate a browser.

I need your expert advice as to how to tackle this problem. Thanks

Hi everyone,

I wanted to ask whether anyone is currently still trying to obtain Reddit API access for research purposes and whether anyone has successfully received approval recently.

I submitted a full application with detailed research plans, ethics approval documents, and supporting materials. However, after waiting for five weeks, I only received the following template rejection:

>

The confusing part is that I carefully checked all the requirements beforehand and followed others' comments on Reddit and made sure my application complied with the policies as much as possible.

So I’m wondering:

• Has anyone here successfully obtained Reddit API access for academic/research purposes recently?
• Has anyone had a similar experience of receiving a vague template rejection despite providing sufficient documentation?
• Is it currently almost impossible to get access, even for legitimate academic researchers with ethics approval?
• Are there specific ways to prepare an application that improve the chances of approval?

I would really appreciate hearing about others’ experiences, timelines, or any advice you may have. I’m mainly trying to understand whether researchers are still realistically able to obtain access at the moment.

Thank you so much in advance.

Hey everyone 👋

I recently started exploring the Reddit API and wanted to learn more about how developers are using it in real projects.

I mainly work with Next.js and Python, and I’m interested in building automation tools, analytics dashboards, or AI-powered integrations using Reddit data.

What API wrappers, tools, or documentation would you recommend for beginners getting into the Reddit ecosystem?

I keep feeling like “one more improvement” before sharing…

But I’m starting to think that’s just avoidance.

How do you decide when something is ready to show people?

We (Me and a member of a mod team) got access to the Reddit API. We had requested access 3+ months ago and the request was accepted 2 months ago and we only saw the acceptance e-mail now. I just wanted to share some positive news with the subreddit and say that there's still some hope for everyone out there.

Before Reddit cracked down on API, I created a script on this account and I have been using my account for some basic automations like removing media posts that the AutoModerator couldn't catch and for removing posts with a certain flairs on certain days. I have also been using it to power a Discord bot to send modmails and posts in our Discord server.

We've got this API access for moderation purposes and it's on a shared account. What moderator tools could we make with this API access? I'm looking forward to some creative replies. Thank you for your help :)

So given the following reddit post url:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1cufcf/what_luxury_item_is_actually_worth_the_money/

if someone adds .json in the end of the url, like so:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1cufcf/what_luxury_item_is_actually_worth_the_money/.json

they get back a JSON representation of the whole reddit post (including its comments).

Now if you scroll to end of the first url, no more comments will be loaded unless you click on load more comments. The newly loaded comments exist in the JSON response only as ids, and only the first batch, i.e. if there is a second load more comments, its ids do not exist.

So my question is, how do I use .json in the end of a reddit url to load more comments?

Is it possible to get posting rules such as minimum / maximum title and body character requirement , need of flair , requirement of certain information in post or requirement of post structure that must be followed ?

I want rules enforced by auto mod and not specified by sub wiki

I’m trying to create a simple script app for PRAW on old.reddit.com/prefs/apps but the CAPTCHA just keeps looping forever.

I fill everything out properly, select “script”, complete the CAPTCHA, click “create app”, and then it just refreshes the page and asks me to verify again. No error message or anything.

I’ve already tried:

• old.reddit.com
• incognito
• different browsers
• disabling extensions
• logging out/in again

I've already done like 10 Captchas, it literally loops forever.

Is Reddit’s app creation just broken right now or is there some workaround?

I have a script on my server that calls a limited number of requests for json each day (<2000) but I've been IP blocked.

Is there an avenue for appeal?

I've applied for the api but my use case isn't moderation and I can't see it fitting into devvit either.

hello. thanks for reading. I'm getting pretty knowledgeable on the API. No expert, but I've been doing a lot of research and development, pretty far down the road. A number of people have asked me in DMs. Everyone I respond to, and it takes quite a bit of time. I thought I'd summarize here.

#1 Kinda API Summary

There's a number of technologies/processes that tackle this problem. many/most are cumbersome and very technical. I've dived into as many/all under the hood to understand Reddit's actual policy implemented since any real straight answer from anyone is really impossible. I've gone quite deep in reviewing the real code of as many as I can obtain responsibly. And I've reviewed pretty deeply a number of extensions code as well. Many people are well minded but just don't know what they're saying unfortunately in many posts. There's a lot of declaration and hearsay, about 50% is correct, that I've found.

#2 Why

I'm a 3-month Redditor that hard a hard time knowing where I posted what I posted when and so on. so, I started building a tool for myself to correct that. Ended up, I built three tools the first was cool - but I had to manually insert a Reddit token to operate OAUTH, and it gathered up all my posts and comments and anyone else too. the 2nd tool I built a plugin to semi-automate OAUTH, though very cool, it was 2 step - kinda , just a bit clunky. And the third is fully automated as an app and as an engine that performs standalone for independent development. Finally, I have a very cool, useful Chrome extension that shows top info of any page of Reddit you view, quite informative with count, karma, and votes. I use it constantly.

#3 Common Solutions

Common solutions are .json and less so, .rss. and then there's scrapers. I don't scrape, anything. And there's extensions, some with previous API keys that want to login and manipulate your account, and others not. There are situations where Reddit doesn't perform and a combination of .json and OAUTH is needed/beneficial, I've found in my use.

Thank you. I am human and Stephen.

hello, i'm building a application to link telegram with reddit(espescially for not english-users!) and for that I would need QAUTH or the oldschool API-Acces. And especially in other countries its better to use telegram then reddit

Did anyone here had any positve outcome?

I wanna build a specialized search for Reddit for my personal use that allows me to scan reddit more efficiently for user problems for my app.

Does reddit have APIs to support this?