Reddit archive in 2026: where Reddit's history lives now

In 2026, a Reddit archive mostly means Arctic Shift. As of October 17, 2026, it was the only open archive still ingesting new Reddit posts and comments and publishing monthly dumps. PullPush blocks scripts, Pushshift is for approved moderators, the old torrents are gone, and the Wayback Machine lost most of its Reddit access in 2025.

"Reddit archive" can also mean two unrelated things. Reddit's own "archived" label locks old posts. Separately, a set of outside projects keep copies of Reddit's history, including posts and comments that have since been deleted. This post covers both, along with how to save your own account and how to search old posts that still exist. Every status below was checked on October 17, 2026.

Every Reddit archive, at a glance

For a deeper side-by-side of the three archive services, read Pushshift vs PullPush vs Arctic Shift.

What "archived" means on Reddit itself

"This post is archived" on Reddit doesn't mean anything was saved. It means the post is locked. Reddit's community settings article (checked October 17, 2026) describes the "Archive old posts" toggle: with it on, "posts within your community will automatically be archived after six months. This means users will not be able to vote or comment on posts older than six months."

You can still read and search an archived post. Moderators decide whether their community archives at all, so some subreddits let you reply to a five-year-old thread and others don't. To get a copy of something that has disappeared, you need one of the outside archives below.

Arctic Shift: the open Reddit archive

Arctic Shift offers a search page, an API and monthly data dumps. It picks up new content within seconds, so it holds copies of posts and comments that were deleted later. In a test on October 17 we looked up three comments that moderators had removed from an r/AskHistorians thread. Arctic Shift had captured two of them, 12 and 17 seconds after they were posted. The full test is in how to see deleted Reddit comments.

Status on October 17:

• Search and the API were answering. The newest r/AskHistorians comment it returned had been retrieved at 08:05 UTC that morning.
• The September 2026 dump was published on October 11, 2026. August came out on September 12 and July on August 9.
• There was a disruption this week. An issue filed October 15 reported that no new data was arriving. The maintainer replied "there are currently some disruptions, because of change reddit has made," and the next morning, "Should now be mostly caught up."
• Nobody knows yet what happens after March 2027, when Reddit closes public API access. Asked about it on October 9, the maintainer answered "Not sure yet what exactly will happen."

The API docs promise no uptime and ask heavy users to download the dumps rather than hammer the API. If you need a whole subreddit, use the dumps. Our Arctic Shift page covers the API parameters.

PullPush: closed to scripts

PullPush rebuilt Pushshift's old query style and ran the undelete viewer many people relied on after 2023. On October 17 its site showed us a Cloudflare security check, and a scripted request to its API came back HTTP 429 with the message "This website does not provide free scraping resources for agents."

Its data is also out of date. The third-party Reddit Archive search page, which can use PullPush as a backend, says in its own changelog that PullPush "only has data up to 20th May 2025." Use it for older material, searched by hand. Details are on our PullPush page.

Pushshift: moderators only

Pushshift was the original Reddit archive, and most tutorials still point to it. Since 2023 only moderators Reddit approves can use it, and only for moderation. On October 17 its API address redirected to a terms page that opens: "user certifies that they are a registered user of Reddit and a Reddit moderator." If you moderate a community and need an account's history there, Reddit supports this route. If you don't, it's closed to you. Our Pushshift page covers the access request.

The data dumps

For years, anyone who wanted all of Reddit downloaded a set of monthly compressed files from Academic Torrents, compiled by Watchful1 from Pushshift data. On July 24, 2026 he posted "Upon reddit's request, I am taking down my academic torrents pages".

The main public set is now Arctic Shift's monthly torrents. One of them, a "Top 40k subreddits" torrent, was reported down on October 14, and the issue was closed the same day. The files are large and you'll need scripts to read them.

Being able to find the files doesn't mean you're allowed to use them. Reddit's Data API Wiki (checked October 17, 2026) says "You must remove any user content in your possession that has been deleted from Reddit." Keeping that content is the whole point of an archive. If your work has to pass legal or ethics review, read Reddit's terms first and talk to whoever signs off.

The Wayback Machine

For a single thread, the Internet Archive used to be the easy fallback. In August 2025 Reddit restricted its access to post, comment and profile pages. The announcement got 2,542 upvotes in r/DataHoarder (the API response further down includes it).

Here is what that means now. On October 17 we asked the Wayback availability API for an r/AskHistorians thread from October 11 and an r/redditdev post from 2026, and it returned no snapshots for either. When we tried the CDX search service, which lists every capture of a URL, it showed "Temporarily Offline". Pages captured before August 2025 are still in the Wayback Machine, so older threads are worth a try.

Reddit for Researchers: the official route

Reddit runs its own archive access for academics. Its program page (updated about two weeks before we checked) asks for an accredited university affiliation, a proposal naming the subreddits you need, ethics board approval and a sponsor's institutional email. Access lasts a year at most, you query the data through BigQuery Analytics Hub, and participants "must ensure your findings do not include any data that has been deleted."

It's the slow, strict route, and the only one with Reddit's permission for research. That matters if a journal or ethics board will ask where your data came from.

Archive your own Reddit account

To save your own history, ask Reddit for it. Its data request article says to visit reddit.com/settings/data-request while logged in and submit the form. It "may take up to 30 days to prepare your data," and the download link arrives in your Reddit inbox or, in some cases, by email. If you're locked out, the same page lists an email address for requests.

If you can't wait, the same page says some of that data, "including your posts, comments, votes, recent IP addresses, account preferences, and any applications you've authorized", is visible in your account at any time. That only covers your own data, though. A thread you took part in still has to be saved separately.

Search Reddit's history that still exists

Often you don't need an archive. If a post hasn't been deleted, Reddit's own search reaches back years, and so does any API built on it. ChatterAPI exposes that search as GET /v1/reddit/search with time=all. It is independent and not affiliated with Reddit.

This is a real call from October 17, 2026, searching r/DataHoarder across all time for archive discussions:

curl "https://api.chatterapi.com/v1/reddit/search?q=reddit+archive&subreddit=DataHoarder&time=all&sort=top" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CHATTERAPI_KEY"

The response, trimmed to two of its 25 posts:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "142l1i0",
      "title": "ArchiveTeam has saved over 10.8 BILLION Reddit links so far. We need YOUR help running ArchiveTeam Warrior to archive subreddits before they're gone indefinitely after June 12th!",
      "author": "BananaBus43",
      "subreddit": "DataHoarder",
      "score": 3125,
      "numComments": 438,
      "createdAt": "2023-06-06T16:15:00.000Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "1mnjmku",
      "title": "Reddit will block the Internet Archive",
      "author": "Xanthon",
      "subreddit": "DataHoarder",
      "score": 2542,
      "numComments": 302,
      "createdAt": "2025-08-11T17:37:17.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "page": { "nextCursor": "AeSfdjQmslSi…", "hasMore": true },
  "credits": { "charged": 2, "remaining": 596 },
  "requestId": "req_01M550ERFZ48XZQ41CNA",
  "cached": false
}

The oldest result on that page dates from January 2021, so the search does go back that far. The limit is that Reddit's search only covers what is still on Reddit. Deleted and removed posts don't show up. Comments have a separate comment search endpoint, and the free Reddit post search tool runs the same query in a browser.

import os, requests

r = requests.get(
    "https://api.chatterapi.com/v1/reddit/search",
    params={"q": "reddit archive", "subreddit": "DataHoarder", "time": "all", "sort": "top"},
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['CHATTERAPI_KEY']}"},
    timeout=30,
)
for post in r.json()["data"]:
    print(post["createdAt"][:10], post["score"], post["title"][:80])

Should these archives exist?

The case against archives is a real one. Reddit gives privacy as one reason it restricted the Wayback Machine, and people who delete their posts often have good reasons. In September, one user told Arctic Shift that people were "looking up comments section you made in the past to doxx," even after they had deleted and edited every comment.

The case for them holds up too. Moderators use archives to catch bot networks, researchers use them to study communities, and anyone can use them to check what a deleted post said. Arctic Shift has a removal request form for people who want out, and its maintainer linked it in that issue.

Our view: use an archive only for something you could explain to the person whose words you're reading. Also expect the open archives to become less complete after Reddit closes public API access in March 2027. The Reddit API shutdown timeline has every date.

Search the Reddit that's still there

If what you need is still on Reddit, try a time=all search before you go to an archive. Sign up with Google and you get 100 free credits without entering a card. A search page costs 2 credits, so that covers 50 of them. Plans start at $19 a month for 25,000 credits. For deleted material, use Arctic Shift. Our Arctic Shift page explains how.