Reddit user search: how to find a user's posts and comments

Reddit user search means finding every public post and comment one account has made. You can do it three ways: Reddit's own search with the author: filter, the profile page, or an API that returns the account's post and comment history as JSON. The search bar works for a one-off check. When you need a full history, an export, or the same check across many accounts, only the API scales.

Below are all three, with real requests and responses, and the limits and privacy rules that apply.

What Reddit user search can and can't do

Reddit's search bar has an author: filter for posts. Reddit's search help page (checked Oct 14, 2026) describes it as "the user who submitted the post" and warns that author:cats works while author: cats, with a space, does not.

The filter has three gaps:

1. It only covers posts. Reddit documents author as a submission field. Comment search exists, but the same page says comment and user searches must match all of your words, and it documents no author filter for comments.
2. People can curate their profiles. Reddit's profile settings let someone hide posts and comments from selected communities, or hide everything, from their profile. Hidden content still appears in its original community and in search results.
3. You can't export anything. Results are read in a browser, one page at a time.

The browser is fine when you have one account and one question. For anything you'll repeat, use the API.

Search a user's posts with author:

To search Reddit posts by user, type the filter along with anything else you know:

author:spez
author:spez subreddit:reddit
author:spez title:"old reddit"

You can combine fields however you like. Reddit's own example is author:reddit subreddit:reddit search updates. Put multi-word values in quotes, and use uppercase AND, OR and NOT for boolean logic.

Reddit user history search on the profile page

The profile page (reddit.com/user/<name>) has Posts and Comments tabs, each sortable by New, Hot and Top. It's the fastest way to scroll through someone's recent activity. You can't filter it by keyword or date, though, and it only shows what the owner chose to make visible.

Search a user's comments

The search bar can't do this. To search a user's Reddit comments you have two practical options: scroll their Comments tab, or use an API that accepts an author.

ChatterAPI's comment search takes a keyword and an author together. GET /v1/reddit/comments/search with author= limits results to one account, so you can answer "has this person ever mentioned our product?" without reading their whole history.

curl "https://api.chatterapi.com/v1/reddit/comments/search?q=old+reddit&author=spez&sort=new" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CHATTERAPI_KEY"

Each page of up to 25 comments costs 2 credits. The free Reddit comment search tool runs the same query in a browser.

Reddit user search with the API

Four endpoints cover the whole job. All of them return the same envelope (data, page, credits), and none of them needs a Reddit developer account.

The examples use u/spez, Reddit's CEO, because it's a public account that posts company announcements. Every response below came from a test key and is trimmed to the useful fields. A test key returns one recorded real response per endpoint, for free.

Look up the profile

curl "https://api.chatterapi.com/v1/reddit/users/spez" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CHATTERAPI_KEY"

{
  "data": {
    "username": "spez",
    "createdAt": "2005-06-06T04:00:00.000Z",
    "karma": { "total": 941002, "post": 184509, "comment": 756493 },
    "bio": null,
    "badges": null
  },
  "credits": { "charged": 0, "remaining": 719 },
  "warnings": [{ "code": "partial_data", "fields": ["bio", "badges"] }]
}

Look at the warnings entry. A null bio here means the default lookup didn't return one. It doesn't mean the profile is empty. When you need bio and badges guaranteed, pass detail=full (3 credits). The free Reddit user lookup shows the same fields.

Pull the post history

curl "https://api.chatterapi.com/v1/reddit/users/spez/posts?sort=new" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CHATTERAPI_KEY"

{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "1vgbkge",
      "title": "Modernizing Reddit’s infrastructure with you",
      "score": 356,
      "numComments": 478,
      "createdAt": "2026-08-05T16:03:56.000Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "1tvsa59",
      "title": "Hi redditstock, leave your questions, and we’ll be back later today to answer them.",
      "subreddit": "redditstock",
      "score": 108,
      "numComments": 29,
      "createdAt": "2026-06-03T15:11:07.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "page": { "nextCursor": null, "hasMore": false }
}

sort accepts new, top, hot and controversial. The post history tool exports the same list as CSV or JSON.

Pull the Reddit comment history

curl "https://api.chatterapi.com/v1/reddit/users/spez/comments?sort=new" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CHATTERAPI_KEY"

{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "p1w9j2v",
      "postTitle": "Modernizing Reddit’s infrastructure with you",
      "subreddit": "u_spez",
      "score": 24,
      "body": "Karma and Age gates are really blunt tools that, while we understand why they are used today, end up with a blast radius making the it hard for (good) new users finding a way to participate...",
      "bodyTruncated": false,
      "createdAt": "2026-08-05T17:29:13.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "page": { "nextCursor": "ATGVwunAGuaISk…", "hasMore": true }
}

Each comment includes the title of the post it replies to, so you can read it in context. If bodyTruncated is true, the text came from a fallback source that only has previews. Retrying later usually returns the full text. The free comment history tool does the same thing without code.

Find the right account first

Half of "Reddit user search" queries come down to "which account is the real one?" GET /v1/reddit/users/search matches a keyword against usernames and profiles:

curl "https://api.chatterapi.com/v1/reddit/users/search?q=hubspot&limit=10" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CHATTERAPI_KEY"

{
  "data": [
    { "username": "hubspot", "createdAt": "2020-08-07T22:01:06.000Z",
      "karma": { "total": 8 }, "badges": { "verified": true, "moderator": true } },
    { "username": "HubSpotHelp", "createdAt": "2024-11-20T09:07:45.000Z",
      "karma": { "total": 998 }, "badges": { "verified": true, "moderator": true } },
    { "username": "HubSpotDev", "createdAt": "2020-09-21T16:35:57.000Z",
      "karma": { "total": 12 }, "badges": { "verified": true, "moderator": false } }
  ],
  "page": { "nextCursor": "AVp5Y7KI6gxs…", "hasMore": true }
}

Three verified HubSpot accounts come back. The one with the brand name has 8 karma, and the support account has 998. If you want to read what a company says on Reddit, look at the support account, because that's where the comments are. The free Reddit user search tool runs the same query.

Build a full history export

This Python script pages through an account's comments and writes them to CSV. It follows page.nextCursor until hasMore is false, and it stops at a page cap so a very active account can't drain your balance.

import csv, os, requests

KEY = os.environ["CHATTERAPI_KEY"]
BASE = "https://api.chatterapi.com/v1/reddit/users"

def comment_history(name, max_pages=10):
    cursor, rows = None, []
    for _ in range(max_pages):
        params = {"sort": "new", "limit": 100}
        if cursor:
            params["cursor"] = cursor
        r = requests.get(f"{BASE}/{name}/comments", params=params,
                         headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {KEY}"}, timeout=30)
        r.raise_for_status()
        body = r.json()
        rows += body["data"]
        if not body["page"]["hasMore"]:
            break
        cursor = body["page"]["nextCursor"]
    return rows

rows = comment_history("spez")
with open("spez_comments.csv", "w", newline="") as f:
    w = csv.DictWriter(f, fieldnames=["createdAt", "subreddit", "score", "postTitle", "body", "url"],
                       extrasaction="ignore")
    w.writeheader()
    w.writerows(rows)
print(len(rows), "comments")

To export submissions instead, swap /comments for /posts. Ten pages cost 20 credits. To group activity by community, count subreddit across the rows. The counts show where an account spends its time, which helps before you invite someone to an AMA or vet a moderator applicant.

Limits worth knowing

• Reddit's listings don't go back forever. In r/redditdev, one developer answering an export question said "You can get the latest 1000 items through the API" (u/Khyta). For very active accounts, treat the export as recent history rather than a complete archive.
• If someone has curated their profile, the profile listings only show what they chose to show. Their posts still exist in the communities where they made them.
• Deleted posts and removed accounts don't come back through these endpoints. Use GET /v1/reddit/users/{name}/status to tell an active account from a suspended or missing one. There's more on that in how to check a Reddit shadowban.
• Each page costs 2 credits, and failed calls are free.

Privacy rules for Reddit user search

Search results for this topic are full of tools that promise to reveal "private" and deleted Reddit activity. This guide leaves them out on purpose.

Reddit's third rule (checked Oct 14, 2026) says: "Instigating harassment, for example by revealing someone’s personal or confidential information, is not allowed." A pseudonymous account's history also gives away more than it seems to. A 2026 preprint by researchers from ETH Zurich and Anthropic, Large-scale online deanonymization with LLMs, reports LLM pipelines "achieving up to 68% recall at 90% precision" when matching pseudonymous profiles, split Reddit histories included.

Set your rules before you run the script:

• Use public data only. Don't try to recover hidden or deleted content.
• Don't dox anyone. Never combine an account's history with other sources to work out who someone is.
• Have a reason. Moderation, vetting an applicant, checking a brand account and research on aggregated activity are all fine. Curiosity about a stranger isn't.
• Store little and delete early. Keep only the fields you need, and drop the export when the job is done.
• Never message anyone based on it. A comment history isn't consent to contact. For research uses, see how we pull pain points from Reddit without tracking individuals.

Look up an account now

Start with the free tools: Reddit user search, comment history and post history. When you need the same lookups in code or in an agent, the endpoints work over REST or the hosted MCP server. Our Reddit API guide covers authentication, pagination and errors.

ChatterAPI gives your code and your agents Reddit and X data through one key, over REST or MCP. You don't have to apply for a developer account. Sign up with Google for 100 free credits with no card. Plans start at $19/month for 25,000 credits.