Get Reddit Post Comments by Permalink

Full comment tree for a post. Returns a clean wrapper with the post, native Reddit comment tree nodes, and a pagination cursor.

Name the post however you hold it: its permalink, its URL, or its id. Pass exactly one of the first four parameters below.

Query Parameters

A URL is only read, never fetched: we take the post id or permalink out of it and read the thread from Reddit ourselves. A URL on any other host is refused with a 400. Reddit share links (/r/X/s/AbC123) do not contain the post id; open one in a browser and pass the URL it lands on.

A large thread is sized by these three knobs: limit=20&depth=1&sort=top reads the twenty best top-level comments and nothing below them. The response's meta block (limit_used, depth_used, sort_used) echoes what was applied, so a client can tell a small thread from a trimmed one.

Example

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "https://api.redditapis.com/api/reddit/comments?permalink=/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1sgjld3/"

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.redditapis.com/api/reddit/comments?permalink=/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1sgjld3/",
  { headers: { Authorization: "Bearer TOKEN" } }
);

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.redditapis.com/api/reddit/comments",
    params={"permalink": "/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1sgjld3/"},
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer TOKEN"},
)

With a URL or an id:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "https://api.redditapis.com/api/reddit/comments?url=https://redd.it/1sgjld3"

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "https://api.redditapis.com/api/reddit/comments?post_id=t3_1sgjld3"

Errors

Every 400 carries a stable code to branch on and a hint naming what to send instead. error keeps its wording, so existing checks still match.

{
  "error": "permalink is required",
  "code": "PERMALINK_REQUIRED",
  "field": "permalink",
  "hint": "Pass one of permalink=/r/<subreddit>/comments/<id>/<slug>/, url=<a reddit.com, old.reddit.com, www.reddit.com or redd.it post URL>, post_id=<id> or id=<id> (a t3_ prefix is optional)"
}

Response Shape

{
  "post": { "...": "same post shape as /api/reddit/post/:id" },
  "comments": [
    {
      "kind": "t1",
      "data": { "id": "abc", "body": "...", "author": "user123" }
    }
  ],
  "after": null
}

comments is Reddit's native comment tree, each node has kind: "t1" and data.replies containing child comments. post follows the posts field shape.

after is always empty here, and it means nothing

A comment thread is not a paged listing. Reddit gives no usable cursor for one, so after comes back null on a four-comment thread and on a four-thousand comment thread alike. If you read it the way you read a listing cursor, every thread looks complete.

The response tells you what it actually knows, in two extra fields:

A cut-short branch appears in comments as a node with kind: "more", carrying the ids of what was left out. See fetching by post id for how to read those.

Fetch by post ID instead of permalink

If you already have the post ID and not the full permalink, call the ID form. It returns the exact same response shape at the same price, so you never have to build a permalink just to read a thread.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "https://api.redditapis.com/api/reddit/comments/1sgjld3"

This is an alias of GET /api/reddit/post/{postId}/comments, both run the same handler. All three of these return the same thing:

Adding the ID form did not change the permalink form above; it still works exactly as documented, and existing integrations need no changes.