🐭 Lemmy Scraper

Scrape posts and comments from any Lemmy instance — the federated, open-source Reddit alternative. No login. No rate-limit nightmares. Works with lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, sh.itjust.works, and any other instance.

🎯 Built for AI/LLM training datasets, fediverse research, brand monitoring on emerging platforms, and Reddit alternatives analysis.

---

✨ What you can do

• 🏘️ Community posts — pull all posts from one or many communities
• 🔍 Search — keyword search across an instance
• 🌐 Instance feed — top/hot/new across the whole instance
• 💬 Optional comment trees — flattened with paths for tree reconstruction
• 🔁 Sort options — Hot, Active, New, Top (multiple ranges), MostComments
• 🌍 Cross-instance federation aware (asklemmy@lemmy.ml)

---

🚀 Quick start

{
    "instance": "lemmy.world",
    "mode": "community",
    "communities": ["technology@lemmy.world", "asklemmy@lemmy.ml"],
    "sort": "Top",
    "topRange": "TopWeek",
    "maxItems": 200
}

---

📥 Input

Field	Description
instance	Hostname (e.g. lemmy.world)
mode	community / search / instance
communities	Names like tech or tech@lemmy.world
searchQueries	Keywords
sort	Hot, Active, New, Top, MostComments, NewComments
topRange	When sort = Top: TopHour … TopAll
maxItems	Cap per target
includeComments	Fetch comment trees

---

📤 Output (per post)

{
    "instance": "lemmy.world",
    "community": "technology",
    "title": "Some headline",
    "body": "Body text or empty",
    "creator": "username",
    "creatorActor": "https://lemmy.world/u/username",
    "score": 123,
    "upvotes": 130,
    "downvotes": 7,
    "comments": 42,
    "publishedAt": "2026-04-15T...",
    "url": "https://example.com/article",
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://...",
    "nsfw": false,
    "apId": "https://lemmy.world/post/123456",
    "postUrl": "https://lemmy.world/post/123456",
    "commentsList": [
        {
            "id": 9999,
            "creator": "commenter",
            "content": "Reply text",
            "score": 12,
            "publishedAt": "...",
            "path": "0.123.456"
        }
    ]
}

---

🎯 Use cases

Who	Why
🤖 AI/LLM teams	Reddit-style training data without Reddit's API gate
📚 Researchers	Federation studies, online community migration patterns
📊 Marketers	Track brand mentions on emerging platforms
📰 Journalists	Source mining on Reddit-alternative communities

---

⚙️ Tech notes

• Uses Lemmy's official /api/v3 REST endpoints — fully open, no key required
• Federation-aware: community@instance syntax works for any cross-instance pull
• Pagination via page parameter; auto-stops when no new posts returned
• Comment trees fetched separately and capped per post for performance