ThreadSnoop vs. Apify: Up to 267x Cheaper, 20x+ Faster

We ran a real test: the same live Reddit thread, pulled through Apify's most popular Reddit scraper and through ThreadSnoop, back to back. The result — up to 267x cheaper and 20x+ faster, for the identical request.

Where the gap comes from

Two separate things stack on top of each other. First, Apify bills per result — every post and every comment counted as its own charge — while ThreadSnoop bills per call, flat, regardless of how many comments come back. That's most of the 267x: a 100-comment thread is roughly 100 billed items on Apify, and one credit here.

Second, Apify's scrapers work by starting a job and waiting for it to run — the 23 seconds is a scraper visiting Reddit's live pages, the same way a browser would. ThreadSnoop reads Reddit data directly and answers in one request, no job to poll. That's the 20x+.

Both are worth the longer read if you want the full numbers and mechanics: the real cost of Apify's Reddit scraper has the complete cost breakdown, and the full Apify comparison covers the call-shape and reliability differences beyond just price.

Try it yourself

Don't take our numbers for it — this is a five-minute test on your own account.

1. Step 1: find a Reddit post with 100+ comments. Any active subreddit works — open a post and check the comment count Reddit shows on the page. The more comments, the bigger the gap you'll see, since comments are what drive it.
2. Step 2: grab the post ID from its URL. A Reddit URL looks like this:

   reddit.com/r/subreddit/comments/1abc23x/post-title/

   The ID is the string right after /comments/ (here, 1abc23x).
3. Step 3: run it through Apify. Open this actor page:

   apify.com/trudax/reddit-scraper-lite

   That's Reddit Scraper Lite, the most popular Reddit tool on Apify's store — click Try for free. Paste the post's URL into the start-URL field, turn on comments, and set the max comments high enough to cover the count you saw in Step 1 (e.g. 200 for a 150-comment post). Click Start, and once the run finishes, note the cost and time shown right on the run's page.
4. Step 4: run the same post through ThreadSnoop. Get a free API key, swap in your post ID, and run:
   curl

   curl "https://api.threadsnoop.com/v1/comments/tree?post_id=1abc23x&limit=500" \
     -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY"

   The response comes back in under a second, with credits_used: 1 — one flat credit, the whole thread included, however many comments it has.
5. Step 5: compare the receipts. Same post, same comments — see for yourself what each side actually billed and how long each one took.

New accounts get 1,000 free Reddit searches, no card required, so the ThreadSnoop side of the test costs nothing to run: get a free API key.

Bottom line

Same thread, same comments, a fraction of the cost and the wait — and it's a five-minute test to confirm on your own account rather than take our word for it.

Frequently asked questions