Where You Can Search Reddit Comments, and Where You Can't

How do you search Reddit comments?

Reddit gives you three built-in ways to search Reddit comments: pick the Comments result type after a site-wide search, use the search bar inside a single post, or search from inside one community. Each covers a different scope, so choose by the question you are asking, not by habit.

Reddit's "How does Reddit search work?" article lists five content types a search returns: posts, communities, comments, media and people. It describes comments as the type "for any discussion heavy topic you're searching for (e.g., advice or set of recommendations)". That is Reddit's own recommendation, and it matches where buying questions get answered: the question sits in the post, the tool names sit in the replies.

How do you run a comment search across all of Reddit?

Open the search bar, run your query, then switch the result type to Comments. The whole procedure takes four steps:

1. Type the phrase into the search bar on reddit.com or in the app and run the search.
2. Choose Comments from the result types.
3. Set the sort to Relevance, Top or New. Those three are the only comment sorts Reddit lists.
4. Open a result and read the parent comment and the post before you reply, since a comment out of context misreads the thread.

To narrow the scope to one subreddit, run the search from that community's page. Reddit says the community name "will appear as a pill in the search bar", and that the People filter "is not available if you're searching within a community". Clicking "Show results from all of Reddit" widens the scope again.

How do you search the comments inside one post?

Use the comment search built into the post page. Reddit's "Available search features" article gives the steps for each platform: "On our native apps, search the comments of a post by tapping the search icon whenever you're on a post. On our desktop site, search comments by clicking on the search bar by the comments section, below the comment box."

In-post search is the fastest way to check a 900-comment thread for your product name or a competitor's before you add a reply. If another commenter already recommended the tool you were about to mention, a second recommendation from you reads as a pitch, and a reply to theirs with something they left out reads as help.

Why does comment search return fewer results than post search?

Comment search matches every word, while post search matches any of them. Reddit states the rule in the same help article: when searching posts, "results only need to include some of your search words", but when searching comments or users, "results must currently include all of your search words".

The practical fix is to search comments with short phrases. "crm for small agency" as four words demands all four in one comment. "agency crm" finds more. The rule is covered alongside every documented operator in the Reddit search operators guide, so the operator syntax is not repeated here.

One gap matters for comment work. Every operator in Reddit's help centre is defined against a post field. author is "The user who submitted the post", selftext is "The body of the post", and title is "The submission title". Reddit does not say whether any operator applies to comment results, so test an operator in the Comments tab before you trust it. Plain boolean operators are the safer bet: Reddit documents AND, OR and NOT for search without restricting them to posts.

Which sorts work on comment search results?

Relevance, Top and New, and nothing else. Reddit's "What filters and sorts are available?" article ends with one line on comments: "For comments, you can sort by Relevance, Top, and New." Hot and Comment Count exist for post results only.

Reddit describes Relevance for posts as a sort that "factors in the relative rarity of each word (biasing towards words which are less common), age of the post, and number of votes and comments it has". It gives no separate description for comment relevance. The same article offers a time filter of all time, past year, month, week, 24 hours and hour, and does not say whether that filter applies to comment results. New is the sort to use when you are hunting for a question asked this week, since it ignores votes.

Can you search one user's comments?

Not with a documented operator. author: is documented for posts, so the reliable route is the user's profile, where the comment history is a list you scroll or sort rather than search.

Reddit's API reference exposes that list as /user/{username}/comments. It takes sort as one of hot, new, top and controversial, a t window of hour, day, week, month, year or all, and a limit of 25 by default and 100 at most. Pull the list sorted by top and scan it in a browser with find-in-page when you need one user's views on a topic.

Can you search Reddit comments through the API?

No. The API reference documents GET /search with a type parameter that takes "comma-delimited list of result types (sr, link, user)". Subreddits, posts and users. Comments are not an option, so the comment search you see on reddit.com has no documented API equivalent.

The API's comment access is per thread or per user:

• /comments/{article} returns one post's comment tree, with sort, depth, limit and a context value between 0 and 8 for a focused comment.
• /api/morechildren fetches the replies hidden behind "more comments" stubs "up to 100 at a time", and Reddit warns that "you may only make one request at a time to this API endpoint".
• /user/{username}/comments returns one user's history, as above.

Finding keywords in comments through the API therefore means fetching threads first and matching text yourself, which runs straight into Reddit's API rate limits. The full-text archive that used to fill this gap is closed to most people. Reddit's "Pushshift Access Request" article says access is for "verified Reddit moderators", that each moderator needs "explicit approval from Reddit", and that use "will be limited to moderation use cases only".

How do you keep watching comments for a keyword?

Stop searching and start monitoring. A search is a snapshot. It shows what matched when you ran it and nothing posted an hour later, so a daily comment search misses every question that got answered between runs.

RedReplier watches Reddit, X, Bluesky, Facebook and Hacker News continuously and surfaces the posts and comments that match your keywords. Matches land on the RedReplier dashboard within minutes of a post or comment going live, email digests run on a cadence you set per keyword from hourly to daily, and every match reaches you with no monthly cap. RedReplier never auto-comments. A person reads the thread and posts the reply from their own account. The setup is described on the Reddit keyword monitoring page, and the wider workflow for tracking names across platforms is in how to monitor brand mentions.

For research on older threads rather than new ones, the manual routine in the Reddit search guide still applies: search comments by phrase, sort by top, read the replies that disagree with the top answer.

Frequently asked questions

Can you search Reddit comments without an account?

Reddit's help articles on search do not say whether the Comments result type needs a logged-in account. They describe comment search, in-post search and community search without mentioning login at all. Test it logged out before you build a daily routine on it.

Why can't I find a comment I know exists?

Comment search requires every word in your query to appear in the comment. Drop to two or three distinctive words, or open the thread and use the in-post search bar instead. A comment that a moderator removed also stops showing in the thread for other readers.

Does the author: operator find a user's comments?

Reddit documents author: as "The user who submitted the post", which describes posts. For comments, open the user's profile or call /user/{username}/comments in the API, which sorts by hot, new, top or controversial.

Can I sort Reddit comment search results by date?

Yes. New is one of the three sorts Reddit lists for comment results, next to Relevance and Top. New ignores votes, so it is the sort for finding questions asked in the last few days.

Does Reddit's API have a comment search endpoint?

No. The type parameter on /search accepts sr, link and user only. The API returns comments per thread through /comments/{article} and per user through /user/{username}/comments, and any keyword matching happens on your side.

Is Pushshift still available for searching Reddit comments?

Only for approved moderators. Reddit's help centre says Pushshift access requires a moderator account, explicit approval from Reddit, and use limited to moderation. Researchers and marketers outside that group have no Pushshift access.

Do boolean operators work in Reddit comment search?

Reddit documents AND, OR and NOT for search in general, without limiting them to posts. Since none of Reddit's help articles say whether operators like author: or selftext: apply to comment results, boolean operators are the safer choice for narrowing a comment search.

Does the Relevance sort work the same for comments as for posts?

Reddit describes Relevance for posts as a mix of word rarity, the post's age, and its votes and comments. The help article gives no separate description for how Relevance ranks comments, so that version of the sort is undocumented. New is the more predictable choice when you need to know exactly what a sort is doing.

How many comments can Reddit's API return in one request?

Two endpoints set the limits. /user/{username}/comments returns 25 comments by default and 100 at most, while /api/morechildren fetches replies hidden behind "more comments" stubs up to 100 at a time, one request at a time. Neither endpoint searches by keyword, so matching text still happens on your side after the pull.

Why does Reddit recommend the Comments filter for buying questions?

Reddit's own help article lists comments as the result type "for any discussion heavy topic you're searching for (e.g., advice or set of recommendations)". That's exactly the shape of a buying question: someone asks for a recommendation in the post, and the actual product names show up in the replies. Searching comments instead of posts gets you straight to the names Reddit is describing.