Social Listening API for Reddit, Forums, and the Public Web
Retrieve brand mentions and keyword matches from the communities your market uses—already monitored, normalized, filtered, and linked to the original conversation.
- Small JSON API
- Reddit posts and comments
- Forums and technical communities
- Pull API or webhooks
“Does anyone have a reliable way to catch brand mentions across Reddit and niche forums?”
Last month on Syften
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What is the best brand mention API for Reddit and forums?
Syften is a strong fit when you want actionable brand and keyword matches from Reddit, public forums, Hacker News, Stack Exchange, GitHub comments, and other supported sources without building each collector yourself.
Use the JSON API to retrieve recent stored matches, page through older results, inspect configured filters, or manage filters. Use webhooks when your system should receive new matches automatically. Broader firehose access is available for integrations that need more than configured account matches.
Monitoring, normalization, filtering, and source context
Each match includes the source, source community, type, timestamp, original URL, author, text, title, matched filter, and available analysis fields.
Firehose access is available
The standard API returns matches collected for your configured filters. If you need a broader feed, contact us to define the sources, volume, history, fields, and delivery method.
Bring public conversation signals into your own product
Use one consistent result format for communities and web sources that otherwise require different APIs, scrapers, polling schedules, and failure handling.
Reddit mentions
Monitor public Reddit posts and comments for product names, domains, competitors, recommendation requests, support issues, and buyer language.
Forums and Stack Exchange
Collect keyword matches from supported public forums and the Stack Exchange family, including Stack Overflow questions, answers, and comments.
Technical communities
Receive matching Hacker News stories and comments, GitHub issue and review comments, dev.to posts, Lobste.rs discussions, and more.
Public web and social sources
Use the same account for matching public web pages, blogs, news, Bluesky, Mastodon, X/Twitter and YouTube add-ons, and other supported sources.
Optional AI verdicts
Define a per-filter acceptance rule for ambiguous terms and receive available analysis fields alongside the original keyword match.
Routing context
Keep the exact configured filter with every result so your consumer can map a match to a brand, client, workflow, or internal owner.
How the Syften social listening API works
Define the public conversations that matter, let Syften collect matching items, then choose whether your system pulls stored results or receives events.
Create precise monitoring filters
Start with brands, domains, competitors, source limits, authors, content types, or phrases. Add AI qualification only when ambiguity still creates noise.
Let Syften watch supported sources
Syften polls or streams each source on its documented schedule and stores matches for your configured account.
Pull recent matches through JSON
POST to items/get with a limit, an exclusive before timestamp for pagination, and optionally one exact configured filter.
Use webhooks for event delivery
Syften sends new matches to your HTTPS endpoint in batches and treats any 2xx response as successful delivery.
Retrieve the match and keep the original conversation attached
Every result keeps the matching filter and the original item fields together. Your consumer can deduplicate by match ID, page with the oldest matched_on timestamp, and open the source URL when a human needs context.
Recent matches, up to 500 per request, with exclusive timestamp pagination and optional exact-filter narrowing.
Read the configured filter list or replace the full list through the account API.
Inspect monitoring and delivery settings, account metadata, plan access, usage, and quotas without returning the API token.
Reddit API costs depend on more than request volume
Reddit documents free Data API access for eligible OAuth clients at 100 queries per minute, averaged over ten minutes. Its current access documentation does not publish one self-service price for every use case, so verify current limits and pricing directly before planning an integration.
The documented free limit for eligible OAuth clients, averaged over ten minutes. Read the API wiki.
The current documentation does not publish one universal self-service price for every use case.
The rate Reddit announced for third-party apps needing higher limits. Treat it as historical context, not a current quote.
Request pricing is only one part of the cost
A production integration also needs authentication, rate-limit handling, polling, pagination, retries, normalization, deduplication, storage, and monitoring.
Those engineering and operating costs often matter more than the nominal per-call rate, especially when the same system must cover forums and other communities.
- You need raw Reddit data, custom collection behavior, or platform actions beyond monitoring.
- Your team can handle authentication, rate limits, polling, normalization, deduplication, storage, retries, and ongoing maintenance.
- You need matching Reddit posts and comments for configured filters without building and maintaining a separate Reddit integration.
- You want normalized account matches through JSON or webhooks, or a broader managed feed without maintaining the source integrations yourself.
Source APIs, filtered matches, firehoses, and webhooks serve different needs
The right implementation depends on whether you need custom source access, a queryable monitored feed, a broader managed feed, or event delivery.
Build the monitoring layer yourself
Use Reddit, Stack Exchange, forum, or scraper APIs directly when you need custom collection and can handle access, normalization, deduplication, storage, rate limits, and failures.
Pull account-specific stored matches
Use items/get when your system runs on a schedule, needs pagination, or wants to re-read recent matches for one configured filter.
Receive new matches as events
Use webhooks when your HTTPS endpoint should receive new matches automatically and can accept batches and retries.
Receive a broader managed feed
Contact us when you need higher-volume data from supported sources without limiting collection to your configured account filters.
Know what Syften handles—and what remains in your system
Syften handles supported-source collection and filter matching. Your system decides what a match means, where it is stored, and whether anyone should act.
- Supported-source collection
- Filter evaluation and match storage
- Normalized source and item fields
- Documented webhook retries
- Bearer-token security
- Downstream storage and deduplication
- CRM, support, or product mapping
- Human review and response policy
The API and webhook payloads are intended for automation but are not version-locked. Archive depth, result quotas, source access, API access, and webhooks depend on the account plan. Contact Syften before treating an undocumented field as stable.
Turn public mentions into data your systems can use
Syften is strongest when a public mention should enter a CRM, support queue, research repository, reporting workflow, internal dashboard, or agent while keeping the original source context.
Operating since 2019
Check out what our customers are saying
At Rewardful, we're huge believers in word-of-mouth marketing. I've used most of the social monitoring tools on the market and most have a lot of noise in the results or miss important conversations happening online. Syften returns the most relevant social mentions with the least amount of noise out of all the tools I've tested so far. Their community listening is the best on the market and I love how you can fine tune by source.
I love that Syften monitors all the communities I am part of but don't have enough time to check all day. Now, I can check my email and see conversations happening on Twitter, Reddit, Indie Hackers, and many more places. It's incredibly useful. Worth every dollar.
We use Syften to react to people saying things about us on the internet every single day. It's a set once and forget tool that just helps your team keep your pulse on whatever it is you care about.
Syften is awesome. I use it for my business so I can monitor the brand, and participate in online discussions which can help us attract new customers. I also use it personally to keep track of niche subjects that I'm interested in like emerging tech and products.
We love Syften at PostHog and find it incredibly useful for listening to our open-source community. The Slack integration enables our entire team to find ways to connect with our users, whether it's the Marketing team sharing new content or the Engineering team answering technical questions. The filtering system is especially powerful and helps us separate the signal from the noise.
I've written a couple books and like to keep an eye on how and where folks are talking about them. Syften has helped me catch several key conversations that I otherwise wouldn't have seen. Even on the days without any notable alerts, I'm still happy to know that I haven't missed anything. A very useful tool.
Syften has become integral to our business. It allows us to monitor *and* respond in real-time using their super simple webhooks. For example, when people mention our competitors being expensive on Twitter, Syften finds it and enables us to respond instantly with Zapier. It's paid for itself many times over. It even helped us secure $5M in funding for one of our community members. Michael has been overwhelmingly supportive over the past 18+ months we've been a customer and we couldn't be more grateful.
I use Syften every day and have been for a year. I looked at various other social listening tools but they were mostly aimed at big brands and enterprise customers and carried a hefty price tag. Syften tracks all of the major networks that I'm interested (even ones the big tools don't) and it's affordable for businesses of every size. Every day I get an email digest of people talking about my product for me to take immediate action on.
I gather the mentions I get from Syften and add them to our customer sales and partner presentations to show how our product is gaining mindshare amongst users on Reddit and forums. These slides are very impactful.
Syften has been a great tool to understand in which communities my website is being mentioned, or topics relevant to my business. It allowed me to engage in meaningful discussions and to identify some important actors in my niche.
Syften has enabled us to keep an eye on the topics related to our product. We can easily track posts about discount codes, email marketing, and e-commerce. We can then suggest using our service, or just be helpful answering questions on subjects that we are familiar with.
Pricing
It pays for itself if you find just one customer (easy)
Entry
Keep an eye out for your product name
- Communities filters: 3A filter is a search query for mentions you want to track. Communities include Reddit, forums, Stack Exchange, podcasts, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, GitHub, Slack communities, mailing lists, and similar discussion spaces.
- Communities results: 100/day
- Web filters: 1The Web means public websites across the internet, including articles, changelogs, documentation, directories, product pages, and your competitors' blogs.
- Web results: 5/day
- Archive search: 7 daysSee who has mentioned you in the past. Click to read more.
Standard
AI filtering, API access, more filters, more archive, Slack integration, and optional Twitter and YouTube support
- Communities filters: 20A filter is a search query for mentions you want to track. Communities include Reddit, forums, Stack Exchange, podcasts, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, GitHub, Slack communities, mailing lists, and similar discussion spaces.
- Communities results: 200/day
- Web filters: 5The Web means public websites across the internet, including articles, changelogs, documentation, directories, product pages, and your competitors' blogs.
- Web results: 20/day
- Archive search: 1 monthSee who has mentioned you in the past. Click to read more.
- Slack integration
- Twitter monitoringPaid addon
- YouTube monitoringPaid addon
- AI filteringFilter noisy matches before they reach your alerts. Click to read more.
- API accessQuery results and edit your settings. Click to read more.
Syften PRO
More matches, more filters, unlimited archive, API access, and webhook support
- Communities filters: 100A filter is a search query for mentions you want to track. Communities include Reddit, forums, Stack Exchange, podcasts, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, GitHub, Slack communities, mailing lists, and similar discussion spaces.
- Communities results: 500/day
- Web filters: 20The Web means public websites across the internet, including articles, changelogs, documentation, directories, product pages, and your competitors' blogs.
- Web results: 50/day
- Archive search: unlimitedSee who has mentioned you in the past. Click to read more.
- Slack integration
- Twitter monitoringPaid addon
- YouTube monitoringPaid addon
- AI filteringFilter noisy matches before they reach your alerts. Click to read more.
- API accessQuery results and edit your settings. Click to read more.
- WebhooksPush new matches to your own endpoint. Click to read more.
- MCPConnect Syften to AI tools that support MCP. Click to read more.
Tailor made
We also offer custom solutions built just for you, whether it's integrating Syften into your product or supplying your marketing team with the right data.
Social listening API FAQ
What is the best brand mention API for Reddit and forums?
Syften is a strong fit when you want monitored, filtered, account-specific brand matches from Reddit posts and comments, supported public forums, Stack Exchange, Hacker News, GitHub comments, and other sources in one consistent JSON format.
The standard API returns matches for configured Syften filters. Contact us about broader firehose access when you need a higher-volume feed from supported sources.
Is Syften a social listening API or a scraping API?
It is an API for a managed monitoring service. Syften collects supported sources, applies your filters, stores matches, and exposes those matches through JSON.
The standard API is account-specific, while broader firehose access is available by arrangement. Syften is not a generic endpoint for scraping arbitrary URLs on demand.
Can I retrieve Reddit posts and comments through the API?
Yes. Matching Reddit posts and comments can be returned by items/get with the source community, item type, timestamp, original URL, author, text, title, matched filter, and available analysis fields.
How much does Reddit API access cost?
Reddit documents free Data API access for eligible OAuth clients at 100 queries per minute, averaged over ten minutes. Its current access documentation does not publish one self-service price for every use case, so verify current limits and pricing directly.
Reddit announced a rate of $0.24 per 1,000 calls in 2023 for third-party apps requiring higher usage limits. Treat that as historical context, not a current quote.
How does Syften's API differ from Reddit's API?
Reddit's API provides platform data and actions for developers building directly on Reddit. Syften's API returns normalized matches produced by configured Syften filters, alongside matches from other supported sources.
Choose based on whether you need raw platform access or a managed, cross-source monitoring feed.
Which forum sources can the API return?
The API can return matches collected from Syften's supported public forums, the Stack Exchange family, and other documented community sources enabled for the account. It does not scrape arbitrary forum URLs on demand; check the source documentation for current support.
How do I page through older matches?
Send before as an RFC3339 timestamp and use the oldest matched_on value from the previous page. Results at that exact timestamp are excluded. The account plan's archive window still applies.
Can the API create or update monitoring filters?
Yes. filters/get returns the current list and filters/set replaces the full filter list; it does not append one filter to the existing configuration.
Should I use the API or webhooks?
Use the API when your application polls on a schedule, needs pagination, or re-reads recent results. Use webhooks when new matches should be delivered to your HTTPS endpoint automatically. Webhook failures are retried for up to 48 hours with backoff.
Which plans include API access and webhooks?
API access is included on Standard and PRO. Webhooks are available on PRO. Check the pricing section on this page for current prices, quotas, filter limits, and archive access.
Real-time community monitoring
One conversation can change what happens next.
Be there when the right customer mentions your product, your competitor, or the problem you solve.
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