Key takeaways
- PullPush is a free Reddit search tool and API that replaced Pushshift after Reddit restricted its API access in 2023, requiring no signup or login.
- Search posts via /reddit/search/submission/ and comments via /comment/search/, combining q, subreddit, author, score, and after/before parameters in the URL.
- Comment search surfaces verbatim pain-point phrasing like "wish there was" that you can reuse directly in landing page copy.
- The archive can lag live Reddit by hours or days because PullPush ingests through the public Reddit API, so cross-check recent threads with Reddit's own search.
- Run one PullPush search daily, collect repeated complaint language in a spreadsheet, and reply helpfully in two threads per day under the 90/10 rule.
The PullPush Reddit search tool lets you search every post, comment, and user on Reddit by keyword, subreddit, author, date, and score, for free, no login required. This guide gives you copy-paste queries for each search type, built around one goal: finding where your target users hang out and what they complain about.
What Is the PullPush Reddit Search Tool and Why Did It Replace Pushshift?
PullPush is a free web tool and API for searching Reddit's history: posts, comments, and users, filterable by keyword, subreddit, date range, and author. If you're hunting for where your target users complain, it's the fastest way to search Reddit without an account or paid plan.
What Pushshift's shutdown meant for Reddit search tools
Pushshift was the public dataset most Reddit tools ran on. Reddit restricted its API access in 2023, which broke keyword search over historical posts and comments for most free tools overnight. PullPush was built as a replacement that ingests Reddit data and exposes it through a searchable interface and API.
What PullPush gives you for free
You can query posts and comments by subreddit, author, score, and date, and the PullPush documentation lists the available endpoints and parameters for building your own queries. No signup, no credit card. That matters when you have zero users: you can find dozens of "how do I do X without Y" threads tonight and reply where it's allowed. For how those threads fit into a wider organic plan, see our guide on semantic authority on Reddit and AI search.
How Do You Search PullPush by Keyword and Subreddit?
PullPush keeps Pushshift's URL structure alive: you build a query in the browser bar and read the JSON it returns. Here is the workflow.
The basic keyword query, copy-paste ready
Paste this into your browser:
https://api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/submission/?q=landing page feedback
Swap in any phrase your target users might complain about. The q parameter matches post titles and bodies.
Combining q and subreddit parameters
Filtering by score to cut noise
Add &score=>5 to return only posts that got upvotes, which filters out spam and low-effort threads. Chain &subreddit=webdev&subreddit=SaaS to search multiple subreddits at once. A realistic example:
https://api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/submission/?q=need a tool&subreddit=SaaS&subreddit=startups&score=>5
The long paragraph worth quoting on its own: the reason this matters is that Reddit search itself is broken for this job. Reddit's own search ranks by recency and engagement, so a two-year-old thread where twenty founders described exactly the problem your product solves is buried under this week's memes. PullPush returns matches by relevance across the full archive, which means you can search "can't get first users" or "spending hours on manual outreach" and surface the exact vocabulary your future customers use when they complain. Copy that vocabulary into your hero line, your Reddit replies, and your content titles. If you want a system for turning that research into a distribution plan, the AI search visibility rubric is a starting point.
How Do You Search Reddit Comments Instead of Posts?
Switch the endpoint from /submission/search to /comment/search and PullPush returns individual comments rather than threads. That matters because comments carry the actual language people use to describe problems, while posts are usually polished summaries.
Comment search vs post search: when to use which
Use post search to find where a topic happens; use comment search to find what people say inside it. If you search comments for "cancel subscription" in r/SaaS, you get raw phrasing like "I'd pay for something that just did X" that you can reuse in landing page copy. Reddit's 2023 API changes killed Pushshift, which is why this community-run replacement exists at all.
Finding pain-point phrasing in comments
Search comments with q="wish there was", q="anyone know a tool", or q="so frustrating" plus a subreddit parameter. The comment body gives you the complaint verbatim, and the link_id parameter takes you back to the parent thread for context. Track repeated phrasing in a spreadsheet before you write a single landing page, then map it to your messaging the same way you'd map content to AI search visibility.
How Does the Reddit User Search Tool in PullPush Work?
Searching by author
PullPush lets you pull every post or comment from a specific Reddit account using the author parameter. To see someone's submissions, open https://api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/submission/?author=USERNAME. For their comments, use https://api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/comment/?author=USERNAME. Combine it with subreddit to see where a person is active: ?author=USERNAME&subreddit=SOMESUB.
Vetting whether a subreddit's regulars match your ICP
This is how you check if a subreddit is full of your people before you spend weeks there. Pull 20-30 of the most active authors, run each through the author search, and read what they post elsewhere. If the regulars are all discussing problems your product solves, that community passes the test. If they are hobbyists or lurkers asking beginner questions, move on. Pair this with tracking which AI search visibility signals matter pre-100 users so you know which communities to prioritize.
How Do You Search PullPush by Date Range?
Using after and before with epoch timestamps
PullPush filters by time with two parameters: after and before. Both take Unix epoch timestamps in seconds, not human-readable dates. To find posts from the first week of January 2024, you'd use https://api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/submission/?subreddit=SaaS&after=1704067200&before=1704672000.
Convert dates to epoch seconds with any Unix timestamp converter, or in your terminal: date -d "2024-01-01" +%s on macOS/Linux. Combine them with keyword and author parameters from earlier sections to build queries like "complaints about X in r/youshouldknow last quarter."
Why very recent posts may be missing
PullPush ingests Reddit data through the public Reddit API, which means the archive can lag behind live search by hours or days. If a post from this morning doesn't show up, that's why. Cross-check recent threads with Reddit's own search, then use PullPush for the historical view. The same terms govern what PullPush can collect, as with any tool reading Reddit data (Reddit Content Policy).
Date filters matter most when you're tracking how a subreddit's complaints change week to week, which is the pattern behind a repeatable research habit we break down in building a daily growth loop.
What Are the Most Useful PullPush Search Operators and Parameters?
Every PullPush endpoint accepts the same core parameters, so you type them once and reuse them across posts, comments, and user searches. Here is the reference table you will come back to most often.
Parameter reference table
| Parameter | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
q | Keyword to search for | q="first 100 users" |
subreddit | Restricts results to one subreddit | subreddit=SaaS |
author | Finds posts or comments by a username | author=somefounder |
after / before | Unix timestamps bounding the date range | after=1704067200 |
score | Minimum or exact upvote count | score>10 |
size | Number of results returned (max 100) | size=100 |
sort | Ordering: asc or desc | sort=desc |
Quoted phrases, AND/OR, and exclusions
The q parameter also takes boolean-style operators. Wrap a phrase in quotes to match it exactly: q="build in public". Use uppercase AND and OR to combine terms, and a minus sign to exclude them: q="first 100 users" AND Lovable -paid.
A practical combo for finding complaints: https://api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/comment/?q="spending hours" AND reddit&subreddit=SaaS&score>2&size=100. Note that score>2 filters out zero-engagement noise, and size=100 pulls the maximum per request so you are not paginating manually.
How Do You Turn PullPush Searches Into Your First 100 Users?
A 20-minute daily research loop
Run one PullPush search per day for your niche keyword, sorted by comments with sort_type=score, and read the top 10 threads. You're not hunting links to drop. You're collecting the exact words people use to describe the problem your product solves. Copy those phrases into a spreadsheet with the subreddit and date.
Then pick two threads where you have something genuinely useful to say: a fix, a code snippet, a lesson from building the same thing. Reply helpfully, no link, no pitch. Do this daily and within a month you'll know which subreddits complain loudest, which phrases repeat, and which threads still get traffic weeks later. That pain language becomes your landing page copy and your build-in-public posts, which is how organic growth compounds without paid ads.
Staying AutoMod-safe while you engage
Most subreddits run AutoMod rules that auto-remove posts from accounts with low karma or fresh profiles, and many flag any comment containing a link. Reddit's own guidance on community rules and moderation is blunt: moderators can and do remove self-promotion that doesn't fit the subreddit. If a removal seems wrong, you can contact Reddit support, but the faster fix is reading each subreddit's rules before posting. Follow the 90/10 rule: nine helpful contributions for every one that mentions your product, and build account karma before you ever post a link.
PullPush vs Other Reddit Search Tools: Which Should You Use?
PullPush wins on one thing: free, raw access to Reddit history. For a one-off hunt ("what subs do vibe coders complain in?"), it beats manual scrolling and spreadsheets every time.
But PullPush only answers questions you already know to ask. There are no alerts, no monitoring, no "tell me when someone posts about this pain." You run the search, read the results, then repeat tomorrow. That manual loop is exactly the 3h/day problem.
Dedicated tools close that gap. Oetzi AI and AutoTraction focus on Reddit automation. Postiz and Predis.ai cover scheduling and content, not Reddit listening.
Where PullPush stops and automation starts
Honest take on our own product: HeyCatch doesn't replace PullPush for deep historical queries. It runs on top of that kind of data, finds where your users hang out, and ships the outreach so you don't refresh searches daily. If you only need answers now, use PullPush. If you need it every day without you, that's the gap it fills.
FAQ
Is the PullPush Reddit search tool free to use?
Yes. PullPush has no signup, no credit card, and no paid plan. You can query posts, comments, and users by keyword, subreddit, author, score, and date range directly in your browser or through the API, at zero cost. That makes it the fastest option when you have no budget for research tools.
Does PullPush still work in 2025 after the Pushshift shutdown?
Yes. Pushshift lost Reddit API access in 2023, which broke most free Reddit search tools. PullPush was built as a replacement that ingests Reddit data through the public API and exposes it via its own searchable endpoints, so historical keyword search works again without an account.
Why can't I find posts from the last few days on PullPush?
PullPush ingests Reddit data through the public Reddit API, so the archive can lag behind live search by hours or days. If a post from this morning is missing, that's the reason. Cross-check recent threads with Reddit's own search, then use PullPush for the historical view.
Can I use PullPush without knowing how to code?
Yes. Queries are just URLs: paste one into your browser and read the JSON results. You can copy the example queries from this guide, swap in your own keywords and subreddit names, and never touch a script. A terminal helps for converting dates to epoch timestamps, but any online converter works too.
Is scraping Reddit through PullPush allowed by Reddit's rules?
PullPush collects data through the public Reddit API, which operates under Reddit's terms. Using PullPush to search is fine, but how you act on results matters: moderators can remove self-promotion that breaks subreddit rules, and AutoMod often flags links from low-karma accounts. Follow the 90/10 rule and build karma first.