social-reddit

Arctic Shift

A Reddit data service providing a keyless API, downloadable bulk dumps, and a web interface, with more generous limits than PullPush. Its full-text search is scoped to a specific user or subreddit rather than the whole site. Reach for it as a complement to PullPush when you need archived Reddit data within a particular community or account.

Social API

Search this archive

Why it’s useful & how it works

Arctic Shift is a useful complement to PullPush when your research is focused on a specific subreddit or Reddit account rather than a site-wide keyword. Its full-text search is scoped to one subreddit or one user at a time, which makes results more manageable. You can search through its web interface at arctic-shift.photon-reddit.com, query its keyless JSON API, or download bulk data dumps for offline analysis. Browser extensions built on its API can also surface deleted comments inline while you browse Reddit normally.

What’s inside

Reddit-wide coverage through bulk data dumps, with full-text search available per-subreddit or per-user. Data spans from Reddit's early years through the present, updated regularly.

API access

https://arctic-shift.photon-reddit.com/api/posts/search?subreddit= <sub> ; /api/comments/search

What we measured

Our own probes, not the archive’s own claims. Re-run periodically; every reading below is dated.

Reachability

Direct request: Responded HTTP 200 475 ms
Through a datacenter proxy: Responded HTTP 200 2.4 s
API, direct: Responded HTTP 200 125 ms
API, through a proxy: Responded HTTP 200 522 ms

Did a real search return anything?

Returned results · 10 results for the sample query · median 883 ms · stable across runs

Sample query: json.loads silently keeps the last duplicate key, and object_pairs_hook is how you catch it

Benchmark coverage

Found 3 of 3 test items (100%) in the Social cluster. Median response 629 ms.

By how well known the item is: 1/1 well-known, 1/1 mid, 1/1 obscure .

One item it found: Any free STT/TTS APIs for a voice AI app?

Reachability measured 2026-08-22. Search checked 2026-08-22. Benchmark run 2026-08-22.