To find people who may be looking to buy in Reddit and Hacker News, monitor authorized public data for specific signs of evaluation or an expressed need, then have a person verify each promising match. A keyword alert is a lead to inspect—not proof that someone will purchase. The key constraint is access: Reddit’s current terms say commercial use of its Data API requires a separate agreement, while Hacker News publishes a public API for its data. Neither source alone establishes that a particular commercial monitoring service is approved or that its alerts will reliably find buyers.
What should a buying-intent radar look for?
Start with the kinds of decisions your product helps people make, not with a long list of sales keywords. A useful signal is public language that suggests someone is evaluating options, asking for a recommendation, or trying to solve a problem your product addresses.
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- Evaluation: phrases such as “what do you use for” or “looking for an alternative.”
- Recommendation requests: a person explicitly asking others to suggest a tool or service.
- Stated problems: a concrete difficulty that your product could address, even if the person has not named a category of solution.
These are examples to test, not proven high-performing queries. A phrase can appear in a joke, a retrospective, a hypothetical question, or a conversation unrelated to a real purchase. Treat the match as a reason to review the post, not as a buyer label.
Check what each platform permits before collecting data
Reddit: commercial use needs a separate agreement
Reddit’s Data API Terms, last revised July 20, 2026, say the API license is revocable and subject to the terms. They state that commercial use, research exceeding rate limits, or a use not expressly permitted requires a separate agreement. The terms also prohibit circumventing or exceeding limitations. That makes a commercial buyer-monitoring service an access question to resolve with Reddit—not a use to assume is covered by ordinary API access.
#1 Best Overall
Reddit’s Developer Terms, last revised March 24, 2026, cover its developer services, APIs, and related products. They prohibit using Reddit services or data to train AI models without permission. API access should not be treated as blanket permission to collect, republish, or use posts for model training.
Reddit says its APIs are subject to rate limits. Its developer help article, updated May 28, 2026, points users to current documentation rather than stating a universal numeric quota for this use. Check the live guidance and honor the applicable limits; do not build around a quota copied from an older or unofficial source. The same help article identifies Reddit For Researchers as the official and authorized avenue for research using Reddit data. That research path is not blanket authorization for a commercial product.
These are platform terms, not legal advice. The public terms do not establish whether Reddit would approve this particular commercial monitoring service, what agreement or fees would apply, or what display and retention obligations it would impose. Ask Reddit for a current determination about the exact use.
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The official Hacker News API documentation describes public data available in near real time through Firebase, with versioned endpoints under /v0/. It currently says there is no rate limit. That statement can change, so verify it before deployment and periodically afterward. The documentation also warns that API changes may not always be backward compatible.
A published public API description is not a substitute for checking the applicable terms for your precise use. Do not infer commercial clearance beyond what the platform’s current documentation and terms establish.
How do Reddit and Hacker News compare for monitoring?
The useful comparison is operational, not a claim that one platform produces better leads. The official access descriptions do not provide a comparable benchmark of coverage, intent quality, alert latency, or conversion impact.
Rank #4
| Question | Hacker News | |
|---|---|---|
| What official access information says | Data API and other developer APIs are subject to rate limits. Commercial use of the Data API requires a separate agreement under the current terms. | Official API documentation describes public data through Firebase and versioned /v0/ endpoints. |
| Freshness and coverage | The reviewed official sources do not establish a comparable measured latency or coverage figure. | The API documentation describes data as available in near real time; it does not provide a comparative coverage benchmark. |
| Rate limits | Rate limits apply; check current documentation for the limits that apply to your access. | The documentation currently says there is no rate limit; recheck before deployment. |
| Commercial access cost | The terms say a separate agreement may be required for commercial use; a price for this use case is not stated in the public terms. | A price for this use case is not stated in the cited API documentation. |
| Signal quality and auditability | Not measured in the cited sources; assess using human-reviewed posts and retain a way to verify the match. | Not measured in the cited sources; assess using human-reviewed posts and retain a way to verify the match. |
For either source, compare authorization for your exact purpose, freshness and coverage, query precision, operating cost and reliability, and the ability to open and verify the original conversation. Public API availability does not establish that the feed is complete or that every use is commercially permitted.
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Build a small, reviewable monitoring workflow
- Define the buyer and need. Specify who your product serves, what problem it solves, and which kinds of public statements would indicate evaluation or a request for help.
- Write a short signal vocabulary. Begin with a few precise phrases and problem descriptions. Keep evaluation, recommendation requests, and problem statements distinct so you can see which matches merit review.
- Confirm access separately for each platform. Use each platform’s official interface, check current terms and rate limits, and confirm that your purpose is permitted. In particular, do not treat personal or research access as commercial approval.
- Record only what review requires. A minimal event record can include the platform, post identifier or canonical link, timestamp, matched phrase, and enough context for a reviewer to understand why it fired. Decide deliberately how long to retain records and how deletion will work; the cited sources do not prescribe a retention period for this project.
- Deduplicate and prioritize. Collapse repeated matches and rank explicit evaluations or recommendation requests above ambiguous keyword hits. Route uncertain cases to a human before treating them as useful leads.
- Review errors before making performance claims. Compare matches with human-reviewed examples, noting false positives and relevant posts the rules missed. No precision, recall, conversion, or alert-latency results are established for this workflow, so do not present it as a proven buyer-finding system without reproducible measurements.
What the radar can—and cannot—tell you
A well-scoped monitor can surface public conversations worth reviewing sooner. It cannot establish that a person is ready to buy, that a match is a qualified lead, or that either platform contains every relevant conversation. Those conclusions depend on human review and measured performance in the actual implementation.
Best Value
Keep the original conversation easy to verify, use the minimum context needed for review, and make sure the access arrangement covers the way the monitor actually operates. The public documentation provides platform-specific access details, but it does not supply a ready-made commercial approval, retention schedule, or performance guarantee for this particular use.
Quick Recap
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