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June 4th, 2026
If you have tried to search Reddit comments recently and found that your usual tools no longer work, you are not alone. Reddit’s 2023 API changes wiped out most third-party comment search tools overnight. Pushshift is gone. Removeddit is dead. Redditsearch.io is offline. The landscape looks completely different from what most guides written before 2024 describe.
This guide covers what actually works in 2026, from native Reddit search to the tools that replaced Pushshift, and what to do when you are trying to find the real person behind a Reddit account rather than just their comment history. If you have a Reddit username and want to find who is behind it, Social Catfish’s username search cross-references any handle against social media profiles, public records, and identity databases in a single search.
How to Search Reddit Comments Using Reddit’s Built-In Search
Reddit’s native search is the fastest free starting point and works without any third-party tools.
Basic keyword search with comment filter: Go to reddit.com and type your search terms into the search bar. After the results load, select Comments from the filter tabs at the top of the results page. Reddit returns comments containing your search terms, ordered by relevance or newest depending on your sort selection.
Exact phrase matching: Put your search terms in quotes to search for an exact phrase rather than individual words. Searching “specific phrase” in the comments filter returns only comments containing that exact string.
Subreddit-specific search: To search comments within a specific community, navigate to that subreddit first and use the search bar from within it. Alternatively, add subreddit:communityname to your search query from the main search bar. This narrows results to a single community.
Author search operator: Type author:username directly into Reddit’s search bar to surface recent comments from a specific account. This is the fastest way to search a particular user’s comment activity without navigating to their profile directly.
Honest limitation: Reddit’s native search only surfaces recent content and has approximately a 1,000 post limit per user. For deeper history or content older than a few months, third-party tools covered below are necessary.
How to Search Reddit User Comments by Username
The most direct method for reading a specific user’s comment history is their profile page.
Direct profile URL: Go to reddit.com/user/username/comments, replacing username with the account you want to search. This loads every publicly available comment from that account in reverse chronological order. Reddit displays these without any login required for public accounts.
What the profile comment tab shows: All comments the user has made across every subreddit, going back as far as Reddit’s interface allows, which is typically the most recent 1,000 items. Older comments beyond this limit require third-party archiving tools.
Using the author: search operator: For searching a user’s comments by keyword rather than browsing all of them, combine the author operator with a keyword: author:username keyword. This surfaces comments from that specific account containing the search term, which is useful when you are looking for a specific topic within a large comment history.
Why comment history matters for identity verification: A Reddit account’s comment history is one of the richest publicly available identity signals on the internet. People mention their city, workplace, school, relationship status, hobbies, and sometimes their real name across months or years of comments without realizing how much information accumulates. If you are trying to identify who is behind a Reddit account, reading their comment history carefully is the free starting point. Social Catfish’s username search then cross-references what you find against other platforms and public records to build a complete identity picture.
What Replaced Pushshift for Reddit Comment Search in 2026
This is the section most people searching for Reddit comment tools actually need in 2026. The tools listed in pre-2023 guides are mostly dead. Here is what actually works now.
Arctic Shift: Arctic Shift is the current community-driven successor to Pushshift, providing access to historical Reddit data through a search engine interface. It covers historical posts and comments going back years and supports search by keyword, username, and metadata. Arctic Shift is free and is the most comprehensive replacement for what Pushshift offered before Reddit’s API changes shut it down. For searching historical comment data, this is the starting point.
PullPush: PullPush is another community successor to Pushshift. It went offline for a period and returned in 2025 with a database covering content up to May 2025. PullPush functions as a backend for several Reddit archive browsers and is accessible directly for comment and post searches. Useful for content in the pre-May 2025 window that Arctic Shift may not cover completely.
Reveddit: Reveddit specifically shows moderator-deleted content. When a moderator removes a comment from a subreddit, Reveddit can surface it. This is distinct from user-deleted content, which is harder to recover. Reveddit is the most reliable free tool for finding comments that were removed by subreddit moderators rather than by the user themselves.
Wayback Machine: The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine occasionally captures Reddit pages and can surface deleted content from manually cached snapshots. Coverage is inconsistent and requires knowing the specific page URL, but for high-traffic threads that were likely crawled, it is worth checking. This is a last resort rather than a primary tool.
What no longer works: Removeddit, Ceddit, and most other pre-2023 Reddit comment search tools are dead. Unddit has severely limited functionality. Any guide that still recommends these as primary tools is outdated.
How to Search Reddit Comments by Keyword Across All Subreddits
For finding comments about a specific topic, person, or phrase across all of Reddit rather than within a single account or subreddit, these methods are the most effective.
Google site search: The most reliable free method for broad keyword comment search is Google. Search site:reddit.com “keyword phrase” in Google. Google indexes a large portion of Reddit’s public content and surfaces comments and threads containing the exact phrase across all subreddits. This often returns more relevant results than Reddit’s own search for specific phrase matching.
Reddit native search with comments filter: Use Reddit’s search bar with the Comments filter and a specific keyword. For current content, this is fast and sufficient. For historical content older than a few months, results become incomplete.
Arctic Shift for historical keyword search: Arctic Shift supports keyword search across its historical database, which makes it the strongest tool for finding all instances of a specific phrase in Reddit comments going back years.
Social Catfish for context beyond Reddit: If a keyword search surfaces a specific username repeatedly in connection with a topic you are researching, entering that username into Social Catfish’s username search cross-references the handle across other platforms. This is particularly useful when a Reddit account is central to a research question, and you want to understand its full online presence beyond what Reddit’s comment history alone reveals.
How to Search a Reddit User’s Comment History to Find Their Real Identity
Reddit accounts are pseudonymous by default, but comment histories are not. People reveal significant personal information across months and years of Reddit activity without realizing how much accumulates in aggregate.
The manual OSINT approach: Read through the account’s comment history systematically. Look for mentions of their city or region, current or past employers, schools attended, relationship status, specific personal experiences, and any instance where they reference their real name or respond to someone using it. Frequent comments in a specific city’s subreddit combined with mentions of a specific employer often narrow the identity significantly.
Cross-reference their username across platforms: Take the Reddit username and search it directly on Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, Discord, and any other platform where they might be active. Many people use consistent handles across platforms, and finding the same username under a real name anywhere online connects the Reddit account to a verified identity.
Reverse image search their profile photo: If the account has a profile photo, upload it to Social Catfish’s reverse image search. The facial recognition searches across social media and public websites, finding where that face appears and returning the identity linked to it. A Reddit account with a genuine profile photo often connects back to the person’s other social media, where real-name information is available.
Social Catfish username search: Enter the Reddit username into Social Catfish’s username search. The search cross-references the handle across hundreds of platforms simultaneously, returning every account where that username appears and the full identity associated with it. Combined with the manual comment history reading above, this gives you the most complete available picture of who is behind a Reddit account. A username that appears across Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and a personal website under a real name confirms the identity in one search rather than requiring hours of manual platform checking.
How to Find Deleted Reddit Comments
Finding deleted Reddit comments depends on who deleted them and when.
Mod-deleted comments: Comments removed by subreddit moderators are the most recoverable. Reveddit specifically surfaces mod-deleted content by comparing the current state of a thread against archived versions. Navigate to the thread URL on reveddit.com to see any comments that were removed by moderators.
User-deleted comments: Comments deleted by the user themselves are significantly harder to recover. Arctic Shift and PullPush both archive Reddit content and may have captured the comment before it was deleted, depending on when the deletion occurred relative to when their crawler last indexed the content. Neither tool guarantees recovery of user-deleted content.
Wayback Machine: For high-traffic threads on major subreddits, the Wayback Machine may have a cached version of the page that includes since-deleted comments. Go to web.archive.org, enter the thread URL, and check available snapshots from around the time the comment was posted.
Honest limitation: Truly deleted user comments, particularly those deleted after Reddit’s 2023 API changes reduced third-party archiving coverage, may be permanently unrecoverable. The tools above give you the best available chance but cannot guarantee results for content deleted after mid-2023.
FAQ
Use Reddit’s native search bar with the Comments filter for recent content. For exact phrase matching, put the terms in quotes. For historical content, use Arctic Shift or Google site:reddit.com “keyword phrase” for the broadest coverage.
Go to reddit.com/user/username/comments for their full public comment history. Use author: username in Reddit’s search bar to filter comments by keyword within their history. For content beyond the 1,000-item limit, use Arctic Shift or PullPush.
Arctic Shift is the primary community successor, covering historical Reddit data through a searchable interface. PullPush covers content up to May 2025 as a secondary option. Reveddit specifically handles mod-deleted content.
Sometimes. Reveddit recovers mod-deleted comments reliably. Arctic Shift and PullPush may have archived user-deleted comments if they were captured before deletion. Comments deleted after mid-2023 may be permanently unrecoverable.
Often yes. Reading comment history for personal details, cross-referencing the username across other platforms, and using Social Catfish’s username search to find every account associated with the handle gives you the most complete available picture of the real identity behind a Reddit account.
Conclusion
Reddit comment search in 2026 looks completely different from what most guides describe. The tool graveyard left by Reddit’s 2023 API changes is real, but Arctic Shift, PullPush, and Reveddit fill most of the gaps for historical and deleted content. Native Reddit search and Google site search cover current content well.
When the goal moves beyond finding comments to finding the person behind the account, comment history is the starting point rather than the answer. The personal details that accumulate across years of Reddit activity combined with Social Catfish’s username search, which cross-references any handle across hundreds of platforms simultaneously, gives you the most complete available picture of who is really behind any Reddit account. That identity layer is what no comment search tool alone provides.
