A useful buying-intent radar is a small monitoring workflow: define what a likely buyer might say, collect only through access methods permitted for your use, and send promising matches to a person for review. Reddit and Hacker News can surface public questions and problem statements, but neither a keyword match nor access to a public API proves that someone intends to buy—or that commercial monitoring is authorized.
If you’re asking, “How can I find people who are looking to buy in Reddit and Hacker News?”, start with the signals you want to detect, then verify each platform’s current terms before building a collector.
What a buying-intent radar should detect
Think of the radar as a way to find conversations worth reviewing, not a machine that identifies confirmed buyers. A post can mention a product category without evaluating anything, while a person describing a concrete problem may be relevant even if they never use the word “buy.”
Define the buyer and the problem first
Write down the product category, the people it serves, and the problem those people are trying to solve. A narrow definition makes it easier to distinguish an actionable question from general discussion. For example, a software team might monitor for people asking what tool others use, seeking an alternative, or describing a workflow problem its product addresses. These are starting points for query design, not phrases known to perform well.
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Use signal groups, not a single magic phrase
- Evaluation: someone compares options or says they are assessing tools.
- Recommendation requests: someone asks what others use for a specific job.
- Alternative searches: someone wants to replace a named product or approach.
- Unmet need: someone describes a clear problem that your product category may solve.
Keep the initial vocabulary small and specific. Broad terms produce noise; highly specific phrases can miss people who describe the same need in different words. Review examples and adjust the vocabulary based on actual matches.
Check access and permitted use before collecting posts
“Publicly accessible” is not the same as “cleared for any commercial use.” Use the official access route for each platform, read the terms that apply to your use case, and confirm any required approval before running a commercial monitor.
Reddit: commercial use needs separate confirmation
Reddit’s Data API Terms, last revised July 20, 2026, say the license is revocable and subject to compliance. They require a separate agreement for commercial use, research that exceeds rate limits, or a use not expressly permitted, and prohibit circumventing or exceeding limitations. The terms do not establish whether a particular buyer-intent monitoring service would be approved, what agreement or fees would apply, or what display and retention obligations it would have. Check the current terms and ask Reddit for a determination for your proposed use; the terms are not legal advice.
Reddit’s Developer Terms, last revised March 24, 2026, cover developer services, APIs, and related products. They also prohibit using Reddit services or data to train AI models without permission. Ordinary API access should not be treated as permission for unrestricted collection, republication, or model training.
Reddit’s developer help article, Developer Platform & Accessing Reddit Data, updated May 28, 2026, says its Data API and other APIs are subject to rate limits. It points developers to current documentation rather than setting a universal quota for this use. Honor the live limits; do not build around an old figure or assume a polling interval. The same article identifies Reddit For Researchers as the only official and authorized avenue for research using Reddit data. That research path is not blanket permission for a commercial product.
Hacker News: use its versioned public API
The official Hacker News API documentation describes public data available in near real time through Firebase and documents versioned endpoints under /v0/. It currently says there is no rate limit, but that is time-sensitive: recheck the documentation before deployment and periodically afterward. The documentation also cautions that API changes may not always be backward compatible.
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How Reddit and Hacker News compare for this workflow
The platforms should be compared on the dimensions that affect your specific monitor—not treated as interchangeable feeds. The table summarizes official access descriptions; it is not a measured benchmark of either platform.
| Decision factor | Hacker News | |
|---|---|---|
| Access and permitted purpose | Data API and Developer Terms apply. The Data API Terms say commercial use requires a separate agreement; confirm the applicable terms for your project. (Reddit Data API Terms) | Official documentation describes an API for public data. Check the current documentation and applicable terms for your use. (Hacker News API) |
| Freshness and coverage | The reviewed official sources do not establish a comparable measured latency or coverage benchmark. (Reddit developer help) | Documentation describes the data as available in near real time; it does not establish a measured comparison with Reddit. (Hacker News API) |
| Rate limits | Reddit says its APIs are subject to rate limits; check live documentation for the applicable limits. (Reddit developer help) | Documentation currently says there is no rate limit; verify again before deployment. (Hacker News API) |
| Intent quality | Not established by the platform documentation; measure against human-reviewed examples. | Not established by the platform documentation; measure against human-reviewed examples. |
| Commercial access cost | The public terms say a separate agreement may be required; a price for this use case is not stated in the terms. (Reddit Data API Terms) | Not stated in the API documentation. |
| Reviewing an alert | Store a link and enough relevant context for a person to validate the match; this is implementation guidance, not a platform guarantee. | Store a link and enough relevant context for a person to validate the match; this is implementation guidance, not a platform guarantee. |
Choose a platform or combination based on the conversations that match your audience, what access your use is allowed, and the work required to operate and review the monitor. The official descriptions do not establish which platform will produce better leads for a particular product.
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Build the monitoring workflow
- Specify the buyer and use case. Document who you serve, the category you monitor, and the problem or evaluation that makes a conversation worth reviewing.
- Confirm the permitted access route. Check each platform’s current terms, access method, rate limits, and permitted purposes. For Reddit, get a direct determination about a commercial use rather than assuming a personal prototype is covered. For Hacker News, review the current API documentation and its
/v0/endpoints. - Start with a small signal vocabulary. Group phrases around evaluation, requests for recommendations, alternatives, and specific problems. Include enough context in queries to make them meaningful, then revise them as you inspect results.
- Record only what you need to review a match. A minimal event record can include the platform, post identifier or canonical link, timestamp, matched phrase, and relevant context. Decide deliberately how long to retain records and how to handle deletion; the cited sources do not specify a suitable retention period for this project.
- Deduplicate and prioritize. Merge repeated matches, rank explicit evaluation or recommendation requests above ambiguous mentions, and route uncertain results to a human. A keyword match is a lead to inspect, not proof of purchase intent.
- Check quality before calling it reliable. Compare alerts with human-reviewed examples, recording false positives and missed signals. Without that evaluation, you cannot claim a particular level of precision, recall, or conversion impact.
- Maintain the integration. Recheck Reddit’s live rate-limit guidance and both platforms’ current access terms. Hacker News notes that API changes may not always be backward compatible, so monitor for endpoint or response changes.
What this radar can—and cannot—tell you
The workflow can help surface public conversations that appear relevant to your product category. It cannot establish that the person will purchase, that the matched phrase expresses a genuine need, or that every relevant conversation has been found. No measured accuracy, alert latency across both services, lead yield, conversion impact, or operating cost is established here; those results depend on the product, query design, permitted access, and a reproducible evaluation of your own monitor.
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