A Reddit thread as JSON, with the reply tree intact.

A Reddit thread is a tree. JSON is a tree. The natural fit is so obvious that it’s strange most tools don’t honor it — half the “Reddit to JSON” exports on the open web are CSVs with curly braces. A real JSON export preserves nesting: each comment carries a children array of its replies, and those children carry their own children, down to the leaves.

The JSON shape

The export is a single JSON object with the post metadata at the top and a tree of comments underneath:

{
  "post": {
    "id": "1h2x7r",
    "title": "How did you get your first 100 users?",
    "author": "founderdiary",
    "subreddit": "SaaS",
    "url": "https://reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1h2x7r/...",
    "createdAt": "2026-04-12T11:08:31Z",
    "score": 312
  },
  "comments": [
    {
      "id": "k8s2j1m",
      "parentId": null,
      "depth": 0,
      "author": "jellybean42",
      "body": "How did you find your first paying customer?",
      "score": 287,
      "createdAt": "2026-04-12T12:14:02Z",
      "permalink": "https://reddit.com/r/SaaS/...k8s2j1m",
      "children": [
        {
          "id": "k8s3a4p",
          "parentId": "k8s2j1m",
          "depth": 1,
          "author": "founderdiary",
          "body": "Built it for a friend who needed it…",
          "score": 56,
          "children": [ ... ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "extractedAt": "2026-04-12T14:33:02Z",
  "extractionSource": "json-api"
}

Every comment object carries the same fields whether it’s a top-level comment or a deeply nested reply. children is always an array (possibly empty). The shape is recursive.

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Why JSON, when CSV exists

CSV flattens. That’s fine for spreadsheet work; it’s wrong for code that needs to walk the tree:

• Iteration is recursive. A function over JSON walks the tree naturally — visit(comment), then comment.children.forEach(visit). The CSV equivalent requires a join on parentId every time.
• Subtree extraction is free. Want everything under a specific comment? Grab that node, you have the whole subtree. In CSV you do a recursive query.
• Types survive. Scores are numbers in JSON, dates are ISO strings, nulls are nulls. CSV is all strings until you parse it.
• Direct LLM input. Most LLM APIs accept JSON cleanly. CSV in a prompt becomes brittle.

If you want the spreadsheet-friendly version instead, see Reddit comments to CSV.

Three things people do with the JSON

Pandas, in five lines

import json, pandas as pd
data = json.load(open("thread.json"))

def flatten(c, rows):
  rows.append({k: c.get(k) for k in ("id","parentId","depth","author","score","createdAt","permalink","body")})
  for child in c.get("children", []): flatten(child, rows)

rows = []
for c in data["comments"]: flatten(c, rows)
df = pd.DataFrame(rows)

Node, with the tree intact

const data = require("./thread.json");
function walk(c, depth = 0) {
  console.log(" ".repeat(depth * 2) + c.author + ": " + c.body.slice(0, 80));
  c.children.forEach(child => walk(child, depth + 1));
}
data.comments.forEach(c => walk(c));

LLM prompt with the actual structure

Pass the JSON as the user message; tell the model the schema in one sentence. It can answer “what does the comment chain under comment k8s2j1m argue?” because the tree structure is preserved — something that takes meaningful pre-processing if you’re working from CSV.

If you want a programmatic JSON endpoint

The Chrome extension is the right tool when a human is reading threads and wants the JSON on disk. If you want JSON as the response of an HTTP call — for a backend pipeline, a scheduled job, or a data product — the Pro tier exposes a hosted Reddit comments API with code samples in cURL, JavaScript, Python, PHP, Go, and Java. Same backend the extension uses, same JSON shape on the way out.

Where to go next

JSON for analysis pipelines. CSV or Excel for spreadsheet workflows. Google Sheets for shareable analysis. Google Docs for readable transcripts. The Reddit API alternative guide covers when to reach for the extension vs. PRAW vs. our hosted API.

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