Start with the feature’s spending decision
An onboarding research feature starts with a product decision: how much archive work may one user action trigger? Reddit API Gateway gives product infrastructure engineers access to an independent historical Reddit archive, without official Reddit affiliation or live updates. Use the SaaS sample to establish that boundary before inviting users to request more pages.
Imagine a product screen offering a small set of historical onboarding references. Its backend first checks the user’s permission, then admits a bounded job. You choose those checks and any per-user allowance in your own application. The archive key pays for retrievals on this domain’s account; it does not define your product’s roles or allocate each customer a separate balance.
Inspect three records, including the possibility of none
Try GET https://api.redditapigateway.com/v1/search?q=onboarding&subreddit=SaaS&limit=3. q=onboarding searches text, subreddit=SaaS restricts the community and limit=3 asks for at most three records. The route may return posts or comments and does not guarantee matching material or useful product advice. Authenticate server-side with X-API-Key: <key> or Authorization: Bearer <key>; both alternatives carry this archive's key.
Synthetic response excerpt for demonstration only: {"data":[],"pagination":{"page":1,"limit":3,"total":0,"relation":"eq"},"credits":{"cost":1,"balance":99}}. This is not a live result and the balance is fictional. Even a successful empty sample costs one credit. Validate data and retain the received response before processing it. Do not charge your own internal record counter as though it were the archive's request counter.
Keep an attempt ledger beside the job
For a planning example, allow up to three retrieval attempts for that job. Three successful requests cost three credits, $0.003, whether they yield nine usable records or none. A local allowance of three attempts is your application policy, not an archive quota feature. Count page changes and retries against it instead of counting only accepted rows.
Keep a distinction between asking again and working again. A second pass over a response already saved by your backend needs no new archive retrieval. A fresh request may return different material and, if successful, costs another credit. Give the user a deliberate choice when refreshing the sample would start paid work.
Decide what the product can say about the sample
Content responses contain flat records with variable fields. Present parent_id and link_id can support local grouping without a complete conversation guarantee. _doc is internal document order, not chronology, relevance or score. min_score filters without sorting. A content request returns up to 100 records and supports page from 1 to 100 across separate requests. Iteration, date partitioning and local deduplication do not establish exhaustive or unique retrieval.
Label the result as the received sample. A short page is not evidence that SaaS has no other onboarding discussions, and a local grouping is not a recovered conversation. Keep query parameters and retrieval context alongside your selection so a teammate can understand what the product actually inspected.
Move from a sample to an operated feature
Use the documentation to choose filters and the pricing page to size the request allowance. The key page prepares the account and funding; the guide follows that key through a permitted job, its logs and a replacement. Establish those responsibilities before turning this example into a repeated product action.
Email/password signup shows the key once immediately after successful registration, before any payment. Passwords require 12–72 UTF-8 bytes; 100 trial credits depend on network-wide anti-abuse eligibility. The minimum paid top-up is $50 for 50000 credits, at $1 per 1000 successes, without subscriptions or expiry for paid credits. Read documentation, pricing, the key page and the private-key guide before funding work. Public /v1/status is free and keyless but only returns static scope information and confirms an HTTP response, not search health or balance.
