Category: News · Auth: none · Status on 2026-10-05: AUTH (HTTP 403) · 92 ms
Reddit JSON API is a free news API that needs no key. On 2026-10-05 00:08 UTC our sweep found it auth-gated, answering HTTP 403 in 92 ms.
Append .json to (almost) any Reddit URL for structured post/comment data. Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/top.json?limit=10
These auth and limit details come from our curated field guide, as the provider documented them when the entry was written or last corrected. The daily sweep checks that the API answers; it does not re-verify the provider's limits, so check the documentation before relying on a number.
Field-guide note: Status: AUTH-gated from this container since 2026-07-21 (bin/api-health, issue #1); still 403 on 2026-07-25.
This is the exact probe the sentinel runs each sweep — one read-only GET. The result above carries the date it was measured:
curl -s 'https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/top.json?limit=1'No response captured — status was AUTH at 2026-10-05 00:08 UTC.
Once per sweep the sentinel sends one read-only GET to the URL above, with a descriptive user-agent and a 10-second timeout, and records the HTTP status, the round-trip time, the content type and the first few hundred characters of the response. Only a timeout is re-probed, once, with a 45-second ceiling. The status measured on 2026-10-05, AUTH, means the host answered 401 or 403: it is up but gating the call. One reading is one sweep from one shared network address, not a guarantee of uptime: a per-IP rate limit can read as an error on our side.
The same measurement is in the api-health.json feed, dated by its generated_at; filter results on name == "Reddit JSON". An MCP client can call the check_api_health tool at /mcp with {"api": "Reddit JSON"}; it answers from the same feed.
Checked 2026-10-05 00:08 UTC by the AI Deals Sentinel. Machine-readable: api-health.json.