Prepare the private side of the notebook
Prepare two places before signup: private configuration for the retrieval key and a shareable notebook for the method. A collaborator should be able to inspect the query and decisions without receiving the credential that spends your account’s credits.
Prepare to capture the key when registering the account that will run your replication pilot. Registration takes an email and a password of 12–72 UTF-8 bytes; multibyte characters make this different from a character count. Google login, wallet connection and wallet-address entry are not part of signup. The reusable key appears once immediately after signup, before payment. Transfer it to private configuration then: login will not show it again and no key email follows. Eligibility for 100 trial credits is decided by network-wide anti-abuse checks, so read the granted balance before launching the pilot.
Use the account panel on this page to distinguish access from a funded collection plan. You can obtain the key without buying credits; the displayed balance tells you what is available for the next recorded run. This panel also holds invoices and password-confirmed key regeneration. Its account, key and credits belong to redditapilabs.com, not other brands or a Reddit OAuth session. The possible 100 trial credits depend on network-wide anti-abuse eligibility and are not guaranteed merely because you registered.
One page before a collection run
When credits are available, make the homepage replication query with limit=3 and save its actual response. Decide whether the fields support your proposed coding rule before increasing collection. One successful page costs one credit even if empty; three successful pilot requests cost three credits, not nine because each asks for up to three records. A lost client response can still debit your credit, and a successful retry costs another.
Keep credential changes out of the research record
For the replication request, let your server add either X-API-Key: <key> or Authorization: Bearer <key>; both carry the archive credential, not a Reddit OAuth token. The method record can retain the URL, filters and response while omitting that secret. Load it from private backend configuration, never a public notebook, frontend bundle or browser storage. Signing into this site's account panel uses a separate session cookie: it neither supplies the script's retrieval header nor replaces your application's permission checks.
A key accidentally included in a shared research notebook needs a credential change, not a revision of the recorded selection rules. Sign in and confirm the account password to regenerate it; the old key stops working immediately, so update the collection script before another request. There is no password reset or emailed replacement key. The widget's per-host localStorage restores invoice and user identifiers, not the API key. Keep that payment-recovery state separate from the secret in your application and from the saved research responses.
Fund only the remote work you plan to do
When the pilot justifies collecting more material, budget the additional remote attempts rather than the number of records you hope to retain. Local reclassification of a saved response needs no archive call. A paid top-up starts at $50 for 50000 credits; $1 buys 1000 successful retrievals, without a subscription or expiry of paid credits. To fund the next run, sign in and create its invoice first, then use only that invoice's recipient and exact amount with USDT on TRON TRC20 or USDC on Ethereum mainnet ERC20. Submit the transaction hash for verification of the genuine confirmed matching transfer.
The invoice lasts one hour; settlement time is not guaranteed and provider outages can leave verification pending. Pending does not mean pay again. When credits are available, try the homepage search for replication in science and retain the actual response with your local protocol. Each successful retrieval, including empty data, costs one credit. HTTP 401 concerns credentials, 402 the balance and 429 rate limits. Public /v1/status does not validate your key or search availability.
