Apples to apples.
Real comparisons from real Reddit threads.
When someone asks "who's a good plumber in Orlando?", Apples finds every prior Reddit thread where that's been answered and shows you the actual businesses the community recommends, ranked.
The problem
Reddit has the best crowd-sourced local recommendations on the internet. They're buried across thousands of threads. When you ask "looking for a handyman in Tampa", the great answers from last year's threads don't reach you. You either re-ask and wait, or leave Reddit to Google around.
What Apples does
- Detects service-recommendation posts in local-services and city subs.
- Searches Reddit's archive for prior threads about the same service in the same city.
- Extracts the specific businesses and individuals named in the replies.
- Aggregates across threads: how often each name is recommended, the sentiment around them, how recent the mentions are.
- Returns an apples-to-apples comparison back to the asker, or routes it to moderators for review.
Example
| Business | Mentions | Sentiment | Most recent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Del-Air | 7 | Positive | 3 mo ago |
| Sunshine HVAC | 4 | Positive | 5 mo ago |
| Service Experts | 2 | Mixed | 1 yr ago |
| One Hour Air | 3 | Negative | 6 mo ago |
Asker gets a real answer immediately. Four old threads get fresh attention. Moderators deal with one less duplicate post.
Why it's good for Reddit
Revives old threads
Each query surfaces multiple archived threads. Evergreen content gets traffic it wouldn't otherwise see.
Faster answers
Askers get aggregated community wisdom in minutes instead of waiting days for fresh replies that may never come.
Less work for mods
Duplicate-question fatigue is the top complaint in active city subs. Apples cuts the flow by answering with the archive.
Keeps users on Reddit
Answers come from Reddit itself. All links point back to existing threads. Nothing leaves the platform.
Operating principles
- Opt-in per subreddit. Coordinates with moderators before running in any community. Respects local rules on bot comments.
- Read-dominant. The vast majority of activity is archive search. Comments are infrequent and only when a high-quality match exists.
- Every link stays on Reddit. No off-platform redirection. The whole point is to surface Reddit's own content.
- Human-reviewable. Operators and mods can gate comments through a review dashboard before anything posts.
- Rate-limit compliant. Well within the 60-per-minute OAuth quota. Proper User-Agent on every request.
- Transparent sourcing. Every response cites the specific threads it's drawing from.
Status
Apples is in early development and currently in the Reddit Data API approval process. Once approved, we will reach out to moderators in a small set of city and home-services subreddits to pilot the tool before wider rollout.
If you moderate a city or local-services sub and would like to pilot, reach out via the operator account below.