Two routes answer different operational questions
Reddit Gateway gives backend platform teams read access to an independent historical Reddit archive. It is not an official Reddit service and is not affiliated with Reddit. The practical integration boundary is between a public description of the service and a protected request for archived records. A successful status response does not prove that a search will succeed, that a key is valid or that the account has enough credits.
GET https://api.redditgateway.com/v1/status needs no API key and costs no credits. Its static response identifies the historical archive scope and confirms that the HTTP application responds. It does not query the search backend, inspect archive health, report account balance or measure latency. In your own operational console, label this observation as an HTTP response rather than a green database or end-to-end readiness indicator.
Keep retrieval credentials on your server, separate from the public status request. Use X-API-Key: <key> or Authorization: Bearer <key> for protected reads; both are supported. This is the archive account's own key, not Reddit OAuth. The service does not provide live feeds, posting, voting, private messages or a transparent relay of arbitrary Reddit routes.
Inspect one bounded search response
Try GET https://api.redditgateway.com/v1/search?q=database&subreddit=backend&limit=3 with a placeholder replaced only in your server configuration. q=database is a text search, subreddit=backend restricts the community and limit=3 asks for at most three records. The search may return posts or comments. It does not guarantee matching material, complete community coverage or useful context for your application.
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 observation and the balance is fictional. Save the original response before validating data and mapping available fields. A successful empty result still costs one credit. Treat an empty array differently from a transport failure or a rejected credential.
Results are flat records, with variable fields. Present parent_id and link_id may support local grouping, without a complete conversation or ancestry guarantee. Retrieval uses internal _doc order, not chronological, relevance or score order. min_score filters a numeric threshold without sorting. A request returns at most 100 records and a query supports at most 100 pages; traversing them does not establish exhaustive or unique retrieval.
Make access and spending explicit
Email/password signup shows the key once immediately, before payment. Passwords require 12–72 UTF-8 bytes. The conditional 100-credit trial depends on network-wide abuse controls; check the granted balance rather than assuming eligibility. The account panel on the key page manages this domain's balance, invoices and password-confirmed key regeneration. A regenerated key immediately invalidates its predecessor.
Each successful retrieval, including empty or repeated requests, costs one credit: $1 per 1000 requests. A minimum paid top-up of $50 buys 50000 credits. There are no subscriptions and paid credits do not expire. Invalid requests do not debit; upstream failures refund reservations. Losing a response may follow a billed success, and another successful attempt costs another credit.
Read the documentation for the route contract, the guide for controls in your own backend, and pricing before funding a workload. Sign in and create an invoice before transferring USDT on TRON TRC20 or USDC ERC20 on Ethereum mainnet. Use its exact recipient and amount, then submit the transaction hash for verification. Neither payment processing nor archive availability has a guaranteed completion time.
