> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.lobstr.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Community Story Rewards: earn bonus credits by sharing your lobstr.io story
> Post about your lobstr.io use case on an eligible subreddit and earn bonus credits worth 20% of your plan's monthly allowance. Here's what qualifies, how to submit, and how long the credits last.
Community Story Rewards pays you in credits for talking about lobstr.io in public. Write a genuine comment about how you actually use it on one of the eligible subreddits, submit the link, and once our team verifies it you get bonus credits worth **20% of your plan's monthly credit allowance**.
One reward per account, per quarter. The credits are non-cash and they expire, so it's worth claiming yours when you have a run you actually want to spend them on.
## What you get
Your reward scales with your plan, because it's calculated as 20% of that plan's monthly credit allowance.
| Your plan | Bonus credits |
| --------- | ------------- |
| Free | 2,000 |
| Starter | 2,000 |
| Pro | 20,000 |
| Team | 200,000 |
| Business | 400,000 |
On the **free plan** there's no monthly allowance to take 20% of, so your reward is calculated from the Starter plan instead — you get the same 2,000 credits a Starter subscriber would. If you're on a **custom plan**, your reward is 20% of your own negotiated allowance. Either way, the submission form spells out which plan your reward is based on before you submit anything.
### Free plan: your export cap is lifted too
On the free plan, run exports are capped at **30 rows** — enough to check that a scraper works, not enough to use the data. 2,000 credits would be useless against that cap, so the reward lifts it as well.
For **30 days** after your reward is granted, you can export your runs in full, with no row limit. Once the 30 days are up, the cap comes back and any reward credits you haven't spent expire alongside it. So claim the reward when you're ready to actually run something.
## What qualifies
Every one of these has to be true, or the submission gets rejected:
* **It's a comment, not a post.** Standalone posts read as self-promotion on Reddit and get removed by subreddit rules, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid. Reply inside an existing thread where the recommendation is genuinely relevant.
* **It's in an eligible subreddit.** The submission form lists the current ones. Anything else is refused the moment you submit.
* **It mentions lobstr.io.** A comment about web scraping in general, with no mention of lobstr.io, earns nothing.
* **It's genuine.** Write about what you actually did — the problem you had, what you used lobstr.io for, what changed. Copy-pasted endorsements get rejected.
* **It stays live for at least 3 days.** Your comment has to remain publicly visible for three days after you submit it. Delete it, or let it get removed, and the reward doesn't land.
### Eligible subreddits
The list is managed by our team and changes over time, so treat the submission form as the source of truth. At the time of writing it covers:
r/automation · r/dataengineering · r/DataHoarder · r/datasets · r/GrowthHacking · r/LeadGeneration · r/n8n · r/nocode · r/saas · r/sales · r/salesdevelopment · r/scrapy · r/webscraping · r/zapier
## Before you post, check your Reddit account
Many of these subreddits require your Reddit account to reach a minimum age and karma before AutoModerator will let you post or comment. If your account is new, your comment can be auto-removed within seconds — before a single person reads it, and with no notification to you.
Check the subreddit's rules first. A comment that AutoModerator removed can't be verified, and from our side it's indistinguishable from a comment you deleted yourself.
## How to submit
There are two ways in. Click **Submit your story** in the banner at the top of your dashboard, or go to **Overview** in the left sidebar and use the **Community Story Rewards** card. Both open the same **Submit your Reddit story** form.
Find a relevant thread in one of the eligible subreddits and leave your comment. Mention lobstr.io and describe your real use case.
On Reddit, use the comment's own permalink — the **Share** option on that specific comment, not the URL of the thread it sits in. It looks like `https://www.reddit.com/r/webscraping/comments/...`
Drop the URL into the **Reddit comment URL** field — **Submit** stays greyed out until you do — then submit. If the subreddit isn't eligible or the link isn't a valid Reddit URL, you'll be told immediately and nothing is consumed.
## After you submit
Track your submission on the **Community Story Rewards** card on your **Overview** page. It moves through three states:
| Status | What it means |
| ------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Pending** | Submitted and awaiting review. Our team checks that the comment is genuine, mentions lobstr.io, and is still live. Leave the comment up. |
| **Gifted** | Approved. The bonus credits are on your account, and on the free plan your export cap is lifted. |
| **Rejected** | The submission didn't qualify. The card shows the reason and a **Submit another story** button. |
Reviews are done by a person, not instantly by a script, so expect a wait rather than a result in seconds. Credits are granted after your comment has been live for three days, and the card confirms it when they land:
The card doesn't repeat the credit figure, so check **Credits available** at the top of your Overview page to see the new balance.
## If your submission is rejected
A rejection doesn't burn your quarterly attempt. The card shows why it failed and gives you a **Submit another story** button to try again in the same quarter — your most recent submission is the one that counts.
The usual reasons:
* **The URL doesn't point to a real comment.** Shown as *"Invalid Reddit URL — does not point to a real post or comment."* Almost always the thread's URL instead of the comment's own permalink, or a link to a comment that has since been removed.
* **The comment doesn't mention lobstr.io.** Check that the mention actually made it into the published comment.
* **The comment is gone.** Deleted by you, or removed by a moderator or AutoModerator. Nothing can be verified against a comment that isn't there.
* **The subreddit isn't eligible.** Caught at submission time, so this one shouldn't reach review.
* **It's a post, not a comment.** Reddit rewards are for comments.
* **It isn't a genuine story.** Generic praise with no real use case behind it.
## Spending your reward credits
Reward credits sit on top of your normal plan balance and are spent on runs like any other credit.
**They expire 30 days after they're granted.** Reward credits don't roll into your next billing cycle and there's no extension — anything unspent at the 30-day mark is gone. On the free plan, the lifted export cap expires on the same clock.
Rewards are always non-cash. They're credits on your lobstr.io account, not a refund, discount, or payout.
## Sharing on LinkedIn
The same program is being extended to LinkedIn. The reward is identical — 20% of your plan's monthly allowance, one submission per quarter, credits expiring after 30 days — and so are the terms, with two differences:
* **Posts, not comments.** The Reddit rule exists because standalone posts get removed there as self-promotion. On LinkedIn a "here's a tool I use" post is completely normal, gets real distribution, and is far more visible than a comment buried in someone else's thread. So on LinkedIn we want a standalone post, and it needs to follow a clear arc: **the problem you had → what you used lobstr.io for → what actually changed.** Include a concrete number or a before-and-after — hours saved, leads pulled, a manual process replaced. "I tried lobstr.io, it's good" doesn't qualify.
* **It has to come from a real, identifiable account.** Reddit is pseudonymous and that's fine there. LinkedIn isn't, so posts from anonymous or throwaway profiles don't count.
LinkedIn submissions aren't live yet. Until they are, the submission form accepts Reddit comment URLs only.
## Frequently asked questions
Only one submission per quarter is reviewed. If a submission was rejected you can submit again in the same quarter, and the most recent one takes precedence — so a rejection doesn't cost you the quarter. Once a reward has been granted, your next one is available in the following quarter.
No. Free accounts qualify, and get the Starter-equivalent reward of 2,000 credits plus a 30-day lift on the 30-row export cap.
Please don't. Your comment has to stay live for at least three days, and it's re-checked before credits are granted — a comment that's gone by then means no reward.
It's treated the same as deleting it: there's nothing left to verify, so the submission is rejected. You can post elsewhere and submit again. Check the subreddit's karma and account-age rules before posting to avoid this.
Yes. They're added on top of your existing balance rather than replacing it, and they're tracked separately so you can see what came from the reward.
Yes. The `/v1/community_rewards/` endpoints let you list eligible subreddits, submit a URL, and check your submission status. See [Community Story Rewards](https://docs.lobstr.io/docs/community-rewards) in the API documentation.
## Need help?
If your submission was rejected and you don't think it should have been, [contact our support team](https://go.crisp.chat/chat/embed/?website_id=45b5fabf-a2d0-441c-b3de-2d517bdeeac9) with the comment URL, or email [contact@lobstr.io](mailto:contact@lobstr.io).