/guardian/articles/comments

POST /api/guardian/articles/comments

Price: 20 credits

List reader comments on a Guardian article. Returns comment text, author with avatar and staff badges, post time, recommend count and, for threaded mode, every reply nested under the comment it answers.

How to use it

Read the comment thread of a Guardian article. article accepts the article url/path or the short_url_id from guardian/articles (the short id is the faster of the two). Threaded mode returns top-level comments with their replies nested in replies[]; set threaded=false to get every comment, replies included, as separate top-level entries. reply_count follows the mode: in threaded mode it is the size of the whole conversation hanging off a top-level comment (the length of its replies[]), in flat mode it is the number of direct answers to that one comment. order_by controls ordering (oldest, newest or mostRecommended). Guardian stops accepting new comments a few days after publication but keeps the thread readable, so old articles still return their full discussion.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• article string required — Guardian article URL or path, or the article's short id (the short_url_id returned by guardian/articles) (examples: "commentisfree/2026/aug/05/ai-regulation-donald-trump-artificial-intelligence", "x5k7h6"; minLength: 1)
• count integer required — Max number of comments to return (min: 1)
• order_by string — Order comments are returned in (default: "oldest"; one of: "oldest", "newest", "mostRecommended")
• threaded boolean — Return conversation threads, with each reply nested under the comment it answers. Set false to get every comment as its own flat entry instead (default: true)

Response

• @type string (default: "GuardianComment")
• id string required
• text string nullable
• created_at integer nullable
• web_url string nullable
• status string nullable
• recommend_count integer nullable
• is_highlighted boolean (default: false)
• author object nullable
  • @type string (default: "GuardianCommentAuthor")
  • id string required
  • name string required
  • profile_url string nullable
  • image string nullable
  • badges array (default: [])
• reply_to_id string nullable
• reply_to_author string nullable
• reply_count integer nullable
• staff_reply_count integer nullable
• editors_pick_count integer nullable
• blocked_reply_count integer nullable
• replies array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "GuardianCommentReply")
  • id string required
  • text string nullable
  • created_at integer nullable
  • web_url string nullable
  • status string nullable
  • recommend_count integer nullable
  • is_highlighted boolean (default: false)
  • author object nullable
    • @type string (default: "GuardianCommentAuthor")
    • id string required
    • name string required
    • profile_url string nullable
    • image string nullable
    • badges array (default: [])
  • reply_to_id string nullable
  • reply_to_author string nullable

Errors

• 422 — The request body did not validate Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.
• 408 — The request ran past its time limit Raise `timeout` in the request body, up to the maximum this endpoint documents. Lowering `count` or turning off the `with_*` flags also helps, because less work finishes sooner.
• 412 — This article has no comment thread — comments were never opened on it Retrying will not help: either the entity does not exist, or the input points at a different one.
• 429 — Too many requests: a rate limit or a usage window is exhausted When the response carries an X-Retry-After header, wait that many seconds and retry: the same number is in the body as `detail.retry_after`, and the limit clears once that window passes. The message in the body names the limit that was hit.
• 500 — Something broke on our side Retrying will not help. If it keeps happening, send us the X-Request-ID from the response headers.
• 529 — Rate limit reached, or the endpoint is overloaded Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

Response headers

• X-Error — Error message text (present only on error)
• X-Request-ID — Unique request identifier
• X-Execution-Time — Execution time in seconds
• X-Result-Count — How many records the body carries. 0 means an empty result, which is a normal answer and not by itself an error. A non-zero count can come back together with X-Error when the failure happened partway through — read this header and X-Error independently.
• X-Total-Available-Results — How many records exist for this query, when the endpoint can say. On a `dry_run` request this is the answer and the body is empty. It saturates: the endpoint's documented maximum means 'at least that many', any smaller number is exact.
• X-Warning — Present when the request body carried keys this endpoint does not document. They were ignored, so any filter you meant to apply through them did not apply. Check the spelling against this schema and retry.
• X-Retry-After — Seconds to wait before retrying. Present only on 429.