What a Reddit Buying Question Looks Like: 148 ThreadsReddit<br>What a Reddit Buying Question Actually Looks Like: I Read All 148 Highest-Intent Threads<br>I read every thread our scanner has ever scored as strong buying intent, 148 of them across 50 subreddits, and wrote down the exact words people use when they're about to buy. Also how many were spam wearing a buyer's clothes.<br>Telman Gadimov·Founder, CueScout·July 24, 2026·7 min read

The short version<br>▸I read all 148 threads our scanner has scored 60+ for buying intent across 50 subreddits and looked at the language, not just the counts.<br>▸The dominant shape is a shopping question: 24 of the 148 literally say 'best', 'which', or 'recommend'. The sharpest tell of all is someone naming the tool they're leaving, like 'alternative to Apollo' or 'outgrowing GoHighLevel'.<br>▸The second tell is frustration with a tool they already pay for: 'my macOS screen recorder stopped working', 'paid CAC is getting painful'. Switching intent hides inside complaints.<br>▸The uncomfortable part: at least 20 of the 148 weren't buyers at all, and the count is inflated by reposts. One lead-gen ad appears four times, one validation post three times. A score gets you a candidate, not a customer.<br>I've pulled from our scan data before to work out where the buying questions live on Reddit: small threads, not popular ones. The question people kept sending me afterward was the practical one. Fine, so the good threads don't announce themselves. When one is in front of me, how do I know it's a buyer and not just someone talking?

So I did the unglamorous thing and read them. Not one month this time, everything: every thread our scanner has scored 60 or above for buying intent, 148 of them across 50 subreddits, going back roughly three months. (The earlier post looked at 147 raw candidates in a single month; this is the stricter cut, only the ones that cleared the high-intent bar, across the whole history.) I read them one at a time and wrote down what the person was actually saying. I run CueScout, which reads Reddit continuously and scores threads for intent, so the model already ranked these. I wanted to see the language behind the number.

Some of it was exactly what I hoped. A lot of it was junk that had fooled the score, which I'll get to, because leaving that part out would make this post a lie.

The buying question has a shape

Real buyers ask a specific, answerable question. Not "is cold email dead" (a debate), but "which tool can I use to send cold emails" (a decision). Reading the 148, the same phrasings kept coming up:

"Best…" — "Choosing the best screen recorder for Mac", "best email finder tool for cold email sending, here's my shortlist", "best tools for Reddit lead generation right now".

"Which…" — "which AI tool should I buy for work, need honest suggestions", "which is the best tool for cold emailing".

"Recommend / recs…" — "starting email marketing for the first time, need tool recs".

24 of the 148 used one of those shopping words outright. That's the surface tell you can almost search for.

The sharpest signal, though, is narrower than any keyword: when the person names the specific tool they're trying to leave. "Best alternative to Apollo." "Open source alternative to Loom." "Need an alternative to Go High Level CRM." "Outgrowing GoHighLevel, what should I migrate to?" Only a handful did this, so I won't pretend it's common. But someone who can name what they're replacing has already decided to replace it; they're just choosing the destination. That's about as close to a raised hand as Reddit produces, and those GoHighLevel and Apollo threads had single-digit upvotes. Nobody churning off your competitor writes a viral post about it.

The other tell is a complaint

The second pattern surprised me because it doesn't look like buying at all. It looks like venting. A big chunk of the high-intent threads were people frustrated with a tool or a situation they're already in:

"All of the screen recording and screenshot tools on macOS have stopped working. I'm not sure why."

"macOS Tahoe: screen recording makes my M2 and M3 MacBook Air unusable, anyone else?"

"Paid CAC is getting painful… what organic is actually working for you right now?"

"GHL cold email deliverability issues, looking for advice."

"Anyone else tired of shady 'SEO companies for small businesses' that take your money and vanish?"

None of these ask "recommend me a tool." They're complaints. But a complaint about a specific tool, cost, or vendor is a person actively unhappy with the status quo, which is the moment right before they go looking for a replacement. If you only chase threads that literally ask what to buy, you miss the ones where the decision is still forming inside a bad mood. The model scored these high and, reading them, I agreed. Being the useful reply in a frustration thread is worth more than being the tenth "have you tried X" in an obvious shopping thread.

The part I'd rather skip

Here's the...