Reddit Research MCP vs Lurk

In-depth architectural comparison of the Reddit Research MCP and Lurk MCP servers. Compare execution transports, security boundaries, tool capabilities, quality scores, and ready-to-paste client installation snippets for Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, and VS Code.

Which MCP Server Should You Choose?

Choose Reddit Research MCP when:

• You need dedicated capabilities in the Social Media domain.
• You prefer remote streaming HTTP/SSE transport architecture.
• Your security boundary fits: No auth required (Free / Open Source).
• Primary tools included: Semantic search across 20,000+ indexed subreddits, Post and comment retrieval with source citations, Batch fetching across multiple subreddits.

Explore Reddit Research MCP Details

Choose Lurk when:

• You need dedicated capabilities in the Social Media domain.
• You prefer local stdio subprocess transport architecture.
• Your security boundary fits: No auth required (Free / Open Source).
• Primary tools included: lurk, lurk_info.

Explore Lurk Details

Feature & Specification Comparison

Specification	Reddit Research MCP king-of-the-grackles Social Media	Lurk Social Media
Summary	AI-powered Reddit intelligence for market research and competitive analysis. Discover subreddits via semantic search across 20k+ indexed communities, fetch posts/comments with full citations, and manage research feeds. No Reddit API credentials needed.	Reddit reader for LLMs — full comment trees, 94% fewer tokens, one binary
Category & Scope	Social Media

Tools & Capabilities Breakdown

Ready-to-Paste Client Configurations

Paste either (or both) of these JSON server blocks into your client config file (e.g. claude_desktop_config.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json).

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "king-of-the-grackles-reddit-research-mcp": {
      "url": "https://mcp.dialog.tools/mcp"
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "lurk": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "reddit-lurker"
      ]
    }
  }
}

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