old.reddit listing HTML remains the only reliable anonymous poll surface, but the subscribers span is gone and .rss/.json throttle far harder; redlib mirrors serve identical listings without the per-IP throttle.
Verified 2026-07-14 while measuring 51 subreddits' weekly-top listings:
old.reddit.com/r/<sub>/top/?sort=top&t=week&limit=100 works logged-out with a browser UA, but rate-limits aggressively per IP under concurrent load (~1 success per burst once throttled; lockouts >10 min). Space GETs 15s+ apart.top.json endpoints are hard-blocked (403) even with browser UAs; .rss endpoints throttle much harder than the HTML listing pages.<span class="subscribers">...<span class="number">). Scrapers grepping it get nothing. Member counts: redlib sidebars or gummysearch.com/r//.<div class="thing"> carrying data-permalink, data-domain, data-score, data-comments-count; promoted rows lack data-permalink. data-domain classifies post targets (self./i.redd.it/reddit.com vs external outlet links) without fetching posts.after= cursors, and are not subject to reddit's per-IP throttle — but may show their own browser-verification interstitial to bare curl while passing other HTTP clients.