# Hacker News Who is Hiring & Tech Jobs Scraper (`arturpl6/hacker-news-hiring-scraper`) Actor

Extract and parse monthly Hacker News Who is Hiring, Seeking Freelancer, and Who Wants to be Hired threads into clean structured job data.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/arturpl6/hacker-news-hiring-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Artur Kierasiński](https://apify.com/arturpl6) (community)
- **Categories:** Jobs, Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.50 / 1,000 scraped jobs

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Hacker News Who is Hiring Scraper

This Actor extracts job postings from the monthly Hacker News hiring threads hosted on Y Combinator:

- Ask HN: Who is hiring? (Full-time roles at startups and tech companies)
- Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (Contracts, freelance projects, and consultants)
- Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (Candidate profiles looking for work)

Instead of manually scrolling through hundreds of unformatted comments, this Actor queries the official Hacker News Firebase API, parses the comment headers, and normalizes the text into clean, searchable records.

***

#### Features

- **Header Parsing:** Automatically splits comments into structured fields: company name, role, location, remote eligibility, and employment type.
- **Direct Contact Extraction:** Extracts hiring email addresses and application URLs directly from post descriptions.
- **Tech Stack Detection:** Identifies mentioned technologies (e.g. Python, TypeScript, Rust, Go, Kubernetes, React, AWS, PyTorch) and tags them as an array.
- **Filtering Options:** Filter postings by keyword, technology, location, or remote-only before saving to the dataset.
- **Lightweight & Fast:** Uses the public Hacker News Firebase API. Runs in seconds without browser automation or proxies.

***

#### Input Parameters

| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| `thread_type` | `String` | `"whoishiring"` | Target thread: `whoishiring`, `freelance`, or `seeking`. |
| `remote_only` | `Boolean` | `false` | When true, only returns roles mentioning remote work. |
| `keyword_filter` | `String` | `null` | Keyword to search across role, company, or description. |
| `location_filter`| `String` | `null` | Filter by geographic location (e.g. `Europe`, `US`, `London`). |
| `max_items` | `Integer` | `150` | Maximum number of top-level postings to inspect. |
| `custom_thread_id` | `Integer` | `null` | Optional specific Hacker News item ID to scrape. |

##### Example Input

```json
{
  "thread_type": "whoishiring",
  "remote_only": true,
  "keyword_filter": "Python",
  "max_items": 100
}
```

***

#### Sample Output

```json
{
  "id": "hn_49929056",
  "company": "GiveDirectly",
  "role": "Senior Software Engineer",
  "location": "REMOTE in select countries",
  "is_remote": true,
  "employment_type": "Full-time",
  "salary": "$140k - $175k",
  "tech_stack": [
    "Python",
    "PostgreSQL",
    "AWS",
    "Docker"
  ],
  "contact_email": "jobs@givedirectly.org",
  "application_url": "https://www.givedirectly.org/careers",
  "author": "gd_recruiting",
  "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49929056",
  "thread_title": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2026)",
  "date_posted": "2026-10-01T15:24:00.000Z",
  "description_text": "GiveDirectly | Senior Software Engineer | REMOTE in select countries...",
  "scraped_at": "2026-10-12T08:00:00.000Z"
}
```

***

#### Common Uses

- Sourcing startup jobs and early-stage opportunities not listed on standard job boards.
- Finding freelance contracts directly from founders and engineering leads.
- Gathering market intelligence on startup compensation, tech stack adoption, and hiring trends.

***

#### Performance

This Actor makes concurrent REST calls to the Hacker News Firebase API (`hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0`). Because the API is public and lightweight, runs complete quickly without proxy requirements.

# Actor input Schema

## `thread_type` (type: `string`):

Select which monthly Hacker News thread to extract.

## `remote_only` (type: `boolean`):

If enabled, only positions with remote options will be included.

## `keyword_filter` (type: `string`):

Filter by keyword in role, company, description, or tech stack (e.g. 'Python', 'AI', 'Rust', 'Security').

## `location_filter` (type: `string`):

Filter by city, country, or region (e.g. 'Europe', 'US', 'London', 'Berlin').

## `max_items` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of top-level postings to scan from the thread.

## `custom_thread_id` (type: `integer`):

Specify an exact Hacker News item ID to scrape instead of auto-detecting the latest thread.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "thread_type": "whoishiring",
  "remote_only": false,
  "max_items": 150
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Extracted jobs from Hacker News hiring threads stored in the default dataset

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("arturpl6/hacker-news-hiring-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("arturpl6/hacker-news-hiring-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{}' |
apify call arturpl6/hacker-news-hiring-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,arturpl6/hacker-news-hiring-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/yyEZ4AxRLkdcUA1Av/builds/SGGkHgt8e0N0hJYY2/openapi.json