Indie Hackers Products Scraper

Extract public product and startup records from the Indie Hackers product directory.

Use this actor to collect names, taglines, websites, founder IDs, tags, social handles, and product metadata from Indie Hackers without writing your own Algolia integration.

What does Indie Hackers Products Scraper do?

Indie Hackers Products Scraper searches the public Indie Hackers product directory and saves structured product records to an Apify dataset.

It is built for repeatable lead generation, market research, startup discovery, and product category analysis.

The actor uses HTTP requests to the public search index exposed by Indie Hackers, so it is fast, lightweight, and does not need a browser.

Who is it for?

Sales teams

Find SaaS companies, indie products, and startup websites for outbound prospecting.

Investors and scouts

Build watchlists of bootstrapped founders, AI startups, ecommerce tools, and niche software products.

Market researchers

Map product categories, revenue models, funding tags, and platform tags in the Indie Hackers ecosystem.

Agencies

Discover companies that may need marketing, SEO, analytics, design, or development help.

Builders

Study positioning, taglines, categories, and website examples from thousands of indie products.

Why use this actor?

• ⚡ Fast HTTP-only extraction
• 🔎 Keyword search support
• 🏷️ Optional tag filters
• 🌐 Website and Indie Hackers profile URLs
• 🧑 Founder user IDs when available
• 📊 Revenue, follower, and traffic fields when the source exposes them
• 🧾 Clean JSON output ready for export
• 🔁 Works in scheduled Apify workflows

Data you can extract

Field	Description
name	Product name
tagline	Short product pitch
description	Longer product description
productUrl	Indie Hackers product page
websiteUrl	External product website
slug	Indie Hackers product slug
twitterHandle	Public Twitter/X handle
twitterUrl	Derived Twitter/X URL
revenue	Public revenue value when present
numFollowers	Indie Hackers follower count
last30DaysUniques	Public traffic metric when present
userIds	Founder or maker IDs
tags	All public product tags
verticalTags	Tags beginning with vertical-
revenueModelTags	Tags beginning with revenue-model-
platformTags	Tags beginning with platform-
fundingTags	Tags beginning with funding-
scrapedAt	Timestamp of extraction

How much does it cost to scrape Indie Hackers products?

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing.

You pay a small run-start fee and then a per-product fee only for product records saved to the dataset.

Typical small test runs are inexpensive because the default input saves only a small number of products.

Final tiered pricing is set on the Apify platform before publication.

How to use the actor

1. Open the actor on Apify.
2. Enter a keyword such as analytics, ai, marketing, or shopify.
3. Set the maximum number of products.
4. Optionally add exact Indie Hackers tags.
5. Start the run.
6. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or via API.

Input

The input is intentionally small and easy to use.

{
  "query": "analytics",
  "maxItems": 20,
  "tags": ["vertical-saas"]
}

Input fields

query

Keyword searched against product name, tagline, description, website URL, and public social fields.

Leave it empty to export from the broader product directory.

maxItems

Maximum number of product records to save.

Use a low number for test runs and a higher number for production exports.

tags

Optional exact public Indie Hackers tags.

Examples:

• vertical-saas
• vertical-ai
• vertical-analytics
• revenue-model-subscription
• platform-web
• funding-bootstrapped

Output

Each dataset item is one Indie Hackers product record.

{
  "name": "Dynoweb",
  "tagline": "Replace GA + Hotjar + CRO tools with one.",
  "description": "Shopify analytics tools show what happened...",
  "productUrl": "https://www.indiehackers.com/product/dynoweb",
  "websiteUrl": "https://www.dynoweb.app",
  "slug": "dynoweb",
  "twitterHandle": "Dynoweb_",
  "twitterUrl": "https://twitter.com/Dynoweb_",
  "revenue": 0,
  "numFollowers": 1,
  "tags": ["vertical-ai", "vertical-saas"],
  "query": "analytics",
  "position": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-23T09:00:00.000Z"
}

Tips for better results

• Use focused keywords for cleaner exports.
• Combine a keyword with one or two tags for niche prospecting.
• Use vertical-saas for software products.
• Use revenue-model-subscription to find subscription businesses.
• Increase maxItems only after a small test run looks correct.

Example searches

• analytics
• ai
• shopify
• marketing
• email
• automation
• design
• developer tools

Example workflows

Startup lead list

Search for analytics, filter by vertical-saas, export websites to CSV, and enrich the domains in your CRM.

Founder research

Search by category and use userIds or makerProfileUrls to review founder profiles on Indie Hackers.

Competitive research

Export products in your category and compare positioning, tags, website URLs, and launch dates.

Newsletter sourcing

Find recently published products in a niche and curate them for a startup newsletter.

Integrations

Use the dataset with:

• Google Sheets exports
• Zapier or Make automations
• CRM imports
• Lead enrichment tools
• Apify webhooks
• Apify API clients
• BI dashboards

API usage

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/indie-hackers-products-scraper').call({
  query: 'analytics',
  maxItems: 50,
  tags: ['vertical-saas'],
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
import os

client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('automation-lab/indie-hackers-products-scraper').call(run_input={
    'query': 'analytics',
    'maxItems': 50,
    'tags': ['vertical-saas'],
})

items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~indie-hackers-products-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query":"analytics","maxItems":50,"tags":["vertical-saas"]}'

MCP usage

You can use this actor through Apify MCP in Claude Code or Claude Desktop.

MCP URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/indie-hackers-products-scraper

Claude Code setup:

$claude mcp add apify https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/indie-hackers-products-scraper

Claude Desktop JSON config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/indie-hackers-products-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• "Find 25 Indie Hackers products about analytics and return their websites."
• "Export SaaS products from Indie Hackers that mention AI."
• "Create a lead list from Indie Hackers products in marketing automation."

Scheduling

Run the actor on a schedule to monitor new products in a category.

For example, schedule a weekly run for ai and compare new product slugs against your previous dataset.

Webhooks

Attach an Apify webhook to send finished dataset URLs to Slack, Zapier, Make, or your own backend.

This is useful for recurring prospecting workflows.

Data freshness

The actor reads the current public Indie Hackers search index during each run.

Results can change as Indie Hackers updates product records, tags, and ranking.

Limits

The actor can request up to 10,000 products per run.

If a query has fewer matching products, the actor stops when the source has no more pages.

FAQ

Can I scrape Indie Hackers products without a browser?

Yes. This actor uses public HTTP endpoints and does not launch a browser, so runs are fast and inexpensive.

Troubleshooting

Why did I get fewer items than maxItems?

The source may have fewer products matching your query and tag filters.

Try removing tags or using a broader keyword.

Why are some fields null?

Indie Hackers does not expose every field for every product.

The actor preserves missing values as null instead of inventing data.

Why does a tag filter return zero results?

Tags must match the exact public tag name used in the source index.

Try running without tags first and inspect the tags field in the output.

Legality

This actor extracts publicly available product directory data.

You are responsible for using the data in compliance with applicable laws, Indie Hackers terms, and privacy regulations.

Do not use the output for spam, harassment, or unlawful profiling.

Related scrapers

Other automation-lab actors that may complement this workflow:

• Product discovery scrapers
• Startup directory scrapers
• Website/domain enrichment actors
• Social profile enrichment actors
• Email verification actors

Use them together to build a complete startup lead-generation pipeline.

Changelog

0.1

Initial version with public Indie Hackers product search, tag filters, and structured dataset output.

Support

If a run fails or the output looks wrong, open an Apify issue with your run URL and expected result.

Include the query, tags, and max item count so the issue can be reproduced.

Notes

The actor is not affiliated with Indie Hackers.

It only uses public data available without logging in.