Hacker News Scraper - Stories, Comments & Trends

What is Hacker News Scraper?

Hacker News Scraper is a tool that lets you scrape stories and comments from Hacker News by keyword, or grab what is on the front page right now: title, link, author, points, comment count, date, post text and the discussion URL. Filter by points, comments, post type and date. Type a keyword, click Start, and download the results as Excel, CSV or JSON.

• 🔎 Search all of Hacker News: every story and comment, ranked by relevance or newest first
• 📈 Front page now: the current front page stories, in front-page order
• 🎯 Filters: minimum points, minimum comments, post type and date range
• 🔓 No login: no Hacker News account or API key needed
• 💸 Free to try: the $5 of free usage every Apify account gets each month covers about 10,000 stories and comments

What can Hacker News Scraper do?

• Search Hacker News stories by keyword
• Search Hacker News comments by keyword
• Scrape the Hacker News front page right now
• Get the newest Hacker News posts about a topic
• Get top Hacker News stories with a minimum number of points or comments
• Scrape Show HN, Ask HN, poll and job posts
• Get Hacker News posts from the last 24 hours, week, month, year or any number of days back
• Monitor Hacker News for mentions of your product or competitors
• Export to Excel, CSV, JSON, HTML or XML, or send the results to Google Sheets, Slack, Make, Zapier and more

What data can you extract from Hacker News?

📰 Story title	🔗 Story link	👤 Author
👍 Points	💬 Number of comments	📅 Date and time
📝 Ask HN and comment text	🏷️ Post type	🧵 Parent story ID and title (comments)
🔗 Hacker News discussion URL	🆔 Item ID

How to scrape Hacker News

1. Create a free Apify account (no credit card needed).
2. Open Hacker News Scraper.
3. Type a Search query, for example AI agents, or set Search mode to Front page now.
4. Optionally set a Date range, Minimum points, Minimum comments or Content type, set Maximum results, and click Start.
5. When the run finishes, open the Output tab (the Posts view shows stories, the Comments view shows comment text) or download the results as Excel, CSV, JSON, HTML or XML.

How much does it cost to scrape Hacker News?

You pay $0.50 per 1,000 results (stories or comments). Apify platform usage is included in that price, and there is no start fee, so there is nothing else to pay.

For example, 100 results cost $0.05, and the maximum of 1,000 results in one run costs $0.50. If you set a maximum cost per run, the run stops when it is reached and keeps everything collected so far.

Every Apify account gets $5 of free usage each month, enough for about 10,000 stories and comments. See the Pricing tab for details.

⬇️ Input

Setting	What it does
Search query	Keywords to search for, such as Rust, AI agents or YC W26. Optional for Newest first and Front page now
Search mode	Relevance (search), Newest first (search_by_date) or Front page now (front_page)
Content type	Post type: story, comment, show_hn, ask_hn, poll, job (default story). Types separated by commas must all match, so story,show_hn means Show HN stories. Empty means every type
Minimum points	Only posts with at least this many points (0 = no filter)
Minimum comments	Only stories with at least this many comments (0 = no filter)
Maximum results	Up to 1,000 results per run (default 100)
Date range	All time, last 24 hours, past week, past month, past year, or custom
Custom days back	Days back, when the date range is custom (default 30)

Example: popular Rust stories from the past month.

{
  "query": "Rust",
  "search_mode": "search",
  "tags": "story",
  "points_min": 50,
  "date_range": "past_month",
  "max_results": 100
}

Example: the newest comments that mention your product.

{
  "query": "Supabase",
  "search_mode": "search_by_date",
  "tags": "comment",
  "date_range": "last_24h",
  "max_results": 200
}

⬆️ Output

You get one row per story or comment. You can view them as a table in Apify Console or download them as Excel, CSV, JSON, HTML or XML.

A story:

{
  "objectId": "49724881",
  "title": "Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust",
  "url": "https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/introducing-cuda-rust-two-...",
  "author": "nonmaskable",
  "points": 970,
  "numComments": 404,
  "createdAt": "2026-09-16T11:15:53Z",
  "storyText": "",
  "contentType": "story",
  "storyId": "",
  "storyTitle": "",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49724881"
}

A comment:

{
  "objectId": "49867252",
  "title": "",
  "url": "",
  "author": "sandworm101",
  "points": 0,
  "numComments": 0,
  "createdAt": "2026-09-27T15:04:40Z",
  "storyText": "Talk about burying the lead. This was a MEC bike light...",
  "contentType": "comment",
  "storyId": "49866515",
  "storyTitle": "Replacing the old battery on rechargeable bike lights",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867252"
}

The text of Ask HN posts and comments comes as plain text in storyText. A comment carries the ID and title of the story it belongs to in storyId and storyTitle.

How can I use Hacker News data?

• Brand and competitor monitoring: track mentions of a product, company or competitor on Hacker News
• Trend spotting: find rising tools, languages and startups before they go mainstream
• Newsletters and digests: collect the best-voted posts of the week
• Market and sentiment research: collect comments on a topic and see what developers think
• Launch monitoring: follow your Show HN and the discussion around it

How to monitor Hacker News for a keyword

1. Type your keyword and set Search mode to Newest first.
2. Set Date range to the last 24 hours.
3. Schedule the actor to run every day, and send the results to Slack, email, Google Sheets or a webhook with an integration.

You can also run it from your own code with the Apify API or the Python and JavaScript clients:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("automly/hacker-news-trends-api").call(run_input={
    "search_mode": "front_page",
    "max_results": 30,
})
for post in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(post["points"], post["title"], post["hnUrl"])

Scrape more tech and community data

Actor	What it gets
Product Hunt Launches Scraper	Product Hunt launches with upvotes, ranks, makers, comments and reviews
Reddit Scraper - Posts, Comments, Users, Subreddits & Search	Reddit posts, comments, subreddits and keyword search results
Reddit Keyword + Comment Thread Monitor	New Reddit posts and comments that mention your keywords
GitHub Repository & Issue Scraper	Repository details, issues, pull requests and contributors
Google News Scraper API - Full Text, Monitoring & RSS	News articles by keyword with full text and only new articles per run

❓FAQ

How much does it cost to scrape Hacker News?

$0.50 per 1,000 stories or comments, with platform usage included and no start fee. See How much does it cost to scrape Hacker News? above.

Do I need a Hacker News account?

No. Everything comes from public Hacker News data, so you need no account or API key.

How many results can I get in one run?

Up to 1,000 stories or comments per run. Use the date range and filters to focus on what you need, or run it again with a different date range.

How fresh is the data?

New posts and comments show up in search within minutes. Use Newest first for monitoring.

What is the difference between the search modes?

Relevance ranks by how well posts match your keywords, Newest first lists the newest matches first, and Front page now returns the stories on the Hacker News front page at the moment of the run.

Why are points 0 on comments?

Hacker News does not show comment scores publicly, so comments always have 0 points.

Can I get all comments on one story?

Set Content type to comment and use words from the story title as the query, or open the story's hnUrl for the full thread.

Can I export to CSV or Excel?

Yes. Download from the Output tab, or get the results through the Apify API in JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or RSS.

Can I connect Hacker News Scraper to other tools or AI agents?

Yes. Start runs and download results with the Apify API or the Python and JavaScript clients, send results to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets or Slack with Apify integrations and webhooks, or let AI assistants and agents run it through the Apify MCP server at mcp.apify.com.

Is it legal to scrape Hacker News?

Hacker News Scraper only collects posts and comments that people chose to publish openly on Hacker News. It does not collect private data such as email addresses. Usernames and comment text can still be personal data, which may be protected by laws such as GDPR, so only scrape for a legitimate reason and ask a lawyer if you are unsure. You can read more in Is web scraping legal?

Hacker News Scraper is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Hacker News or Y Combinator.

Something isn't working. What should I do?

Open the Issues tab and tell us your input and what you expected.

⭐ Your feedback

Have an idea or found a problem? Tell us on the Issues tab. If Hacker News Scraper saved you time, a short review on the Reviews tab helps other people find it.