Hacker News Scraper: stories and comments by keyword

🟧 What is Hacker News Search?

Turn search terms into a table of Hacker News stories and comments, with title, link, author, points, date and thread id. Keep only recent or popular items; no login and no proxy needed.

• Brand monitoring: see every story and comment that names your company or its rivals
• Release tracking: measure how your Show HN post did, in points and comments
• Market research: collect the best-voted discussions on a topic since a date
• Content ideas: find the questions developers raise in Ask HN

✨ Why use this Actor?

• ✅ Official source: Algolia's HN Search, the search behind hn.algolia.com
• ✅ Every item type: tags: story, comment, ask_hn, show_hn or job
• ✅ Filters: since, minPoints and sort by relevance or date
• ✅ Several searches per run: each query is reported in the run summary
• ✅ Cheap: 0.16 USD per 1,000 items; failed queries are not charged

📦 What data can you get with Hacker News Search?

📰 Title	🔗 Link and HN URL	👤 Author
🔺 Points	💬 Comment count	📅 Created at
📝 Text of comments and Ask HN	🧵 Story and parent id	🏷️ Type and tags
🔎 Query it came from

🚀 How to use Hacker News Search

Hacker News Search works in a few clicks, no coding needed:

1. Create a free Apify account (the free plan includes 5 USD of monthly credit).
2. Open Hacker News Search and click Try for free.
3. Enter one or more search terms, pick stories or comments and, optionally, a date and a minimum of points.
4. Click Start and wait for the run to finish (most runs take seconds).
5. Download your data as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or send it straight to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier or your AI agent.

⬇️ Input

Only queries is required; by default the Actor returns the 100 most relevant stories per query.

Item type

tags picks story (default), comment, ask_hn, show_hn or job.

Newest first

Set sort to date and since to a date for monitoring; schedule the run daily.

Only popular

minPoints keeps items with at least that many points.

Field	Type	What it does	Default
Search terms (queries)	array	One search per term; results are deduped across terms.	["web scraping"]
Type (tags)	string	Which kind of Hacker News item to search: "story", "comment", "ask_hn", "show_hn", "job", "poll" or "front_page" (stories currently on the front page).	"story"
Sort (sort)	string	relevance (with points) or date (newest first).	"relevance"
Created since (since)	string	Keep items created on or after this date, e.g.
Minimum points (minPoints)	integer	Keep stories with at least this many points.	0
Maximum items per term (maxItemsPerQuery)	integer	Maximum number of items returned for each search term (1 to 1,000), most relevant or newest first depending on the sort.	100
Maximum retries (maxRetries)	integer	Retries per request with exponential backoff on network errors, 429 and 5xx.	3

Input example

{
    "queries": [
        "web scraping",
        "apify"
    ],
    "tags": "story",
    "minPoints": 50,
    "maxItemsPerQuery": 20
}

⬆️ Output

Every story or comment becomes one row. The run summary (OUTPUT) lists every query with the items found and the error if one failed.

Output example

One row of the dataset (query "web scraping", a real run of 2026-10-16):

{
    "id": "22180559",
    "type": "story",
    "title": "Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent)",
    "url": "https://parsers.me/us-court-fully-legalized-website-scraping-and-technically-prohibited-it/",
    "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22180559",
    "author": "ehurynovich",
    "points": 1057,
    "numComments": 388,
    "createdAt": "2020-01-29T14:06:37Z",
    "text": null,
    "storyId": 22180559,
    "parentId": null,
    "tags": [
        "story"
    ],
    "query": "web scraping"
}

View the results as a table or JSON in the Output tab and download them as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, HTML or RSS, all fields or only those you pick.

💰 How much does Hacker News Search cost?

Hacker News Search is priced per event: 0.16 USD per 1,000 results (0.00016 USD per result), with no monthly rental. Each saved row is billed; failed queries cost nothing.

You get	You pay
100 results	0.02 USD
1,000 results	0.16 USD
10,000 results	1.6 USD
100,000 results	16 USD

💡 Apify's free plan gives you 5 USD of credit every month, enough for about 31,250 results at no cost. Set a spending limit per run and the Actor stops there.

⚖️ Hacker News Search vs. the alternatives

	Hacker News Search	HTML scrapers	hn.algolia.com
Official source	✅	❌	✅
Several queries in one run	✅	varies	❌
Points and date filters	✅	rarely	✅
Export, schedule, API and MCP	✅	✅	❌

🔌 Integrations, API and MCP

Connect Hacker News Search to your AI agent (MCP)

Give Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP client direct access to Hacker News Search through the Apify MCP server. Add this URL to its settings:

https://mcp.apify.com/?actors=bepolabs/hacker-news

For Claude Desktop, add it under mcpServers in claude_desktop_config.json:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "hacker-news": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "@apify/actors-mcp-server",
                "--actors",
                "bepolabs/hacker-news"
            ],
            "env": {
                "APIFY_TOKEN": "<your Apify API token>"
            }
        }
    }
}

Then ask: "Find Hacker News stories about our product from the last 30 days with more than 20 points and sum up the comments."

Run it from your code

Python (pip install apify-client):

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("bepolabs/hacker-news").call(run_input={"queries":["web scraping","apify"],"tags":"story","minPoints":50,"maxItemsPerQuery":20})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

JavaScript (npm install apify-client):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('bepolabs/hacker-news').call({"queries":["web scraping","apify"],"tags":"story","minPoints":50,"maxItemsPerQuery":20});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

No-code integrations

Send results to Google Sheets, Slack, Airtable, HubSpot, Make, Zapier, n8n and more from the Integrations tab, start runs on a schedule, or trigger your own endpoint with a webhook when a run finishes. The Apify API gives you full control over runs and datasets.

❓ FAQ

How far back does it go?

To the start of Hacker News; use since to limit the window.

Can I get comments?

Yes, set tags to comment; each row has the comment text, its story and parent.

How many items per query?

Up to maxItemsPerQuery (default 100).

Is it legal to use Hacker News Search?

The Actor reads the open search index that Y Combinator and Algolia offer for exactly this kind of search. Usernames are public; respect authors' rights if you republish their text.

What if something is missing or does not work?

Open an issue on the Issues tab; we read each one and reply. Feature requests are welcome too.

💬 Your feedback

Tell us what Hacker News Search should add on the Issues tab or leave a review; your notes decide what we work on next.

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