Frontpeek: Hacker News Scraper — Front Page, Search & Domain Mentions

Know what's on Hacker News, and the moment your site is posted

Get the Hacker News front page, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN and job lists with rank, points, comments and age; search stories by keyword; and catch every story that links to your domain (or a competitor's). Built on the official Hacker News API and the Algolia HN Search API. $0.30 per 1,000 stories, no start fee.

▶ Try it now with a prefilled input · $0.0003 per story (the full front page = $0.009) · no start fee · Apify's free plan includes $5 of credit a month

Built for: founders and marketers watching for mentions of their product · developer-relations and PR teams · trend and content researchers · newsletter writers · AI agents that need "what's trending in tech right now"

Real output (real run on Apify, 25 Oct 2026, the prefilled input: front page top 10 in 2.9 s, $0.003; two rows shown):

Rank	Title	Domain	Points	Comments	Age
3	We should be more ambitious with the software we build	danluu.com	499	429	15 h
4	Cerebras Deploys Trillion-Parameter AI Models	cerebras.ai	216	67	11.2 h

{"lists": ["top"], "maxItems": 10}

Ready-made inputs (one click)

Job	Input	Result
Front page now	{"lists": ["top"], "maxItems": 30}	All 30 front-page stories, ranked ($0.009).
Mentions of your site	{"domains": ["yourproduct.com"], "since": "30d"}	Every story linking to your domain in 30 days.
Keyword research	{"searches": ["AI agents"], "minPoints": 50, "sort": "relevance"}	The most-upvoted stories on the topic.
Show HN launches this week	{"lists": ["show"], "maxItems": 50} or {"searches": ["developer tools"], "kind": "show", "since": "7d"}	New launches.
Mention alerts	{"domains": ["yourproduct.com", "competitor.com"], "monitor": true}	On a schedule: only stories not seen before.

Use cases

• Brand and competitor mention alerts: a daily (or hourly) monitor on your domains, with a Slack or email ping only when something new appears.
• Launch tracking: follow your Show HN post's rank, points and comments over the day.
• Trend research: what the tech crowd is upvoting about a topic, with points and comment counts to rank by.
• Newsletters and dashboards: a clean daily feed of the best stories.
• AI agents: a fast, cheap tool for "what's on Hacker News about X?".

Why Frontpeek

	Frontpeek	Typical Hacker News scraper on the Store
Sources	All 6 live lists with rank + keyword search + domain mentions	Often lists only or search only
Domain mention alerts	Subdomain-aware, monitor mode, nothing new = free	Rare
Filters	Since (24h/7d/date), min points, min comments, story type	Varies
Data source	Official HN API + Algolia HN Search API, no HTML scraping	Varies
Price	$0.30 per 1,000 stories, no start fee	$0.20 to $5 per 1,000 (median about $0.40) (Store prices on 25 Oct 2026)

Input

Field	What it does
lists	Any of top, new, best, ask, show, job. Default top when nothing else is set.
searches	Keywords to search (newest first, or sort: relevance).
domains	Domains whose links you want to catch.
maxItems	Per list or search (default 30). In monitor mode: how deep each list is watched.
since, minPoints, minComments, kind	Filters.
monitor, monitorKey	Only stories not returned in earlier monitor runs.

Output

One row per story: id, title, url, domain, points, comments, createdAt, ageHours, kind (story, ask, show, launch, job, poll), hnUrl (the discussion), hasText, rank (list position), source (list:top, search:…, domain:…), matchedQuery, and change in monitor mode. Story-level data only: no user profiles or comment text.

Pricing

• $0.0003 per story delivered ($0.30 per 1,000). No start fee.
• Free: filtered-out stories, duplicates, stories already returned in earlier monitor runs.

Run it on a schedule

Apify Console → Schedules → Create new → cron 0 * * * * (hourly) → Add Actor → Frontpeek with your domains and "monitor": true. Through the API:

POST https://api.apify.com/v2/schedules?token=YOUR_TOKEN
{
  "name": "frontpeek-mentions",
  "cronExpression": "0 * * * *",
  "timezone": "America/New_York",
  "isEnabled": true,
  "actions": [{
    "type": "RUN_ACTOR",
    "actorId": "cybermax/hacker-news",
    "runInput": {
      "body": "{\"domains\":[\"yourproduct.com\"],\"searches\":[\"Your Product\"],\"monitor\":true,\"monitorKey\":\"mentions\"}",
      "contentType": "application/json"
    }
  }]
}

Add a Slack or email notification on "Run succeeded" under the Actor's Integrations tab, or send only non-empty runs with Make/Zapier below.

Integrations

API (synchronous): POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cybermax~hacker-news/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN with the input JSON returns the stories.

Make / Zapier: Apify app → "Run an Actor" (cybermax/hacker-news, run synchronously, "monitor": true) → "Get dataset items" → for each item post title, points and hnUrl to Slack.

n8n: Apify node, or HTTP Request:

POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cybermax~hacker-news/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN
{"lists": ["top"], "maxItems": 30}

Google Sheets:

=IMPORTDATA("https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cybermax~hacker-news/runs/last/dataset/items?format=csv&fields=rank,title,domain,points,comments,hnUrl&token=YOUR_TOKEN")

Python (pip install apify-client):

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("cybermax/hacker-news").call(run_input={"domains": ["yourproduct.com"], "since": "30d"})
for s in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(s["points"], s["title"], s["hnUrl"])

AI agents (MCP): https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=cybermax/hacker-news (Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN). Typical prompts: "What's on the Hacker News front page right now?", "Has anyone posted our site on HN this month?".

When NOT to use it

• Comment threads and user profiles: Frontpeek returns story-level data. Open hnUrl for the discussion.
• Posting or voting: read-only.

FAQ

Why not call the HN API myself? You can. Frontpeek joins the official lists API (which returns only ids) with item details and the Algolia search API, adds rank, domain and age, filters, de-duplicates and remembers what you've seen, and an AI agent can call it.

How fresh is it? Lists come straight from the official API at run time; search results are usually indexed within minutes.

Can an AI agent use it (MCP)? Yes. Add https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=cybermax/hacker-news as an MCP server in Claude, Cursor, VS Code or any MCP client.

Is Frontpeek affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator? No. It's an independent tool that reads their public APIs.

Is it legal to use? Frontpeek uses the public Hacker News API and the Algolia HN Search API, both offered for programmatic access. This is general information, not legal advice.

Start now

▶ Try Frontpeek with a prefilled input · $0.30 per 1,000 stories. Questions? Open an issue on the Store page and it gets answered the same day.

Also from CyberMax

• Swellmeter — Google Trends API: rising queries and interest over time for the topics you find here.
• Keyfern — long-tail keyword ideas: what people type into Google about them.
• Inkpluck — article extractor: the full text of the linked articles as Markdown.
• Unfurlwren — meta tags & Open Graph extractor: title, description and image of any linked page.

Changelog

• 2026-10-25: First release: top/new/best/ask/show/job lists with rank, keyword search, domain mentions, filters, monitor mode.

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