Product Hunt Scraper & Launch Tracker

Scrape Product Hunt for product launches, makers, topics, and search results — no login and no Product Hunt API token required. Point it at today's front page, a topic feed, a search query, or specific product URLs and get one clean JSON item per product, complete with upvotes, makers, and topics.

Why this Actor

Product Hunt is where new SaaS, AI, and developer tools launch first — which makes it the freshest public source of early-stage startups and the people building them. The official API is rate-limited and OAuth-gated; this Actor reads the public site, so you can pull launches into a spreadsheet, CRM, or model without managing tokens. Track competitors the day they ship, or build a nightly feed of every AI launch.

What it extracts

• Product name, tagline, and full description
• Upvotes / vote count, rating, and review count
• Makers — name, username, headline (great for lead gen)
• Topics / categories and pricing type
• Media — thumbnail, images, video
• Launch date and last-updated date
• Product website URL and Product Hunt URL

Who is this for?

• Lead generation — build lists of new startups and reach their makers directly
• Competitive intelligence — get alerted the moment a competitor or adjacent tool launches
• Investors & scouts — surface high-upvote products early, filtered by topic
• Trend & market research — track which categories are heating up week over week
• Growth & content teams — mine launch data for roundups, newsletters, and benchmarks

How it works

Choose one or more ways to select products, and the scraper collects them up to maxProducts:

1. scrapeFrontPage — today's featured launches.
2. topic — one or more topic slugs (e.g. artificial-intelligence, developer-tools, saas).
3. searchQuery — any search term Product Hunt supports.
4. startUrls — exact product pages you already know.

Input

{
  "scrapeFrontPage": true,
  "topic": "artificial-intelligence, saas",
  "searchQuery": "",
  "maxProducts": 50,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

Option	Description
startUrls	Specific Product Hunt product URLs to scrape
topic	Comma-separated topic slugs (required if no other source given)
searchQuery	Free-text search across Product Hunt
scrapeFrontPage	Scrape today's front-page launches
maxProducts	Max products to return (default 50, max 500)
proxyConfiguration	Optional proxy. Front page needs none; topic/search pages block datacenter IPs — use a residential proxy (proxyUrls) for those

Output (one item per product)

{
  "id": "a1b2c3...",
  "phId": "12345",
  "name": "Product Name",
  "tagline": "One-line description",
  "description": "Full description",
  "url": "https://www.producthunt.com/products/...",
  "website": "https://...",
  "upvotes": 250,
  "topics": ["Artificial Intelligence", "SaaS"],
  "makers": [{"name": "Jane", "username": "jane", "headline": "Builder"}],
  "media": [{"type": "thumbnail", "url": "https://..."}],
  "launchedAt": "2026-07-01T00:00:00Z",
  "pricingType": "free",
  "reviewsCount": 15,
  "rating": 4.5
}

Export to JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull the dataset via the API.

Run on a schedule / via API

Build a daily feed of new AI launches:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/darknezz~product-hunt-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"topic":"artificial-intelligence","maxProducts":50}'

From Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("darknezz~product-hunt-scraper").call(
    run_input={"topic": "artificial-intelligence", "maxProducts": 50},
)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["name"], item["upvotes"], [m["username"] for m in item["makers"]])

Add a Schedule in the Apify console to run it every morning, and a webhook to push new makers straight into your CRM.

Worked example: track every AI launch this week

1. Set topic to artificial-intelligence and maxProducts to 500.
2. Schedule the Actor to run daily at 08:00.
3. Attach a webhook that posts new items to your Slack channel.
4. Filter makers for individuals (not companies) and add them to a "founders to contact" list.

Within a week you have a rolling, de-duplicated feed of every AI product launch — with the people behind it.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: $0.01 per product extracted, plus a tiny per-run start fee. No subscription — pay only for the products you pull.

FAQ

Do I need a Product Hunt account or API key? No. It reads the public site — no login, no OAuth, no token.

Can I combine sources? Yes — set scrapeFrontPage and a topic together, for example; results are de-duplicated up to maxProducts.

Are makers included? Yes — each product carries a makers array with name, username, and headline, ideal for outreach.

Should I keep proxy on? No — the front page works without a proxy and is the default. Topic and search pages block datacenter IPs (Product Hunt 403/429s them), so if you scrape by topic or search query, attach a residential proxy under proxyConfiguration.proxyUrls; the Actor falls back to a direct connection automatically when a proxy is blocked.

How do I find topic slugs? Visit any topic page on Product Hunt — the slug is the part after /topics/ (e.g. artificial-intelligence, developer-tools, saas). You can pass several at once, comma-separated.

What counts as one product for billing? One dataset item = one product record. maxProducts caps the run, so a 500-product run costs a fixed, predictable amount.