# Hacker News (By Keywords) Scraper - Low-cost💲🔥🔍📰 (`delectable_incubator/hacker-news-by-keywords-scraper-low-cost`) Actor

🔍 Easily search Hacker News by keyword across Stories, Comments, Ask HN, Show HN, Launch HN, Jobs and Polls. Extract titles, URLs, authors, scores, comments, publication dates, domains and more. Perfect for tech research, startup intelligence, AI datasets, trend analysis and automation.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/delectable\_incubator/hacker-news-by-keywords-scraper-low-cost.md
- **Developed by:** [Prime Scrape](https://apify.com/delectable_incubator) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Jobs, Social media
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 1 bookmarks
- **User rating**: 5.00 out of 5 stars

## Pricing

from $0.00005 / actor start

This Actor is paid per event and usage. You are charged both the fixed price for specific events and for Apify platform usage.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

<p align="center">
  <img src="https://i.ibb.co/jkNS73wX/readme.png" alt="Hacker News Search Scraper" width="100%">
</p>

***

## 🔍📰 Hacker News Search Scraper | Algolia Search | Stories, Comments, Ask HN, Show HN & Jobs | Apify Actor

### 🚀 Search Hacker News in Seconds (No Code)

The **Hacker News Search Scraper (Apify Actor)** is a powerful, scalable, and SEO-optimized scraping solution designed to search **public Hacker News content** through the official **Algolia Hacker News Search API**.

Search across **Stories, Comments, Ask HN, Show HN, Launch HN, Jobs, Polls, or All content** using **bulk keywords**, then collect structured datasets including titles, URLs, authors, scores, comments, publication dates, rankings, story IDs, and much more.

Perfect for **startup intelligence, AI research, developer trends, market research, content monitoring, news aggregation, LLM datasets, and automation workflows.**

***

## 🔥 Why This Hacker News Search Scraper?

✔ Best Hacker News Search Scraper on Apify

✔ Bulk Keyword Search

✔ Multiple Search Types

✔ Powered by Algolia Search

✔ Stories & Comments

✔ Ask HN, Show HN & Launch HN

✔ Jobs & Polls

✔ Date Range Filters

✔ Sort by Date or Popularity

✔ Fast & Scalable Extraction

✔ JSON / CSV / Excel Ready

✔ No Coding Required

***

## 🎯 What This Scraper Does

This Apify Actor searches **public Hacker News content** using one or multiple keywords.

Every keyword is automatically combined with every selected **Search Type**.

Example:

- AI + Stories
- AI + Comments
- AI + Ask HN

Each combination is processed independently and returns up to **max\_items\_per\_choice** results.

***

### 📌 Supported Search Types

✅ All

✅ Stories

✅ Comments

✅ Ask HN

✅ Show HN

✅ Launch HN

✅ Jobs

✅ Polls

***

### 📌 Core Features

✅ Bulk Keyword Search

✅ Multiple Search Types

✅ Sort by Date

✅ Sort by Popularity

✅ Date Range Filters

✅ Story Search

✅ Comment Search

✅ Ask HN Search

✅ Show HN Search

✅ Launch HN Search

✅ Jobs Search

✅ Poll Search

✅ Authors

✅ Scores

✅ Domains

✅ Publication Dates

✅ Comments Count

✅ Structured Output

✅ High-Speed Cloud Scraping

***

## ⚡ Input Configuration (Simple & Powerful)

### 🔥 BULK SEARCH MODE (SEO BOOST 🚀)

```
{
  "keywords": [
    "AI",
    "OpenAI",
    "Startup"
  ],
  "search_type": [
    "story",
    "comment"
  ],
  "sort_by": "byPopularity",
  "date_range": "pastMonth",
  "max_items_per_choice": 100
}
```

Simply enter one or more keywords, choose one or multiple search types, then select your preferred sorting and date range.

Each **keyword × search type** combination is processed independently.

***

## 📊 Extracted Data

| Field | Description |
|--------|-------------|
| item\_id | Hacker News item ID |
| item\_type | Story, Comment, Ask HN, Job, etc. |
| search\_keyword | Search keyword |
| search\_type | Selected search type |
| sort\_by | Search sorting |
| date\_range | Date filter |
| position\_index | Position in results |
| title | Story title |
| url | Original URL |
| domain | Website domain |
| score | Points |
| author | Author username |
| age\_text | Relative publication time |
| published\_date | Publication date |
| comments\_count | Number of comments |
| comment\_text | Comment or description |
| comment\_html | HTML version |
| parent\_id | Parent item ID |
| story\_id | Story ID |
| story\_title | Parent story title |
| hn\_item\_url | Hacker News discussion URL |
| scraped\_at | Extraction timestamp |

***

## 💡 Use Cases

Perfect for:

🤖 AI & LLM Datasets

🚀 Startup Intelligence

📰 Tech News Monitoring

💻 Developer Research

📈 Trend Analysis

📊 Market Intelligence

🔍 Open Source Monitoring

📚 Academic Research

📢 Content Discovery

⚙️ Automation Workflows

***

## 🚀 Key Features

⚡ Bulk Keyword Search

🔍 Multiple Search Types

📰 Stories

💬 Comments

❓ Ask HN

🚀 Show HN

🛠 Launch HN

💼 Jobs

📊 Popularity & Date Sorting

📅 Date Filters

👤 Authors

⭐ Scores

🌐 Domains

📊 Structured Output

🔁 Reliable Cloud Execution

💾 Export-Ready Datasets

⚙️ Enterprise-Ready Apify Actor

***

## 📤 Export Formats

✔ JSON

✔ CSV

✔ Excel (XLSX)

✔ XML

✔ HTML

✔ RSS

***

## 📦 Example Output

```
{
  "item_id": "45896321",
  "item_type": "story",
  "search_keyword": "AI",
  "search_type": "story",
  "sort_by": "byPopularity",
  "date_range": "pastMonth",
  "position_index": 1,
  "title": "Open-source AI framework released",
  "url": "https://example.com/article",
  "domain": "example.com",
  "score": 523,
  "author": "johndoe",
  "published_date": "2026-08-07T15:42:00Z",
  "comments_count": 84,
  "hn_item_url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45896321",
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-07T16:01:15Z"
}
```

***

## 🔥 Why This is the BEST Hacker News Search Scraper on Apify?

✔ Optimized for Apify Search Ranking

✔ Bulk Keyword Support

✔ Multiple Search Types

✔ Date & Popularity Filters

✔ Rich Story Metadata

✔ Stories & Comments

✔ Ask HN, Show HN & Launch HN

✔ Structured Export-Ready Datasets

✔ Enterprise-Ready Scalability

***

## 💸 Pricing

This scraper runs on a **pay-per-result** pricing model.

You only pay for successfully extracted search results.

**💳 Price: $0.29 / 1,000 results**

***

## ❓ FAQ

#### Can I search multiple keywords?

Yes.

Bulk keyword mode is fully supported.

***

#### Can I search multiple content types at once?

Yes.

Each keyword is combined with every selected search type automatically.

***

#### Which content types are supported?

- Stories
- Comments
- Ask HN
- Show HN
- Launch HN
- Jobs
- Polls
- All Content

***

#### Can I filter by date?

Yes.

Supported filters include:

- All Time
- Last 24 Hours
- Past Week
- Past Month
- Past Year

***

#### Can I sort results?

Yes.

Choose between:

- Date (Newest First)
- Popularity

***

#### Can I scrape thousands of results?

Yes.

Increase **max\_items\_per\_choice** and add as many keywords as needed.

***

#### Is coding required?

No.

Everything runs directly on Apify.

***

#### Can I export the data?

Yes.

Supports JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, HTML and RSS.

***

## ⚠️ Disclaimer

This tool is an independent data extraction solution and is **not affiliated with Hacker News, Algolia, or Y Combinator**.

Users are responsible for complying with the applicable Terms of Service and all relevant laws.

***

## 🔗 Related Actors

We are building the complete **PrimeScrape Tech Intelligence Suite.**

More premium startup, news, developer, forum, and technology scrapers are coming soon.

🚀 Stay tuned.

***

## 🌍 PrimeScrape Ecosystem

Built for large-scale data extraction, automation, AI datasets, and business intelligence.

📰 Tech Intelligence

🚀 Startup Research

💻 Developer Analytics

📊 Market Research

🤖 AI Training Datasets

⚙️ Automation Pipelines

🌐 Public Data Extraction

***

## 📬 Support

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

If this scraper saves you time, please leave a review.

For enterprise scraping solutions, custom Apify Actors, or large-scale Hacker News search projects, feel free to contact **PrimeScrape**.

# Actor input Schema

## `keywords` (type: `array`):

One or more search keywords. Each keyword is combined with every selected search type into its own scrape job.

## `search_type` (type: `array`):

Select one or more Hacker News content types to search. Combined with each keyword above.

## `sort_by` (type: `string`):

Result ordering applied to every job.

## `date_range` (type: `string`):

Time window applied to every job.

## `max_items_per_choice` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of items to extract for EACH keyword × search type combination.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Proxy settings used while scraping. A fresh session is used per job attempt.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "keywords": [
    "AI"
  ],
  "search_type": [
    "all",
    "story"
  ],
  "sort_by": "byDate",
  "date_range": "all",
  "max_items_per_choice": 100,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `overview` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "keywords": [
        "AI"
    ],
    "search_type": [
        "all",
        "story"
    ],
    "sort_by": "byDate",
    "date_range": "all",
    "max_items_per_choice": 100
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("delectable_incubator/hacker-news-by-keywords-scraper-low-cost").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "keywords": ["AI"],
    "search_type": [
        "all",
        "story",
    ],
    "sort_by": "byDate",
    "date_range": "all",
    "max_items_per_choice": 100,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("delectable_incubator/hacker-news-by-keywords-scraper-low-cost").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "keywords": [
    "AI"
  ],
  "search_type": [
    "all",
    "story"
  ],
  "sort_by": "byDate",
  "date_range": "all",
  "max_items_per_choice": 100
}' |
apify call delectable_incubator/hacker-news-by-keywords-scraper-low-cost --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,delectable_incubator/hacker-news-by-keywords-scraper-low-cost"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/QKEoMRKNw4gpr9aEp/builds/uzj01K8VwegZ6hQYQ/openapi.json