Hacker News Scraper — Stories, Comments & Search API

Search and scrape Hacker News — stories and comments — into clean structured data. Powered by the official Hacker News (Algolia) search API, this scraper lets you filter by keyword, item type, points, comment count, and date, and returns tidy records ready for research, monitoring, trend analysis, or LLM datasets.

What it does

• Full-text search across all of Hacker News, or browse the newest / front-page items.
• Types — stories, comments, Ask HN, Show HN, polls, or the current front page.
• Filters — minimum points, minimum comments, and a start date.
• Clean output — one record per item with title/text, url, author, points, comments, and date; comment HTML is stripped to plain text.

Use cases

• Trend & topic monitoring — track what HN is discussing about a keyword or company.
• Market/competitor research — find top stories and community sentiment.
• LLM/RAG datasets — high-signal tech discussion text.
• Lead/PR signals — catch Show HN launches and front-page moments.

Input

Field	Description
query	Full-text search (empty = newest/front-page of the chosen type).
type	story, comment, ask_hn, show_hn, poll, or front_page.
sortBy	date (newest first) or relevance.
minPoints	Only items with at least this many points.
minComments	Only stories with at least this many comments.
startDate	Only items on/after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
maxItems	Cap on items returned (main cost lever; API returns up to ~1000).

Output

Each item becomes one dataset record:

{
  "type": "story",
  "objectId": "45712345",
  "title": "Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem",
  "text": null,
  "url": "https://example.com/article",
  "author": "pg",
  "points": 2214,
  "numComments": 1324,
  "createdAt": "2025-10-29T13:05:00.000Z",
  "tags": ["story"],
  "storyId": null,
  "parentId": null,
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45712345"
}

Comments carry their text in text and a parentId/storyId.

Pricing

Pay-per-result: charged per item returned — no monthly fee.

Notes

• Uses the official Hacker News Algolia API — reliable and keyless.
• The API returns up to ~1000 results per query; narrow with filters for precise sets.

FAQ

Can I get comments, not just stories? Yes — set type to comment (optionally with a query).

How do I get the top stories of the week? Set minPoints, a recent startDate, and sortBy: date.

What formats can I export? JSON, JSONL, CSV, or Excel, or via the Apify API.