HN Show HN Tracker

Track and scrape Show HN, Ask HN, and Launch HN posts from Hacker News — the most active technical product launch community on the internet.

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What Does This Actor Do?

Every day, hundreds of founders, engineers, and makers post their projects on Hacker News under "Show HN: ..." — effectively one of the most signal-rich product launch feeds available. This actor lets you:

• Scrape all Show HN posts within any date range (days, weeks, months, years)
• Filter by minimum score / comments to focus on breakout hits
• Search by keyword (e.g., AI, SaaS, open-source, Python)
• Track Ask HN discussions or Launch HN (Y Combinator company launches)
• Get clean structured JSON output: title, URL, author, points, comments, HN link

Powered by the Algolia HN Search API — free, official, no authentication required.

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Use Cases

• Competitive intelligence: track what new products are being launched in your niche
• Trend research: identify emerging technologies and tools from community signal
• Lead generation: find founders launching products (early-stage sales opportunities)
• VC/investor deal flow: discover early-stage projects before they become known
• Content research: find high-signal discussions for newsletters or blogs
• Building datasets: collect historical HN launch data for analysis

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Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
postType	string	show_hn, ask_hn, or launch_hn	show_hn
dateFrom	string	Start date (YYYY-MM-DD). Empty = 7 days ago	""
dateTo	string	End date (YYYY-MM-DD). Empty = today	""
minPoints	integer	Minimum upvote score (0 = all)	0
minComments	integer	Minimum comment count (0 = all)	0
keywords	array	Filter titles containing any of these keywords	[]
maxResults	integer	Max posts to return (0 = unlimited)	500
sortBy	string	Sort by date, points, or comments	date

Example Input

{
  "postType": "show_hn",
  "dateFrom": "2026-05-01",
  "dateTo": "2026-05-31",
  "minPoints": 50,
  "minComments": 10,
  "keywords": ["AI", "open source"],
  "maxResults": 100,
  "sortBy": "points"
}

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Output Format

Each item in the dataset:

{
  "hn_id": "48297555",
  "title": "Show HN: cuSBF – Faster GPU Bloom Filter for Sequence Data",
  "url": "https://github.com/tdortman/cuSBF",
  "hn_url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48297555",
  "author": "tdortman",
  "points": 312,
  "num_comments": 47,
  "created_at": "2026-05-27T17:30:53Z",
  "created_at_ts": 1779903053,
  "tags": ["story", "show_hn", "author_tdortman", "story_48297555"]
}

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Performance & Limits

• Typical run: <30 seconds for 500 posts
• Large date ranges (months of data): 1–3 minutes
• The Algolia API serves up to 1,000 results per query. For larger datasets, the actor automatically paginates.
• Rate limiting: polite 200ms delay between pages; Algolia's API is public and stable.

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Pricing (Pay-Per-Event)

This actor uses Pay-Per-Event pricing:

• $0.01 per post extracted

A run extracting 500 Show HN posts costs ~$5. Fetching just the top 50 posts of the week costs $0.50. No platform compute overhead — runs fast and lightweight.

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Data Source

Algolia HN Search API — the official search index provided by HN/Y Combinator. Free, open, no authentication, extremely stable.

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FAQ

Does this require login or API keys? No. The Algolia HN Search API is fully public and free.

How far back can I search? The full HN history is indexed (back to 2006). Date ranges are only limited by your maxResults setting.

How often does the data update? Algolia indexes HN in near-real-time (typically < 1 minute lag).

Does this scrape HN directly? No. It uses the official Algolia HN Search API, which is specifically provided for this use case.