Hacker News Scraper: Stories, Comments, Search & Users

Scrape Hacker News fast through its official open APIs: search stories and comments by keyword, pull the front page and the top, new, best, Ask HN, Show HN and job lists, download full comment threads, and get user profiles with everything they posted.

No login, no API key and no browser: the Actor reads the data directly, which makes it fast and cheap. Proxies are included in the price.

What can you use it for?

• Hiring & lead generation: turn the monthly "Who is hiring?" thread into rows of job posts.
• Brand & topic monitoring: track every mention of your product, competitors or keywords.
• Trend research: see which domains, launches and topics get the most points.
• Launch analysis: study Show HN posts and their comments.
• AI datasets: collect high-quality technical discussions.

Features

Inputs	Keyword searches, front page / top / new / best / Ask / Show / job lists, story URLs, usernames
Per story	ID, type (story, Ask HN, Show HN, job, poll), title, URL, domain, author, points, comment count, date, text, HN link, rank
Per comment	ID, story ID and title, parent ID, depth in the thread, author, text, date, link
Per user	Karma, about, created date, submission count
Filters	Min points, only newer than a date, stories / comments / Show HN / Ask HN / jobs
No result cap	Date-sorted searches page past the 1,000 hit limit of HN search

How to use

1. Fill in the input (the form explains every field).
2. Click Start.
3. Download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel, or use them through the API, webhooks, Zapier, Make or n8n.

Input example

{
    "searchQueries": [
        "apify",
        "web scraping"
    ],
    "searchType": "all",
    "onlyNewerThan": "2026-01-01",
    "storyUrls": [
        "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1"
    ],
    "maxItemsPerSource": 0
}

Output example

{
    "type": "story",
    "id": 50298884,
    "storyType": "ask_hn",
    "title": "\"Decentralization\" doesn't look decentralized",
    "url": null,
    "domain": null,
    "author": "DeveloperOne",
    "points": 1,
    "numComments": 0,
    "createdAt": "2026-10-30T01:45:53Z",
    "text": "Billions in assets frozen within minutes, or at most a few hours.\n\nSo, what’s the difference between having a bank account where your funds can be frozen and...",
    "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50298884",
    "source": "search: rust",
    "rank": 1,
    "status": "ok"
}

Inputs that cannot be scraped (wrong URL, not found, blocked) get a free row with status and error, so you always know what happened. A run summary is saved to the key-value store as SUMMARY.

Pricing

You pay per item saved. Proxies and compute are included. Set a maximum cost per run and the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

FAQ

Do I need proxies? No. The Actor uses the open Hacker News APIs, so it is fast and cheap. Proxies are off by default.

How do I scrape "Who is hiring?" Paste the thread URL into Story URLs and set Max comments per story to 0. Each top-level comment (depth 0) is one job post.

How far back can I search? All the way to 2006.

Can I call it from code or an AI agent? Yes, via the Apify API, the official JS/Python clients, or Apify's MCP server.