Y Combinator Scraper

🚀 What is Y Combinator Scraper?

Y Combinator Scraper lets you extract company profiles, founders, open jobs, press mentions and Launch YC posts from the public YC startup directory, so you can build a clean YC companies list for sales, investing or hiring. Paste a directory search URL or a company profile URL (or switch on Scrape All Companies), click Start, and get one row per company.

You don't need to write or maintain your own ycombinator scraper script: the Actor runs in the cloud and saves the data you see on each company page as structured rows, ready to export.

• Sales prospecting and B2B lead generation: build target lists of YC backed startups by batch, industry, region or team size, with founder names, titles and LinkedIn profiles.
• Deal sourcing for investors: follow new batches and recently launched YC portfolio companies, and sort the matches by launch date.
• Startup recruiting: find companies with open roles and pull job details such as salary, equity, skills, visa and location.
• Startup market research: map industries, regions, stages and statuses (Active, Acquired, Inactive) across the directory.
• Media monitoring: collect press mentions and Launch YC posts with dates and upvotes.
• Automate research workflows: schedule runs so your Y Combinator startups list stays fresh without copy-pasting.

What can Y Combinator Scraper do?

• 🔍 Scrape YC companies from directory search URLs, single company profile URLs, or the whole directory, and mix both URL kinds in one list
• 🎯 Filter results with the filters in your directory URL (search text, batch, industry, sub-industry, tags, region, stage, status, Top Companies, hiring, nonprofit), plus team size and launch date ranges
• 👤 Choose what to collect: founders, full open-job details, news and press mentions, Launch YC posts, and the full Launch post text
• ⚡ Live results: each company is saved to the dataset as soon as it is done
• 📦 Export to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML, with five ready-made views: Overview, Founders, Open Jobs, News & Press, and Launch Posts
• 🔌 Run it as an API, schedule runs, monitor them, and connect Make, Zapier, Google Sheets and more
• 🌐 Uses Apify Proxy when needed, with your own proxy settings in the input

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📊 What data can Y Combinator Scraper extract?

Here is the Y Combinator data you get for every company. Field names match the dataset exactly, so your Y Combinator companies list is easy to filter and join with other tools.

🔗 Profile URL (url)	🆔 Company ID (company_id)
📝 Company name (company_name)	📸 Logo (company_image)
📝 Short description (short_description)	📝 Long description (long_description)
📅 Batch (batch)	🏭 Industry and sub-industry (industry, subindustry)
📈 Stage (stage)	✅ Status (status)
🏷️ Tags (tags)	📍 Regions (regions)
🌐 Website (website)	📅 Year founded (year_founded)
👥 Team size (team_size)	📍 Location and country (company_location, company_country)
🔗 LinkedIn, X, Facebook (company_linkedin, company_x, company_facebook)	🔗 Crunchbase, GitHub (company_crunchbase, company_github)
👤 YC partner (primary_partner, primary_partner_url)	⭐ Flags (top_company, nonprofit, is_hiring)
💼 Open job count (number_of_open_jobs)	💼 Open jobs (open_jobs)
📰 News and press mentions (news)	🚀 Launch YC posts (launch_posts)
👤 Founders (founders)

Founders give you startup founders data for each company: name, title, bio, linkedin, x, and an email-availability flag (whether YC lists an email; the address itself is not returned). That makes it easy to collect YC founders LinkedIn profiles for outreach.

Open jobs turn the Actor into a Y Combinator jobs scraper: each job has title, description_url, description, location, remote, type, role, salary, equity, skills, years_experience and visa. It is a quick way to collect startup job listings from YC companies.

Note: Some fields can be empty. open_jobs is filled only when Scrape Open Jobs is on, while number_of_open_jobs is always filled. news and launch_posts are empty when their switch is off or the company has none. Companies added by a direct company URL have no industry, subindustry, stage, tags or regions, and their top_company, nonprofit and is_hiring flags are always false.

What data can't Y Combinator Scraper extract?

• Founder email addresses. You only get emails.available (whether YC lists an email). emails.email and emails.status are always empty.
• Funding amounts, valuations and investors. They are not part of the output.
• Hacker News posts or comments.
• YC job board pages as input. Only directory URLs and company profile URLs are accepted.

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🧭 How to scrape Y Combinator companies

You don't need any coding experience. The fastest first run takes six steps and works on the Free plan:

1. Create a free Apify account using your email.
2. Open Y Combinator Scraper. YC Directory URLs already contains an example batch URL (Summer 2026).
3. To use your own list, open the YC directory and pick your filters, for example a batch. Copy the page address (your filters are part of it, as in ?batch=Summer%202026) and paste it into YC Directory URLs in place of the example.
4. Leave everything else as it is. Maximum Companies stays at 10.
5. Click Start. Results appear while the run is still going.
6. Open the Output tab and switch to the Founders view to see founder names, titles and LinkedIn links. Download the data in JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML.

Other options for later runs: paste single company profile URLs, or switch on Scrape All Companies.

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💲 How much does it cost to scrape Y Combinator?

Y Combinator Scraper uses pay-per-event pricing. You pay for what the run produces, plus Apify platform usage:

Event	Price	When it is charged
💲 Result	$8.00 per 1,000 results ($0.008 per company) on the Free plan (lower on paid plans, see below)	Each company saved to the dataset
💲 Actor start	$0.00005 per GB of run memory	Once per run, at start: $0.00005 per run at the default 1 GB of memory (you don't need to change it)

Apify plan	Price per company	Price per 1,000 companies
Free	$0.008	$8.00
Starter	$0.0072	$7.20
Scale	$0.0064	$6.40
Business and higher	$0.0055	$5.50

Paid Apify plans get a lower result price. The plan discount applies to that price only. The start fee is the same on every plan, and platform usage is billed at your Apify plan's own rates.

Apify platform usage (the computing resources your run uses) is billed on top of these event prices and is not included in the examples below. It depends on the run, for example on how many companies you scrape and whether Scrape Open Jobs is on. To see your real total, do a 10-company test run, then open that run in Apify Console: the run's detail page shows what it actually cost.

Example costs (event prices only, Free plan prices):

• 10 companies (the default Maximum Companies): 10 × $0.008 = $0.08, plus $0.00005 for the start at the default memory.
• 1,000 companies: 1,000 × $0.008 = $8.00, plus the start event.

See the pricing tab for the current prices.

Is scraping Y Combinator free?

You can try it for free. The Apify Free plan gives you $5 of monthly credit, which pays for both the events and the platform usage. Free-plan runs of this YC scraper work the same as paid runs: the number of companies per run is set by maxCompanies (or Scrape All Companies) and your filters. Set a maximum charge limit when you start a run, and do a small test run first.

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⬇️ Y Combinator Scraper input

To run Y Combinator Scraper, you need at least one URL in YC Directory URLs, or Scrape All Companies switched on. Everything else is optional and has a default (see the table below). Set the input in the Actor's form or send it as JSON via the API.

Here's an example that scrapes the first 10 companies of the Summer 2026 batch, with founders, press mentions and Launch YC posts:

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=Summer%202026" }
  ],
  "maxCompanies": 10,
  "scrapeFounders": true,
  "scrapeOpenJobs": false,
  "scrapeNews": true,
  "scrapeLaunchPosts": true,
  "includeLaunchBody": false,
  "sortByLaunchDate": false,
  "scrapeAllCompanies": false,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

See the input tab for a full description of all fields.

Field	Default	What it does
startUrls	(empty)	Directory search URLs and/or company profile URLs
maxCompanies	10	Stop after this many companies (ignored with Scrape All Companies)
scrapeFounders	true	Add founders
scrapeOpenJobs	false	Add full open-job details (one extra page per job)
scrapeNews	true	Add news and press mentions (no extra requests)
scrapeLaunchPosts	true	Add Launch YC posts (no extra requests)
includeLaunchBody	false	Add the full text of each Launch YC post
sortByLaunchDate	false	Pick the newest launches first when Maximum Companies cuts the list
launchedAfter / launchedBefore	(empty)	Launch date range, YYYY-MM-DD
scrapeAllCompanies	false	Scrape every company in the directory
teamSizeMin / teamSizeMax	(empty)	Team size range
proxyConfiguration	Apify Proxy on	Proxy settings. Apify Proxy is used when needed; you don't need to change anything
concurrency	5	Companies scraped in parallel (1 to 20)
maxRetries	3	Limits how many times a failing request is retried before the Actor gives up (1 to 10)
requestDelay	0	Optional pause in seconds before each company profile is loaded (0 to 10)

YC Directory URLs (startUrls)

Two kinds of URLs work, and you can mix them:

• A directory search URL with your filters. This is how you get YC companies by batch, YC companies by industry, by region, by tag, by stage or by status. Set the filters on the directory page, then copy the URL.
• A company profile URL for one company.

Other URLs, such as other ycombinator.com pages or other websites, are skipped with a warning. Unsupported filters in a directory URL are skipped too.

• ✅ Good: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=Summer%202026
• ✅ Good: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/airbnb
• ❌ Bad: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs
• ❌ Bad: https://news.ycombinator.com/

⚠️ Leave startUrls empty only when Scrape All Companies is on. Otherwise the run ends with no results.

Maximum Companies and Scrape All Companies

maxCompanies (default 10) caps the combined list from all your URLs. Direct company URLs are queued first, then the directory search matches. Scrape All Companies ignores both startUrls and maxCompanies.

Duplicates are removed across directory search URLs and across repeated company URLs. A company that you add as a direct company URL and that also matches one of your directory URLs is kept twice: it is saved and charged twice, and both copies count toward maxCompanies.

• ✅ Good: keep the default "maxCompanies": 10 for a first test. Raise it, for example to 50, once the test looks right.
• ❌ Bad: "scrapeAllCompanies": true for a quick test

⚠️ Scrape All Companies can take a long time and creates a very large dataset, which also costs more.

Team size and launch date filters

Use teamSizeMin and teamSizeMax to narrow the YC companies team size range, and launchedAfter / launchedBefore to keep only companies launched in a date range. Dates must use the YYYY-MM-DD format.

These filters apply to directory search results (directory URLs and Scrape All Companies). Companies you add by a direct company URL are not filtered by them.

• ✅ Good: "launchedAfter": "2026-01-01"
• ❌ Bad: "launchedAfter": "01/01/2026"

⚠️ The input form rejects other date formats. A well-formed but impossible date, such as 2026-02-30, ends the run at start with an error and no results.

Open jobs: use it as a YC jobs scraper

number_of_open_jobs is always filled. Switch on Scrape Open Jobs (scrapeOpenJobs) when you need the full YC companies jobs data: salary, equity, skills, visa, experience and remote flag. The Actor loads one extra page per job, so runs with this option are slower.

Sort by launch date

sortByLaunchDate orders the directory search matches by launch date (newest first) instead of relevance. It decides which companies are picked when Maximum Companies cuts the list. It does not set the order of rows in the dataset, because companies are saved as they finish.

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⬆️ Y Combinator Scraper output

Results are stored in a dataset in the Output or Storage tab. You can view them as a table or JSON, switch between the five views (Overview, Founders, Open Jobs, News & Press, Launch Posts), pick only the fields you need, and download your YC companies dataset in JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML.

A short run summary is also saved in the key-value store record OUTPUT, with counts such as companiesSaved, foundersCollected and openJobsCollected.

JSON example

Here is an illustrative example record for the input above. The company and values are made up; the field names and structure of the YC company data are exact:

{
  "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/example-inc",
  "company_id": 12345,
  "company_name": "Example Inc.",
  "company_image": "https://example.com/example-inc-logo.png",
  "short_description": "AI assistant for small accounting teams",
  "long_description": "Example Inc. helps small accounting teams close their books faster…",
  "batch": "Summer 2026",
  "industry": "Fintech",
  "subindustry": "Accounting",
  "stage": "Early",
  "status": "Active",
  "tags": ["AI", "Fintech", "B2B"],
  "regions": ["United States of America", "America / Canada"],
  "website": "https://example.com",
  "year_founded": "2026",
  "team_size": "3",
  "company_location": "San Francisco, CA, USA",
  "company_country": "US",
  "company_linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/example-inc",
  "company_x": "https://x.com/exampleinc",
  "company_facebook": null,
  "company_crunchbase": "https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/example-inc",
  "company_github": null,
  "primary_partner": "Jane Partner",
  "primary_partner_url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/jane-partner",
  "top_company": false,
  "nonprofit": false,
  "is_hiring": true,
  "number_of_open_jobs": 2,
  "open_jobs": null,
  "news": [
    {
      "title": "Example Inc. raises its first round",
      "url": "https://example.com/news/example-inc",
      "date": "2026-08-20"
    }
  ],
  "launch_posts": [
    {
      "title": "Launch YC: Example Inc.",
      "tagline": "Close the books in hours, not weeks",
      "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/example-inc",
      "date": "2026-07-15",
      "upvotes": 42
    }
  ],
  "founders": [
    {
      "id": 67890,
      "name": "Alex Founder",
      "title": "Founder/CEO",
      "bio": "Former accountant and software engineer.",
      "emails": { "available": true, "email": null, "status": null },
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-founder",
      "x": null
    }
  ]
}

In this illustrative example record for the input above, open_jobs is null because scrapeOpenJobs is off. Turn it on to get the job list.

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💡 Y Combinator Scraper tips and advanced usage

How many results can you scrape with Y Combinator Scraper?

There is no fixed maximum. The number of companies depends on your directory filters, the team size and launch date filters, maxCompanies and your run spending limit. If the spending limit is reached, the Actor stops and keeps everything saved so far. The best way to know for your use case is a quick test run.

How to get faster or cheaper results

• Keep Scrape Open Jobs off unless you need full job details. It loads one extra page per job.
• News, press mentions and Launch YC posts come from the company page itself, without extra requests.
• Narrow the list with directory filters and the team size or launch date filters, and set a small maxCompanies for tests.
• Use either a directory URL or direct company URLs for the same companies, not both, to avoid paying twice.
• Raise concurrency (up to 20) to scrape more companies in parallel.

Known limitations

• Row order: companies are saved as they finish, so the dataset order can differ from the directory order.
• Direct company URLs: no industry, subindustry, stage, tags or regions, and the flags are false. Check number_of_open_jobs instead of is_hiring.
• Founder emails: only the availability flag is returned.

For failed runs, missing profile data or fewer results than expected, see What should I do if a run fails or returns fewer results? in the FAQ below.

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🔌 Integrations and API

Can I use Y Combinator Scraper as a YC companies API?

Yes. The Apify API lets you start runs, schedule them and fetch results as JSON, so you can call the Actor as a Y Combinator API from your own apps, and it works like a YC startup directory API that returns one record per company. Use the apify-client NPM package for Node.js or the apify-client PyPI package for Python. The API tab has ready-to-use code.

How to scrape Y Combinator with Python

This short example uses the Apify Python client to run the Actor and print the results:

from apify_client import ApifyClient  # scrape Y Combinator Python script: first 10 Summer 2026 companies

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("insights_data/y-combinator-scraper").call(run_input={
    "startUrls": [{"url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=Summer%202026"}],
    "maxCompanies": 10,
    "scrapeFounders": True,
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["company_name"], item["batch"], item["website"])

Can I integrate Y Combinator Scraper with other apps?

Yes. Connect it with almost any cloud service through Apify integrations: Make, Zapier, Slack, Google Sheets, Google Drive, Airbyte, GitHub, LangChain, and more. Use webhooks to trigger actions when a run finishes. For example, schedule a weekly run on a batch URL and send new companies straight to Google Sheets or your CRM, or load them into your own startup database of YC companies.

Can I use Y Combinator Scraper with AI agents (MCP)?

Yes. Connect Y Combinator Scraper to Claude and other AI assistants through the Apify MCP server. Open the MCP tab for setup steps.

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🔗 Other recruiting and market research scrapers

These Actors from the same developer pair well with Y Combinator Scraper for hiring research and competitor intelligence:

💼 Welcome to the Jungle Jobs Scraper: scrape WTTJ jobs by keyword, location, salary or remote, with titles, companies, salaries, skills and apply links	📊 Google Ads Transparency Center Scraper & API: extract ads across Search, YouTube, Shopping, Maps and Play by brand, domain or advertiser ID for competitor ad intelligence

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❓ FAQ

Is it legal to scrape Y Combinator?

Scraping publicly available data is generally legal, and the YC directory is public. You should still respect personal data such as founder names and profiles (for example under GDPR), collect it only with a legitimate reason, and take Y Combinator's Terms of Use into account. Read more in Apify's guide Is web scraping legal? This is not legal advice.

How does Y Combinator Scraper work?

Y Combinator Scraper is a Y Combinator directory scraper that reads the same public pages a visitor sees. It finds the companies that match your URLs and filters (or all companies), then opens each public company page to collect the profile, founders, press mentions and Launch YC posts. With Scrape Open Jobs on, it also opens each job page. Each company is saved as soon as it is done.

Why scrape Y Combinator data?

The YC directory is public, but browsing it company by company is slow. A Y Combinator companies scraper turns it into structured rows you can sort, filter and enrich:

• Lead lists: target YC backed startups that fit your ideal customer profile.
• Investing: spot new batches and recent launches early.
• Hiring: see who is growing and what they pay.
• Research: compare industries, regions and company outcomes.

How do I find YC backed startups hiring?

Add the hiring filter on the directory page and use that URL, or check is_hiring and number_of_open_jobs in the output. To list the jobs of YC companies hiring, switch on Scrape Open Jobs.

How do I export YC companies to CSV?

Open the run's Output tab and download the dataset as CSV. To export YC companies to Excel, choose the Excel format instead. You can also pick a view, such as Founders or Open Jobs, before downloading.

Does Y Combinator Scraper return founder email addresses?

No. You only get emails.available (true or false), which tells you whether YC lists an email for that founder. The email and status fields are always empty. Use the founder linkedin and x links for outreach instead.

What should I do if a run fails or returns fewer results?

Start with the run log: in Apify Console, open the run and switch to the Log tab. It shows how many companies matched your filters and a warning for every URL or company profile that was skipped.

Fewer results than expected:

• Check maxCompanies. The default is 10.
• Your directory filters, team size range or launch date range may match fewer companies than you think. If the log says no companies matched, try different filters or double-check your URLs.
• URLs that are not directory or company profile URLs are skipped with a warning in the log.
• If you set a spending limit, the run stops when it is reached and keeps everything saved so far.

Rows with missing data: if a company profile could not be loaded, the company is still saved, and charged, with the directory search data only. You can spot these rows because founders, news and launch_posts are empty, location, social links and year_founded are empty, and number_of_open_jobs is 0. For a direct company URL, such a record is almost empty. The log shows a warning for each of these companies; running the same URL again later is worth a try.

Run ends at start with no results:

• YC Directory URLs is empty and Scrape All Companies is off. Add a URL or switch it on.
• A launch date is impossible, such as 2026-02-30. Use a real date in YYYY-MM-DD format.
• The log says the Actor could not reach Y Combinator. Try again in a few minutes.

If the run shows a Failed status, or the log doesn't explain the problem, open an issue on the Issues tab and include the link to the run.

Why do I see the same company twice?

You probably added it as a direct company URL and it also matched one of your directory URLs. In that case the company is saved, and charged, twice. Use only one of the two inputs for the same company.

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📧 Support and feedback

Found a bug or have a feature request? Please create an issue on the Issues tab.

Need a custom solution, a different YC dataset, or more data? Contact us at hello.insights.data@gmail.com.

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