Hacker News Scraper — Stories, Comments & Who Is Hiring Jobs

Two tools in one:

1. Search Hacker News stories, comments, Ask HN and Show HN by keyword, with date range, minimum points and ordering. Sorting by date goes beyond the 1,000-result limit of the HN search API (the actor walks back in time window by window).
2. "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" jobs: turn any month's thread into structured job posts: company, headline, remote/onsite flags, visa mention, emails and links, full text, author and date. Filter by keywords and remote.

Built for brand and competitor monitoring, trend research, dataset building, recruiters and job boards.

Input

All stories mentioning Postgres since January, newest first:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "postgres",
  "itemType": "story",
  "sort": "date",
  "sinceDate": "2026-01-01",
  "maxItems": 3000
}

Remote Python jobs from the latest "Who is hiring?":

{
  "mode": "hiring",
  "keywords": ["python"],
  "remoteOnly": true
}

Use hiringMonth (e.g. "September 2026") for an older thread.

Output

Search mode (one item per story or comment):

Field	Description
type	story or comment
id, hnUrl, title, url	item and link (for comments, the parent story's title and link)
author, points, comments, createdAt	metadata
text	comment or story text, without HTML
storyId, parentId	thread position (comments)

Hiring mode (one item per job post):

Field	Description
company, headline, headlineParts	first line of the post, split on |
remote, onsite, visa	flags read from the post
emails, links	contacts found in the text
text, author, postedAt, url	the post
thread, threadUrl	which "Who is hiring?" thread

Example output

One real item from a test run (long texts and lists shortened):

{
  "type": "hiring-post",
  "company": "Sidekick Labs",
  "headline": "Sidekick Labs | Senior SWE, R&D Engineer, Intelligence Engineer | REMOTE (US Timezones) | Full-time | $170k to $230k Base + Equity + Health",
  "headlineParts": [
    "Sidekick Labs",
    "Senior SWE, R&D Engineer, Intelligence Engineer",
    "REMOTE (US Timezones)"
  ],
  "remote": true,
  "onsite": false,
  "visa": false,
  "emails": [
    "eric+hn@sidekicklabs.com"
  ],
  "links": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/in/three-two-one",
    "https://sidekicklabs.com"
  ],
  "text": "Sidekick Labs | Senior SWE, R&D Engineer, Intelligence Engineer | REMOTE (US Timezones) | Full-time | $170k to $230k Base + Equity + Health\n\nSidekick builds ...",
  "author": "mcintyem",
  "postedAt": "2026-10-01T15:03:36.000Z",
  "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49922609",
  "thread": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2026)",
  "threadUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49922569"
}

Tips

• Relevance ordering returns at most 1,000 results; switch to Newest first for complete history.
• minPoints keeps only stories that got traction (e.g. 100+).
• Schedule the hiring mode on the 2nd of each month to get each new thread.

Feedback

Found a problem or need a field? Open an issue in the Issues tab: every issue is read and answered. If the actor helped you, a review on the Store helps a lot.

How much does it cost?

You pay only for results delivered, at a fixed price per item. Apify platform usage is included in that price, so there are no compute costs on top. Errors and items that couldn't be found are free.

What you get	Price	Example
Who is hiring job post	$0.001 each	1,000 who is hiring job posts = $1.00
Story or comment	$0.0003 each	1,000 stories or comments = $0.30

The Apify Free plan includes $5 of monthly credit, enough for about 5,000 who is hiring job posts per month at no cost. You can also set a maximum spend per run.

On paid Apify plans it gets cheaper automatically: 10% off on Starter, 20% on Scale and 30% on Business.