Hacker News Jobs & Startup Hiring Scraper (Who Is Hiring)

Hacker News Who Is Hiring scraper: export every job post from the latest monthly "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" thread as clean rows with company, role, location, remote flag, contact email, apply link and the full post text.

It reads the official Hacker News Firebase API over plain HTTP: no browser, no proxy, no login. A run of 30 jobs usually takes well under a minute.

Who it is for

• Job seekers who want the whole thread as a sortable sheet instead of scrolling 500+ comments.
• Recruiters and sales teams looking for startups that are hiring right now, with the contact email the poster shared.
• Analysts tracking which roles, stacks and remote policies HN startups hire for month by month.

How to use

1. Open the Input tab.
2. Set Maximum Job Leads (1 to 500). The thread usually has a few hundred top-level posts.
3. Optional: type a Keyword Filter such as Python, Rust, Berlin or AI. It matches the whole post text, case-insensitive.
4. Optional: tick Remote Only to keep posts that mention remote work.
5. Click Start and download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel from the Output tab, or read them through the API.

The Actor always picks the newest "Who is hiring?" thread posted by the official whoishiring account, so a monthly schedule gives you each new thread automatically.

Input settings

Field	Type	Default	What it does
maxItems	integer	30	Stop after this many matching job posts (max 500).
keywordFilter	string	empty	Keep only posts whose text contains this word or phrase.
remoteOnly	boolean	false	Keep only posts that mention "remote".

Example input:

{
  "maxItems": 50,
  "keywordFilter": "python",
  "remoteOnly": true
}

Output

One row per job post. Fields:

Field	Meaning
id	Hacker News comment id of the post
company	First part of the post header (Company | Role | Location | ...)
role	Second part of the header
location	Third part of the header
remote	Remote when the header mentions remote work, otherwise On-site
contactEmail	First email address found in the post, empty if none
url	First link in the post (careers page, job board or company site)
summary	First 300 characters of the post
fullText	The whole post as plain text
hnPostUrl	Link to the post on news.ycombinator.com
postedAt	When the post was written (UTC)
extractedAt	When this run read it (UTC)

Example row from a real run (November 2026 thread, email shortened here):

{
  "id": "50349129",
  "company": "Opsfleet",
  "role": "AI Engineer (Agentic / GenAI)",
  "location": "REMOTE (EEA)",
  "remote": "Remote",
  "contactEmail": "b...@opsfleet.com",
  "url": "https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4478769287/",
  "hnPostUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50349129",
  "postedAt": "2026-11-03T07:31:55+00:00"
}

Posts that do not follow the Company | Role | Location header get the fallback values Tech Role and Global for the missing parts; fullText always has the complete post.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.003 per job post extracted (job-extracted), that is $3 per 1,000 jobs. No start fee and no proxy cost.

• 30 jobs (default run): $0.09
• 200 jobs (most of a monthly thread): $0.60

If you set a maximum cost per run, the Actor stops when the budget is reached and you pay only for the rows you get.

Integrations and API

• Run it from the Apify API or the Apify Python and JavaScript clients and read the dataset as JSON or CSV.
• Schedule it monthly (for example on the 2nd of each month) to collect every new thread.
• Send rows to Google Sheets, Airtable, Slack, Make, Zapier or n8n with Apify integrations.

FAQ

Which thread does it read? The newest "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" thread from the whoishiring account. Older months and the "Who wants to be hired?" and "Freelancer?" threads are not included.

Are replies included? No. Only top-level comments, which are the job posts. Replies and deleted posts are skipped.

Does it get salaries? There is no separate salary field. When the poster writes a salary range, it is in fullText and summary.

Why is company or role sometimes odd? These fields come from the post header. When a poster writes a free-form first line, the split can be off; fullText and hnPostUrl are always correct.

Is it legal to use the contact emails? They are emails the posters published for job applications. Use them for that purpose and follow the privacy and anti-spam rules that apply to you.

Support and feedback

• Found a bug or missing a field? Open an issue on the Issues tab of this Actor. We reply within 48 hours and ship most fixes within a few days.
• Have an idea for a feature? Issues are the fastest way to get it built.
• If the Actor saves you time, a short review on this page helps other users find it.