Hacker News Scraper

Scrape stories and comments from Hacker News — extract top, new, best, Ask HN, Show HN, and job posts with full comment threads. Uses the official HN API and Algolia search for fast, reliable data extraction.

Features

• 6 story types — top, new, best, Ask HN, Show HN, and job stories
• Full comment threads — nested comments with author, text, timestamp, depth level, and child count (up to 3 levels deep)
• Algolia search — find stories by keyword with relevance ranking across all of Hacker News history
• Score filtering — set a minimum score threshold to extract only high-quality stories
• Batch processing — fetches stories in parallel batches of 10 for maximum speed
• Domain extraction — automatically extracts the domain from story URLs
• Real-time data — uses the official Firebase HN API for live scores and comment counts

Output Example

{
  "id": 39876543,
  "title": "Show HN: I built an open-source alternative to Notion",
  "url": "https://github.com/user/project",
  "author": "developer_123",
  "score": 487,
  "commentCount": 234,
  "time": "2026-03-17T14:20:00.000Z",
  "type": "story",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39876543",
  "domain": "github.com",
  "source": "top",
  "comments": [
    {
      "id": 39876600,
      "author": "tech_reviewer",
      "text": "This is impressive! I especially like the...",
      "time": "2026-03-17T14:35:00.000Z",
      "depth": 0,
      "childCount": 5
    }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-03-18T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Use Cases

• Tech trend monitoring — track what topics, tools, and technologies the developer community is discussing
• Content research — discover high-performing content topics and formats that resonate with technical audiences
• Competitive intelligence — monitor mentions of your product, competitors, and industry on the #1 tech news site
• Startup discovery — scrape Show HN posts to find new product launches and early-stage startups
• Job market analysis — extract HN job postings to analyze hiring trends, salaries, and in-demand skills

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
scrapeType	String	"top"	Story type: top, new, best, ask, show, job, search
searchQueries	Array	[]	Keywords to search across HN history (via Algolia)
maxStories	Number	100	Maximum stories to extract
includeComments	Boolean	true	Whether to extract comment threads
maxCommentsPerStory	Number	30	Maximum comments per story (includes nested replies)
minScore	Number	0	Minimum score threshold (filter out low-scoring stories)

Cost Estimation

• ~$0.50 per 100 stories without comments
• ~$2.00 per 100 stories with full comment threads
• Free tier: up to 30 stories with Apify free plan

FAQ

Q: Can I search across all of Hacker News history? A: Yes. The search feature uses Algolia's HN Search API, which indexes all Hacker News stories and comments from the beginning. You can find stories from any time period.

Q: Why are comments more expensive to scrape? A: Each comment requires a separate API call to the HN Firebase API. A story with 200 comments can require 30+ individual requests to fetch the top-level and nested replies.

Q: What's the difference between "top" and "best" stories? A: "Top" shows the current front page ranking (changes frequently). "Best" shows the highest-scoring stories over a longer period. "New" shows the most recently submitted stories regardless of score.