# Hacker News (HN) Stories, Show HN & Jobs Scraper (`kravennagen/hacker-news-scraper`) Actor

Fast, structured extraction of Hacker News stories, Show HN launches, Ask HN discussions, scores, and comment counts via official Firebase API.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/kravennagen/hacker-news-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Morgane Flamant](https://apify.com/kravennagen) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Jobs, Lead generation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.40 / 1,000 hacker\_news\_outputs

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## 📰 Hacker News (HN) Stories, Show HN & Jobs Scraper

A high-performance **Apify Actor** built in Python to extract top stories, Show HN startup launches, Ask HN discussions, and job postings directly from the official Hacker News Firebase REST API.

***

### 🌟 Key Features

- **⚡ Direct Firebase REST API**: Hits official Hacker News API endpoints (`hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0`) directly via `httpx` async requests. No headless browser overhead (~128MB RAM footprint).
- **🎯 Multi-Category Support**: Scrape **Top Stories**, **Best Stories**, **Newest**, **Show HN (Launches)**, **Ask HN (Discussions)**, or **Job Board**.
- **🔥 Minimum Score Filtering**: Filter stories by minimum upvote score to extract high-impact tech discussions.
- **🚀 Concurrent Async Fetching**: Retrieves items concurrently using `asyncio.gather` for high execution speed.
- **📊 Store-Ready Dataset**: Pushes standardized Pydantic models to Apify's Dataset storage with tabular view support.

***

### 📥 Input Parameters

The Actor accepts the following input settings in JSON format:

| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| `category` | `string` | `"top"` | Select HN feed category: `top`, `best`, `new`, `show`, `ask`, or `jobs`. |
| `minScore` | `integer` | `0` | Minimum upvotes (points) required to include a story. |
| `maxItems` | `integer` | `100` | Maximum number of items to retrieve. |

#### Example Input JSON

```json
{
  "category": "show",
  "minScore": 20,
  "maxItems": 50
}
```

***

### 📤 Output Format

Each item pushed to the output dataset follows a structured schema:

```json
{
  "id": 39821045,
  "title": "Show HN: Fast AI Agent Framework in Rust",
  "item_type": "story",
  "url": "https://github.com/example/fast-agent",
  "hn_url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39821045",
  "author": "techbuilder",
  "score": 145,
  "comments_count": 42,
  "created_at": "2026-08-25T08:15:00+00:00",
  "text_content": null
}
```

***

### 🚀 Running Locally

#### Step 1: Install Dependencies

```bash
pip install -r requirements.txt
```

#### Step 2: Run the Actor

```bash
python -m src.main
```

***

### 🐳 Docker Support

To build and run containerized:

```bash
docker build -t hn-scraper .
docker run -it hn-scraper
```

# Actor input Schema

## `category` (type: `string`):

Select the Hacker News feed to scrape.

## `minScore` (type: `integer`):

Only return stories with at least this number of upvotes.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of items to retrieve.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "category": "top",
  "minScore": 0,
  "maxItems": 100
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Structured Hacker News dataset

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "maxItems": 100
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("kravennagen/hacker-news-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "maxItems": 100 }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("kravennagen/hacker-news-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "maxItems": 100
}' |
apify call kravennagen/hacker-news-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,kravennagen/hacker-news-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/6aQtRBM8PAYGOKBFH/builds/9w1pJ7hoUhT6vjNFk/openapi.json