Y Combinator Scraper — YC Companies Directory, Founders & Startup Data (No API Key)

Scrape the entire Y Combinator startup directory — all 5,900+ YC portfolio companies across every batch since 2005 (S05 → W26 and beyond). Filter by batch, industry, status, team size, location, tags or free-text search, and get company name, one-liner, website, industry, batch, status, team size, location and YC profile URL in clean structured JSON. Optionally enrich each company with its founders (name, role, LinkedIn, Twitter) and launch posts. Reads a daily-refreshed open mirror of YC's public directory. Fast, no browser, no API key, no login.

🏆 Why this Y Combinator scraper?

All 5,900+ YC companies · every batch since 2005 · filter by batch / industry / status / team size / location / tags · optional founder LinkedIn & Twitter enrichment · direct HTTP (no browser) · export to JSON / CSV / Excel. The unofficial Y Combinator API alternative for VC sourcing, sales prospecting and startup-market research.

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✨ What this Actor does / Key features

• 🏢 Whole directory or a slice — pull all 5,900+ YC companies, or narrow to exactly the batch, industry and stage you need.
• 🎛️ Powerful combined filters — batch, status (Active / Acquired / Inactive), industry, subindustry, location, country, minTeamSize / maxTeamSize, tags and isHiring — all AND-ed together.
• 🔎 Free-text search — substring match across company name, one-liner and long description to find, say, every YC company mentioning "agent".
• 👥 Founder enrichment (opt-in) — flip fetchCompanyPageDetails on to add each company's founders[] with name, role, bio, LinkedIn and Twitter — ideal for sales and recruiting.
• 🚀 Launch posts (opt-in) — the same toggle pulls each company's Launch YC posts (title, tagline, date, URL) for product-trend research.
• 🗓️ Every batch since 2005 — Winter (W), Summer (S), Fall (F) and legacy cohorts like IK12.
• 📦 Volume control — cap the run with maxResults (up to 10,000) so you pay only for the companies you need.
• ⚡ Direct HTTP extraction — reads a daily-updated open mirror of YC's official directory; no browser, no bot wall, no API token.
• 📤 Export anywhere — JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML or the Apify API, straight into your CRM, spreadsheet, BI tool or data pipeline.

🚀 Quick start (3 steps)

1. Configure — leave filters empty to pull the whole directory, or set filters (e.g. batch: "W26", industry: "B2B", status: "Active") to narrow it. Toggle fetchCompanyPageDetails on to add founders and launches.
2. Run — click Start. The Actor loads the directory, applies your filters, and (if enabled) enriches each company from its YC page.
3. Get your data — open the Output tab and export to JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or pull it via the Apify API.

📥 Input

Everything is optional — an empty input returns the full directory (capped by maxResults).

Example — active W26 B2B startups in the US, with founders

{
  "filters": {
    "batch": "W26",
    "industry": "B2B",
    "status": "Active",
    "minTeamSize": 5,
    "location": "United States",
    "tags": ["AI"]
  },
  "maxResults": 200,
  "fetchCompanyPageDetails": true
}

Example — free-text hunt across the whole directory (VC sourcing)

{
  "searchQuery": "agent",
  "maxResults": 500,
  "fetchCompanyPageDetails": false
}

Example — YC startups currently hiring (recruiting)

{
  "filters": {
    "status": "Active",
    "isHiring": true,
    "tags": ["Developer Tools"]
  },
  "maxResults": 300,
  "fetchCompanyPageDetails": true
}

Field	Type	Description
filters	object	Combined filters, AND-ed together. Empty = all companies. See filter keys below.
searchQuery	string	Substring search across company name, one-liner and long description.
maxResults	integer	Cap on returned companies, 1–10000. Full directory is ~6000. Default 100.
fetchCompanyPageDetails	boolean	Scrape each YC company page for founders (name, role, LinkedIn, Twitter) and launch posts. Adds one HTTP request per company. Default false.

Filter keys (inside filters): batch (exact, e.g. "W26"), status (Active / Acquired / Inactive), industry (substring), subindustry, location, country, minTeamSize / maxTeamSize (range), tags (all required), isHiring (boolean).

Tip: filter first, enrich after. Enabling fetchCompanyPageDetails on the full 6,000-company directory means 6,000 extra requests — narrow with filters or maxResults, then turn enrichment on.

📤 Output

One row per YC company. With enrichment off you get the core company + batch + classification + location fields; with it on you also get founders[] and launches[]. Trimmed sample record:

{
  "name": "Acme AI",
  "batch": "W26",
  "status": "Active",
  "oneLiner": "AI agents for customer support",
  "website": "https://acme.ai",
  "ycUrl": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/acme-ai",
  "industry": "B2B",
  "subindustry": "B2B -> Sales",
  "tags": ["AI", "Generative AI", "Customer Support"],
  "teamSize": "8",
  "allLocations": "San Francisco, United States",
  "country": "United States",
  "stage": "Seed",
  "isHiring": true,
  "launchedAt": "2026-02-15T00:00:00.000Z",
  "founders": [
    { "name": "Jane Doe", "title": "CEO", "linkedinUrl": "https://linkedin.com/in/janedoe", "twitterUrl": null }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-06T12:00:00.000Z"
}

💡 Use cases

• VC & deal sourcing — surface recent batches in a target industry (e.g. all W26 fintech with team > 5) for a live pipeline of fundable startups.
• Sales prospecting — export YC companies in your ICP with founder LinkedIn URLs straight into your CRM.
• Recruiting — filter isHiring: true to find startups actively building teams right now.
• Competitive intelligence — track competitors sharing your YC batch, industry and sub-industry.
• Startup-market research — count companies per industry, batch or stage over time to map where YC is placing bets.
• Product-trend analysis — enable launches to see what YC companies are shipping and how they position it.

👥 Who uses it

VC analysts & angel investors sourcing deals · B2B sales & lead-gen teams building prospect lists · technical recruiters · startup and market researchers · data journalists covering the startup ecosystem · founders benchmarking their batch and competitors.

💰 Pricing

This Actor runs on a simple pay-per-result model — you pay for the companies you extract, with no separate Apify platform fees to calculate. Try it on the free tier first, then scale up. See the Pricing tab on this page for the current rate.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a Y Combinator login or API key? No. The Actor reads a community-maintained, daily-refreshed open mirror of YC's official public directory — no login, no API key, no cookie and no bot detection. YC's company data is intentionally public.

Does Y Combinator have a public API? There is no official public YC companies API. This Actor works as an unofficial Y Combinator API alternative: it reads the open directory mirror and returns the same data as clean, structured rows you can pull on a schedule.

How fresh is the data? The open data source is updated daily, so it's reliable for last-24h freshness. For the very latest per-company details and launch posts, enable fetchCompanyPageDetails to scrape individual YC company pages live.

Can I get founder LinkedIn and Twitter URLs? Yes. Set fetchCompanyPageDetails: true to enrich each company with its founders[] array (name, title, bio, LinkedIn, Twitter) plus launch posts. It's opt-in because it adds one request per company.

Which batches are covered? Every batch from S05 to the latest — W{YY} = Winter, S{YY} = Summer, F{YY} = Fall — plus older cohorts like IK12 (Imagine K12).

How do I find YC startups that are currently hiring? Add isHiring: true to the filters object and the Actor returns only YC companies actively building teams — ideal for recruiting outreach.

How do I export the YC startup directory to CSV or JSON?

Run the Actor, then open the Output / Dataset tab and export to CSV, JSON or Excel. You get one row per company, ready for your CRM, spreadsheet or data pipeline.

Can I scrape Y Combinator without login?

Yes. YC's directory is public, so no login, API key or cookie is required. The Actor pulls a daily-refreshed open mirror of the official directory with no auth and no bot detection.

How do I get founder LinkedIn URLs from Y Combinator companies?

Enable Fetch Company Page Details and each company is enriched with a founders[] array including name, title, LinkedIn and Twitter — perfect for sales prospecting.

🔗 More B2B & lead-gen scrapers by logiover

Building a startup or B2B dataset? Pair the YC scraper with the rest of the logiover data suite:

Source	Actor
🏢 Company registries	EU Companies Registry · UK Companies House · SEC EDGAR Form D
💼 LinkedIn	LinkedIn Company Scraper · LinkedIn Profile Scraper
📧 Leads & contacts	B2B Lead Scraper · Website Contact Scraper · Bulk Email Verifier
🌐 Web intel	Website Tech Stack Detector · SimilarWeb Scraper
🚀 Launches & funding	Product Hunt Daily Launches · Crunchbase
💻 Startup jobs	Web3 Crypto Jobs Scraper · Greenhouse Job Board

👉 Browse all logiover scrapers on Apify Store — 180+ actors across real estate, jobs, crypto, social media & B2B data.

⏰ Scheduling & integration

Schedule this Actor on Apify to refresh your YC dataset daily or weekly as new batches are announced. Export results to JSON, CSV or Excel, sync to Google Sheets, or push to your CRM, BI tools and webhooks through the Apify API. Connect it to Make, n8n or Zapier to build automated deal-sourcing and prospecting pipelines.

⭐ Support & feedback

Found a bug or need an extra field? Open an issue on the Issues tab — response is usually fast. If this Actor saves you time, a ★★★★★ review on the Store page genuinely helps and is hugely appreciated. 🙏

⚖️ Legal

This Actor extracts only publicly available Y Combinator directory data and is intended for legitimate research, analytics and lead-generation use. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with YC's terms, GDPR and any applicable local laws.

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How much Y Combinator data can you extract in one run?

A single run returned 955 rows in 54 seconds on the example input. That is roughly 1,061 rows a minute. Widen the search — more queries, more pages, a broader location — and the same run goes deeper.

There is no hard ceiling built into this Actor. What bounds a run is the result limit you set, the breadth of the input you give it, and how much Y Combinator itself publishes. Because billing is per result, a wider run costs proportionally more and a narrow one costs almost nothing — so it is worth starting small and scaling once the output looks right.

Y Combinator scraping — frequently asked questions

Do I need a Y Combinator API key, account or login?

No. This Actor reads publicly available pages and feeds, so there is nothing to register for and no credentials to manage.

How do I export Y Combinator data to CSV, Excel, JSON or Google Sheets?

Open the Storage tab after a run and pick the format you want — CSV, Excel, JSON, XML or an HTML table. For Google Sheets, Airtable or a database, use the dataset URL or the Apify API so the sheet refreshes itself on every run.

Can I schedule this Y Combinator scraper to run daily or hourly?

Yes. Use the Schedules tab and pick a cadence. Daily is enough for most tracking work; pick hourly only if the rows you care about really do change that fast.

How many rows can I get, and what does it cost?

See the volume section above for a measured figure. Billing is per result, so you pay for the rows you actually receive and a run that finds nothing costs nothing.

Is scraping Y Combinator legal?

This Actor collects only information that Y Combinator publishes publicly. It does not log in, does not defeat access controls and does not touch private data. You remain responsible for how you use the output, including under GDPR and similar rules where personal data is involved.

What happens if Y Combinator blocks the run or changes its layout?

A refused exit IP is swapped for a fresh one within a quarter of a second and retried, and rate limiting is waited out rather than fought. If nothing gets through, the run fails with the reason instead of reporting success with zero rows — so an empty result always means "no matches", never "the source would not answer".

Can I use this with an AI agent, LangChain or an MCP client?

Yes. The Actor is callable over the Apify API and through Apify's MCP server, so an agent can run it and read the dataset back as a tool call.

📝 Changelog

2026-08-01

• Completed the August 2026 full health check: verified empty/programmatic default, Console UI default, and two source-informed alternative inputs on Apify.
• Confirmed successful live execution, non-empty structured output, dataset-field/type integrity, and logical sample quality within the 5-minute quality window.
• Normalized relative YC logo paths to absolute HTTPS URLs so exported link fields are valid.
• Replaced a contradictory Healthcare plus developer-tools intersection with a live-verified Active/Hiring healthcare variation containing 165 eligible companies before the row cap.

2026-08-01 — Health-check remediation

• August 2026 monthly health-check remediation is in progress; this build contains fixes verified from empty/default, Console-default, targeted live probes, or field-level semantic review.
• Normalized relative company-logo paths to absolute URLs and emits null instead of a fabricated placeholder when no logo exists.
• The final four-input matrix verdict will be appended after post-build cloud revalidation.
• Removed a contradictory Healthcare + “developer tools” health-check intersection; the replacement verifies 165 live Active/Hiring healthcare candidates before applying the row cap.

2026-07-06

• ✨ README overhaul: keyword-rich intro, ready-to-run example scenarios (VC sourcing, prospecting, recruiting), full field reference with founder/launch enrichment, and a B2B & lead-gen cross-promo grid.

2026-07-01

• Maintenance pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data and confirmed successful runs within the 5-minute quality window on the default input.
• Sharpened Store metadata (SEO title & description) and expanded the FAQ with high-intent, long-tail questions for easier discovery in Google and Apify Store search.
• Added ready-to-run example tasks that cover common real-world use cases.

2026-06-15

• Reliability pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data with real-world inputs. Routine maintenance build.

2026-06-07

• Docs: added coverage for YC companies API alternative, exporting the YC startup directory to CSV/JSON, and scraping Y Combinator without login.

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*Maintained: last verified 2026-09-01 — checked end-to-end against live run history (reliability, output fields and types, and time/memory budgets).