Trends Aggregator - Multi-Source Trending Topics (Google, Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub, Product Hunt)

Aggregate trending topics from 5 sources in a single Apify Actor run -- Google Trends, Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub, and Product Hunt. No API keys required. The best free alternative to Exploding Topics, BuzzSumo, SparkToro, Google Trends API wrappers, and Feedly.

Who Is This For?

• Content marketers -- Discover trending topics before competitors and create timely content
• SEO specialists -- Identify trending keywords and topics for content calendar planning
• Product managers -- Track emerging tools, frameworks, and products in your industry
• Startup founders -- Monitor Product Hunt and Hacker News for competitor launches and market signals
• Developers -- Track trending GitHub repos and tech discussions on Hacker News
• Journalists & media -- Aggregate breaking topics across platforms for story ideas
• Social media managers -- Find trending topics to create timely posts that ride the wave

Sources

Source	What It Captures	Update Frequency
Google Trends	Daily trending searches with traffic volume + related news articles	Updates multiple times/day
Hacker News	Top stories (tech, startups, science, culture)	Updates every few minutes
Reddit	Trending posts from r/popular (all topics)	Updates every few minutes
GitHub	Fastest-growing repositories created in the last 7 days	Updates daily
Product Hunt	Today's top-voted product launches	Updates daily

Pricing -- Free to Start

Tier	Cost	What You Get
Free trial	$0	Apify free tier includes monthly compute credits
Pay per run	~$0.01-0.05/run	All 5 sources in one run
vs. Exploding Topics	Saves $39-249/mo	Real-time data from 5 sources
vs. BuzzSumo	Saves $199-499/mo	Trending topics + tech/product trends
vs. Feedly AI	Saves $18-99/mo	No curation needed, raw trending data

How It Compares to Paid Trend Tools

Feature	This Actor (FREE)	Exploding Topics ($39/mo)	BuzzSumo ($199/mo)	SparkToro ($50/mo)	Feedly ($18/mo)
Google Trends data	Yes (with traffic volume)	Yes	No	No	No
Reddit trending	Yes	No	Limited	No	Yes
Hacker News	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
GitHub trending repos	Yes	No	No	No	No
Product Hunt	Yes	No	No	No	No
Region filtering	Yes (Google Trends)	Yes	No	No	No
API/automation	Yes (Apify API)	API ($249/mo)	API ($299/mo)	API ($150/mo)	API ($99/mo)
Scheduling	Yes (Apify scheduler)	Dashboard only	Dashboard only	Dashboard only	Dashboard only
Raw JSON output	Yes	No	CSV export	CSV export	No
Monthly cost	$0 (pay per run)	$39-249	$199-499	$50-150	$18-99

Quick Start (3 Steps)

1. Click "Try for free" on this Actor's page in Apify Store
2. Select sources (Google Trends, Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub, Product Hunt) and region
3. Click "Start" and get aggregated trending topics as JSON, CSV, or Excel

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
sources	array	all 5 sources	Which sources to fetch: google, hackernews, reddit, github, producthunt
googleGeo	string	"US"	ISO country code for Google Trends region (e.g. US, JP, GB, DE, BR)
limit	integer	25	Max items per source (1-50)

Example Input -- All Sources, US Region

{
  "sources": ["google", "hackernews", "reddit", "github", "producthunt"],
  "googleGeo": "US",
  "limit": 25
}

Example Input -- Tech-Focused, Japan Region

{
  "sources": ["google", "hackernews", "github"],
  "googleGeo": "JP",
  "limit": 10
}

Example Input -- Product & Startup Monitoring

{
  "sources": ["producthunt", "hackernews", "github"],
  "limit": 15
}

Output

Each source produces one dataset record:

{
  "source": "hackernews",
  "updated": "2026-03-16T10:00:00.000Z",
  "count": 25,
  "items": [ ... ]
}

If a source fails, the record includes an "error" field instead of items -- no silent failures.

Google Trends Item

{
  "title": "Topic name",
  "traffic": "500K+",
  "pubDate": "Mon, 16 Mar 2026 ...",
  "link": "https://trends.google.com/...",
  "relatedArticles": [
    { "title": "...", "url": "...", "source": "..." }
  ]
}

Hacker News Item

{
  "id": 12345678,
  "title": "Show HN: Something cool",
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "score": 342,
  "by": "username",
  "comments": 87,
  "time": 1710000000
}

Reddit Item

{
  "title": "Post title",
  "subreddit": "r/technology",
  "score": 12000,
  "comments": 450,
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/...",
  "author": "username",
  "created_utc": 1710000000
}

GitHub Item

{
  "name": "owner/repo",
  "description": "Repo description",
  "url": "https://github.com/owner/repo",
  "stars": 1200,
  "forks": 80,
  "language": "TypeScript",
  "created_at": "2026-03-10T00:00:00Z"
}

Product Hunt Item

{
  "name": "Product Name",
  "tagline": "Short description",
  "votes": 540,
  "url": "https://www.producthunt.com/posts/...",
  "website": "https://product.com",
  "topics": ["AI", "Productivity"]
}

Real-World Use Cases

1. Daily Content Inspiration Dashboard

Schedule this Actor to run every morning. Export to Google Sheets via Apify integrations for a free, auto-updating trend dashboard your content team can reference daily.

2. SEO Trend-Jacking

Monitor Google Trends + Reddit for emerging topics in your niche. When a topic spikes, publish content within hours to capture early search traffic.

3. Competitive Product Intelligence

Track Product Hunt and GitHub for new tools in your space. Get alerted via webhook when a competitor launches or a relevant open-source project gains traction.

4. Tech Stack Trend Monitoring

Filter GitHub trending repos by language to track which frameworks and tools are gaining momentum. Essential for CTOs and engineering managers making technology decisions.

5. Newsletter Content Curation

Run weekly across all 5 sources, filter the top items, and use the structured output to auto-generate a trend digest newsletter via n8n, Make, or Zapier.

6. Regional Trend Analysis

Compare Google Trends across US, JP, GB, DE, and BR to identify regional content opportunities and localization priorities.

FAQ

Q: How often should I run this? A: For daily trend monitoring, run once per day. For real-time trend tracking, run every 1-4 hours. Hacker News and Reddit update most frequently; GitHub and Product Hunt are best checked daily.

Q: Can I filter by specific subreddits or GitHub languages? A: Currently, Reddit fetches from r/popular and GitHub fetches all languages. Filtering by specific subreddits or languages is planned for a future update.

Q: What does the Google Trends "traffic" field mean? A: It's Google's estimated daily search volume for that trending topic (e.g., "500K+" means over 500,000 searches that day).

Q: Can I send results to Slack or email? A: Yes. Use Apify's built-in integrations to push results to Slack, email, Google Sheets, webhooks, or any tool via Zapier/Make.

Q: What if Product Hunt data is unavailable? A: Product Hunt's GraphQL API may occasionally require authentication. If unavailable, the record returns count: 0 with a note field. The other 4 sources will still work normally.

Q: Can I use the Apify API to call this programmatically? A: Yes. Full API access via REST or SDKs (Python, JavaScript, Go). Trigger runs, retrieve results, and build automated trend monitoring pipelines.

Notes

• Product Hunt GraphQL may require authentication; if unavailable the record will have count: 0 and a note field.
• All sources use public endpoints (RSS, JSON APIs, HTML parsing) -- no API keys needed.