Hacker News Scraper

Scrape Hacker News by keyword — stories, comments, Ask HN, Show HN, and the front page — with points, author, date, and URL. Built on the official HN Algolia API: no API key or setup needed.

Search a topic, a company, or your product name and get a clean, structured feed you can export to CSV, Excel, or JSON — great for tech trend research and mention monitoring.

Features

• Official, unlimited source — reads the public HN Algolia search API.
• Everything on HN — stories, comments, Ask HN, Show HN, polls, or the live front page.
• Powerful filters — sort by relevance or newest, and keep only items above a points threshold.
• Mention monitoring — schedule it on your brand or product name and catch every HN discussion.

Use cases

• Tech & startup trend research — track what's trending on any topic over time.
• Brand / product monitoring — get every HN story and comment mentioning you (great for "Show HN" feedback).
• Investor deal-sourcing — follow Show HN launches and Ask HN threads.
• Datasets — build HN text datasets for analysis or LLM pipelines.

Input

Field	Type	Description
searchQueries	string[]	Keywords to search. Leave empty with tag: front_page for the front page.
tag	enum	story, comment, ask_hn, show_hn, poll, or front_page.
sortBy	enum	relevance or date (newest first).
minPoints	integer	Keep only items with at least this many points.
maxItems	integer	Max items per query. Default 100.

Example

{
  "searchQueries": ["AI agents", "vector database"],
  "tag": "story",
  "sortBy": "relevance",
  "minPoints": 50,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Output

{
  "objectId": "13663751",
  "type": "story",
  "title": "The Rust Programming Language, 2nd Edition",
  "url": "https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/",
  "author": "nanxor",
  "points": 346,
  "numComments": 108,
  "text": null,
  "createdAt": "2026-02-01T10:00:00Z",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13663751",
  "query": "rust programming",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-11T19:00:00.000Z"
}

Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML, or pull it via the Apify API.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: $0.01 per run start (per GB of run memory) plus $0.50 per 1,000 items. You only pay for items actually returned. See the Pricing tab for current rates.

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. This Actor uses the public HN Algolia API — no key, no auth.

How do I get the front page? Set tag to front_page and leave searchQueries empty.

Can I get a story's comments? Set tag to comment and search — or filter by a story to follow its discussion.

Can I monitor mentions of my product? Yes — schedule the Actor with your product name as the query and sortBy: date.

Disclaimer

This is an unofficial Actor. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Y Combinator or Hacker News. It uses the public HN Algolia API and returns publicly available content. You are responsible for how you use the data.