Hacker News Stories Scraper

Get Hacker News stories straight from the official Hacker News API: title, link, author, points, comment count and time posted. Pick the feed you want, filter by keyword or score, and run it on a schedule.

• Feeds: top, new, best, Ask HN, Show HN and jobs.
• Filters: keywords in the title and a minimum score.
• Monitoring: turn on "Only new stories" and schedule a run. Each run returns only stories you have not received before.

How to use it

1. Pick a feed.
2. Add keywords or a minimum score if you want a narrower list.
3. Run it, then download the stories as JSON, CSV or Excel, or use the API.

Input example

{
  "feed": "show",
  "keywords": ["open source", "rust"],
  "minScore": 20,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Output example (one story)

{
  "id": 42000001,
  "type": "story",
  "title": "Show HN: A small tool for ...",
  "url": "https://example.com/tool",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42000001",
  "author": "example",
  "score": 120,
  "comments": 45,
  "postedAt": "2026-10-31T09:00:00.000Z",
  "feed": "show",
  "returnedAt": "2026-11-01T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Good to know

• Official data. Reads the Hacker News API, which Hacker News publishes for developers. It doesn't read the website's pages.
• No rate limit stated. The API documentation says there is no rate limit. The actor still retries politely if it gets one.
• Lists are short. Each feed lists up to 500 stories, so schedule a run every hour to follow a feed closely.
• Ask HN and jobs have no link. For those, use the discussion link (hnUrl).
• Cost. Each story costs $0.0001, so 1,000 stories cost $0.10, plus $0.005 per run.
• Cost limit. If you set a maximum cost for a run, the scraper stops cleanly when it reaches it.

FAQ

Why does a monitoring run sometimes return nothing? Nothing new reached the feed since the last run.

Are deleted or dead stories included? No. They are skipped.

Pricing

Hacker News Stories Scraper uses pay per event. You pay $0.005 to start a run and $0.0001 for each story, so 1,000 stories cost about $0.105. There is no monthly fee. Set a maximum cost on a run and it stops cleanly when it reaches it.

Use cases

• Track mentions of your product, a competitor or a technology on Hacker News.
• Find Show HN launches in a niche, ranked by score.
• Build a daily digest or newsletter from the top or best feed.
• Collect Hacker News job posts for hiring research.

Use it from Python or JavaScript

Every Apify actor has an API. Replace the token with yours from the Apify Console.

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("My_agent_C/hacker-news-stories-scraper").call(run_input={
  "feed": "show",
  "keywords": ["open source", "rust"],
  "minScore": 20,
  "maxItems": 50
})
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('My_agent_C/hacker-news-stories-scraper').call({
  "feed": "show",
  "keywords": ["open source", "rust"],
  "minScore": 20,
  "maxItems": 50
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

You can also run it on a schedule, send results to Google Sheets, Zapier, Make or n8n, or call it from an AI agent through the Apify MCP server.

More questions

How do I scrape Hacker News? Pick a feed, add optional keywords, and run the actor. It reads the official Hacker News API, so you get clean JSON, CSV or Excel without writing a crawler.

Is there a Hacker News API? Yes. Hacker News publishes a free API for developers. This actor wraps it, adds keyword and score filters, and returns new-only results for monitoring.

Can I export Hacker News stories to CSV or Excel? Yes. Every run's results can be downloaded as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML from the Storage tab.

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Found a problem or want a field added? Open an issue on the Issues tab. Replies usually come within a day.