Hacker News Trend Aggregator

Scrape Hacker News stories and comments using the official Algolia HN Search API and Firebase API — no account, no API key, no proxy spend required.

What it does

• Keyword search — query stories and/or comments by relevance or date, with since/until date range and minPoints/minComments filters
• Live rankings — pull the current top, best, new, Ask HN, Show HN, or jobs lists straight from HN's Firebase feed
• Unified output — stories and comments in one dataset with consistent field names, ready for analysis or AI pipelines

Why use this actor

Competitor actor	Problem	This actor
harvestlab/hacker-news-scraper (5 users)	Barely launched, search-only	Search and live ranked lists
Generic multi-source actors	No HN-specific depth	Native points/comments/date filters
Roll-your-own API calls	Pagination + hydration + charge logic to maintain	One input, clean schema, pay-per-result

Hacker News is the canonical signal source for startup, AI, and developer-tooling intelligence — a natural input for RAG pipelines, trend dashboards, and competitive research.

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
type	string	story, comment, job, or poll
object_id	string	HN item ID
url	string	HN permalink (news.ycombinator.com/item?id=…)
external_url	string	Linked article URL (stories)
title	string	Story title (or parent story title for comments)
text	string	Self-text (Ask/Show) or comment body
author	string	HN username
author_url	string	HN user profile link
points	integer	Score
num_comments	integer	Comment count
story_id	string	Parent story ID (comments)
story_title	string	Parent story title (comments)
created_at	string	ISO 8601 timestamp
created_at_i	integer	Unix timestamp
tags	array	HN/Algolia tags

Usage examples

Keyword search, high-signal stories from 2025 by recency:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchTerms": ["AI agents", "LLM"],
  "itemType": "story",
  "sortBy": "date",
  "minPoints": 50,
  "since": "2025-01-01T00:00:00Z",
  "maxResults": 1000
}

Live front-page snapshot:

{
  "mode": "top",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.001 per result.

Example: 10,000 items ≈ $10.

Technical notes

• Uses the official hn.algolia.com search API and hacker-news.firebaseio.com Firebase API — both free, public, no key
• Zero proxy cost — official APIs, no anti-bot bypass
• Polite rate limiting
• Automatically stops when the user's spending limit is reached — charge respected per result, no overrun

Common use cases

• AI / startup intelligence — track what the HN community is discussing
• RAG pipelines — feed fresh, high-signal tech discourse into retrieval systems
• Trend monitoring — daily pulls of top/best lists for a dashboard
• Developer-tooling research — find Show HN launches and Ask HN demand signals
• Sentiment / discourse analysis — collect comment threads on a topic

Data compliance

This actor accesses only public Hacker News data through YC's official, publicly documented APIs. No login credentials are used. Hacker News content is intentionally public; suitable for research and business use.