Show HN Tracker

Track Show HN launches on Hacker News. Built for PR, comms, media-monitoring teams and AI agents.

📊 Sample Output

object_id	stream	url	hn_url	author	created_at
49838333	show_hn	https://github.com/inlevel9-com/Vons	https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49838333	haebom	2026-09-24T23:48:09Z
49838304	show_hn	https://sandbox.topotrace.org	https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49838304	mmcginnis	2026-09-24T23:44:29Z
49838009	show_hn	https://github.com/danielnc/jev-browse	https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49838009	danielnc	2026-09-24T23:08:04Z
49837886	show_hn	https://sprocket.bio/	https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49837886	clmcleod	2026-09-24T22:53:20Z
49837643	show_hn	https://github.com/motif-Labs/motif	https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49837643	merthdotxyz	2026-09-24T22:31:08Z

Real rows from run TACfvEnaDxnvcGndH on build 0.0.21 (2026-09-25), unedited apart from masked emails/phones and shortened long text; fields the source does not publish are empty.

🔧 Input reference

Field	Type	Default	What it does
streams (required)	array of string	["show_hn"]	Which HN feed(s) to track. Allowed values: 'show_hn' (Show HN launches), 'ask_hn' (Ask HN questions), 'front_page' (front-page stories), 'story' (all stories).
dateFrom	string	""	Earliest story creation date (UTC, inclusive). Leave blank for no lower bound. Algolia indexes go back to Feb 2007.
dateTo	string	""	Latest story creation date (UTC, inclusive). Leave blank for no upper bound (defaults to now).
minPoints	integer	0	Filter to stories with at least this many upvotes. 0 = no filter; 50 = ~front-page tier; 100+ = trending.
includeComments	boolean	false	If true, fetch the first 5 comments per story (text + author + parent_id). Adds 1 extra API call per story; useful for sentiment / discussion intel.
maxStoriesPerStream	integer	5	Cap stories per stream (1–5000). Each story is one dataset row.

🧾 JSON sample record

One real record from run TACfvEnaDxnvcGndH (emails/phones masked, long text shortened):

{
  "object_id": "49838333",
  "stream": "show_hn",
  "title": "Show HN: Vons – Jev-inspired local decisions for AI agents, in the browser",
  "url": "https://github.com/inlevel9-com/Vons",
  "hn_url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49838333",
  "author": "haebom",
  "points": 1,
  "num_comments": 0,
  "created_at": "2026-09-24T23:48:09Z",
  "created_at_i": 1790293689,
  "updated_at": "2026-09-24T23:51:25Z",
  "story_text": null,
  "tags": [
    "story",
    "author_haebom",
    "story_49838333",
    "show_hn"
  ],
  "comments": [],
  "source": "hn.algolia.com"
}

💰 Pricing

Event	Price (USD)	When it is charged
Actor Start (apify-actor-start)	$5e-05	Charged when the Actor starts running. Number of events charged depends on Actor memory (one event per GB, minimum one event).
HN story (apify-default-dataset-item)	$0.02	Single Hacker News story (Show HN, Ask HN, front-page, or general story) parsed and pushed to the dataset.

Pay-per-event: you pay only for what the run delivers. A run that delivers nothing bills no result events (only the actor-start event, when the actor defines one). Example: a run that delivers 100 results costs 100 × $0.02 = $2.00 plus the start fee.

🔗 Related Actors

More from the NexGenData Startup, VC & funding family:

• Founders Fund Portfolio Scraper — Portfolio API
• Greylock Portfolio Scraper — VC Portfolio API
• Hacker News Trends — Topic, Engagement & Viral-Story Analytics
• Index Ventures Portfolio Scraper — VC API
• Lightspeed Portfolio Scraper — VC Portfolio API
• Pre-IPO Secondary Prices — Late-Stage Startup API

10 more in this family on the NexGenData Store page.

⏰ Run this as a launch watch (recommended)

This is a monitoring subscription, not a one-shot lookup. Schedule a sweep and catch new launches as they land:

{
  "streams": ["show_hn"],
  "minPoints": 10,
  "maxStoriesPerStream": 100
}

A weekly cron (0 8 * * 1) turns this into an always-on launch watch.

📊 What you get

Clean JSON, one record per story (full output has 14 fields):

• title — story title
• url — the submitted link (null for text-only posts)
• hn_url — permalink to the Hacker News discussion
• points — upvotes at fetch time
• author — submitter's HN username
• num_comments — comment count at fetch time
• created_at / created_at_i — submission time (ISO and Unix)
• story_text — post body for text submissions
• stream — which feed the row came from (show_hn, ask_hn, front_page, story)
• tags — Algolia _tags for the story
• object_id — Hacker News item id
• comments — top 5 comments, only when includeComments is true

Values are whatever the Hacker News Algolia index reports at fetch time; points and comment counts on a fresh post are often low or zero.

Pricing: $0.02 per story (Pay-Per-Event) — about 50 stories per $1. An Actor Start fee of $0.00005 applies per run (charged per GB of memory, minimum 1).

🤖 Use with AI agents

Point Claude, the OpenAI Agents SDK, an n8n flow or any MCP-aware client at it and run Hacker News Show HN launch monitoring on demand.

Sample agent prompt:

List new Show HN launches this week with points and comments.

Agentic payments (x402): Supports agentic payment via x402 — agents can call this actor with USDC, no API key required.

🔗 Related news & media actors

Full media-monitoring stack — monitor every major wire: PR Newswire, Business Wire, GlobeNewswire, PRWeb, EIN Presswire, Brand Mention Monitor

News agent front door: News MCP

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Data from public news, press-wire and media sources.