HN Who's Hiring Scraper -- Structured Tech Job Listings from Hacker News

Automatically scrape and parse Hacker News "Ask HN: Who is Hiring?" monthly threads into clean, structured job data. Stop manually scanning hundreds of unformatted comments -- get filterable, searchable job listings with extracted company names, salaries, tech stacks, remote status, benefits, and location data in seconds. This is the only tool that transforms HN hiring threads into production-ready structured data.

Key Features

• Smart Comment Parsing -- Extracts structured fields from free-form HN comments using pattern matching across 100+ technology keywords, salary formats, and location conventions.
• Company & Role Extraction -- Identifies company names, job titles, and seniority levels even when posters use inconsistent formatting.
• Salary Detection -- Captures salary ranges, equity mentions, and compensation details from text that uses dozens of different formats ($150K, $150,000/yr, 150-200k, etc.).
• Tech Stack Recognition -- Detects 100+ technologies including languages (Python, Rust, Go), frameworks (React, Django, Rails), infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes), and databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis).
• Remote Status Classification -- Classifies each listing as remote, hybrid, on-site, or remote-friendly based on contextual analysis of the full comment text.
• Location Normalization -- Parses locations like "SF", "San Francisco, CA", "NYC", "Berlin, Germany" into consistent, filterable formats.
• Historical Thread Access -- Scrape not just the current month but any past "Who is Hiring?" thread. Build a longitudinal dataset of tech hiring trends going back years.
• Advanced Filtering -- Filter by keyword, location, remote-only, specific technologies, or salary ranges to get exactly the listings you need.

Output Example

Each parsed job listing contains structured fields extracted from the raw HN comment:

{
  "company": "Stripe",
  "role": "Senior Backend Engineer",
  "salary": "$180,000 - $250,000",
  "equity": "0.01% - 0.05%",
  "location": "San Francisco, CA",
  "remote": "hybrid",
  "techStack": ["Ruby", "Go", "AWS", "PostgreSQL", "Kubernetes"],
  "benefits": ["Health insurance", "401k match", "Unlimited PTO"],
  "description": "Building the next generation of payment infrastructure...",
  "hnCommentUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39562281",
  "threadDate": "2025-03-01",
  "postedBy": "stripe_recruiter"
}

How to Use

1. Select the thread -- Choose the current month's "Who is Hiring?" thread or specify a historical thread URL. The actor auto-detects the latest thread if no URL is provided.
2. Set filters -- Optionally filter by keywords (e.g., "machine learning"), location (e.g., "remote"), or technology (e.g., "Python"). Leave blank to get all listings.
3. Run the actor -- Click "Start" or trigger via API. The actor parses all top-level comments and extracts structured data, typically completing in under 60 seconds.
4. Export and analyze -- Download results as JSON/CSV, push to Google Sheets, or integrate with your ATS, job board, or recruitment pipeline via webhooks.

Integration Examples

Python SDK

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("nexgendata/hn-whos-hiring-scraper").call(
    run_input={
        "keyword": "machine learning",
        "remote_only": True,
        "maxResults": 100
    }
)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["company"], item["role"], item["salary"])

cURL

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~hn-whos-hiring-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keyword": "machine learning", "remote_only": true}'

Use Cases

• Job Seekers -- Find high-quality tech jobs from companies that post on Hacker News, typically well-funded startups and established tech companies. Filter by your preferred stack, location, and salary range.
• Recruiters & Talent Teams -- Monitor which companies are actively hiring and for what roles. Identify competing offers and salary benchmarks in your market.
• Market Researchers -- Track which technologies are in highest demand month over month. Build trend reports on the rise of AI/ML roles, Rust adoption, or remote work shifts.
• Startup Analysts -- Identify well-funded startups entering hiring mode. A burst of HN job posts often signals a recent funding round or product launch.
• Job Board Operators -- Enrich your job board with high-quality structured listings from HN threads. These are often exclusive postings not found on LinkedIn or Indeed.
• Compensation Analysts -- Aggregate salary data from hundreds of postings to build compensation benchmarks for specific roles, technologies, and locations in the tech industry.

FAQ

What are the rate limits? The actor scrapes Hacker News respectfully with built-in rate limiting. A typical monthly thread with 500+ comments completes in under 60 seconds with no risk of being blocked.

How fresh is the data? Data is scraped in real-time from the live HN thread. New comments posted after a run started will not be included -- re-run the actor to capture late additions. The "Who is Hiring?" thread is posted on the first of each month.

What output formats are supported? JSON, CSV, Excel, and XML. You can also push results to Google Sheets, Slack, or any webhook endpoint. The structured schema makes it easy to import into any database or analytics tool.

How much does it cost? This actor uses pay-per-event pricing at $0.008 per parsed listing plus $0.01 per actor start. A typical monthly thread with 400 listings costs approximately $3.21. See the pricing table below.

Is there a competing tool for this data? No. This is the only tool that provides structured, machine-readable data from HN "Who is Hiring?" threads. The alternative is manually reading hundreds of unformatted comments or writing your own parser from scratch.

Can I access this via API? Yes. Full REST API access plus official Python, JavaScript, and Node.js SDKs. Schedule monthly runs to automatically capture each new "Who is Hiring?" thread as it is posted.

Pricing

Metric	Cost
Cost per parsed listing	$0.008
Cost per actor start	$0.01
100 listings	$0.81
400 listings (typical month)	$3.21
12 months of data	~$38.52
Manual parsing (3 hrs @ $50/hr)	$150/month
Custom scraper development	$2,000+ one-time
Competing structured HN job data	Does not exist

A full year of monthly HN hiring data costs under $40 -- less than a single hour of manual research.

Why Choose This Actor

• Unique data source -- No other tool provides structured, queryable data from HN "Who is Hiring?" threads. This is exclusive intelligence you cannot get from LinkedIn, Indeed, or any job aggregator.
• 100+ technology keywords -- The most comprehensive tech stack detection for job listings, recognizing languages, frameworks, infrastructure tools, and databases automatically.
• Historical trend analysis -- Build longitudinal datasets spanning months or years to track hiring trends, salary shifts, and technology adoption in the startup ecosystem.
• Zero maintenance -- The actor handles HN's comment format variations, edge cases, and thread structure changes automatically. No custom parser to maintain.

Get Started

New to Apify? Sign up here to get started with $5 in free credits -- enough to parse several months of HN hiring threads for free.

Related Hacker News Actors

Actor	What It Does	Best For
Hacker News Scraper & Trend Tracker	Front page stories, engagement velocity, topic classification	Content strategy, trend monitoring, market research
HN Who's Hiring Scraper	Structured jobs from monthly hiring threads — salary, tech stack, remote status	Recruiting, job market analysis, hiring trends

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