Hacker News Monitor — Brand & Tech Keyword Alerts (Vigia)

Monitor Hacker News for your brand, product or tech keywords and get only NEW stories since last check, with a discussion-spike signal. Charged only on new mentions, never per run. Ideal for dev-tool marketing, PR and competitive-intel agents.

100% first-party. This monitor reads the official Hacker News (Algolia) search API directly — no third-party scraper in the middle. There is no upstream actor that can break, rate-limit, or go dark, and the source check costs just $0.02.

Free tier — 10 results free on every run

The first 10 results of every run are free, on every run you ever make — not a one-off trial. Run it on your own subjects and see the real output before you are billed for a single result.

One guard: the free allowance never covers more than half of a run, so a run returning 6 results gets 3 free. That keeps the offer sustainable.

What it does

Get alerted when your product or a keyword hits Hacker News. You get only what changed since your last check — never a full re-dump to diff yourself.

Why Vigia — 5 advantages a raw scraper can't match

1. You pay the alert price only for real change. New-story alerts are billed only for genuinely new stories since your last check. With monitoring on, a quiet run bills only a small check fee — never the result price on unchanged data; one-off runs pay only per result. Raw scrapers bill every row of a full re-scan every run.
2. Never billed on a failed source. If the source is down or an input fails, that item is free.
3. Append-only delta + spike signal. The first monitored run stores a free baseline; later runs deliver only what's new, plus a velocity-spike alert when volume suddenly surges (trend / review-bomb / hiring-surge).
4. Hard cost cap you control. Set maxTotalChargeUsd and the run can never bill above it — predictable spend, no surprise invoice.
5. Agent-ready output. Clean, normalized rows and a RUN_SUMMARY.json with ready-to-use signals — chainable from any MCP / A2A agent in one step.

Example input

{
  "keywords": [
    "your product",
    "competitor name"
  ],
  "monitorEnabled": true,
  "maxTotalChargeUsd": 1.0
}

Set monitorEnabled: true so the first run stores a free baseline and later runs return only new results. Pin a monitorId to keep separate targets from sharing state.

Output

Each row is a normalized change record: record_id, query_id, title, url, author, published_at, score, text. A RUN_SUMMARY.json accompanies every run with the aggregated signal (counts, velocity spikes, trend).

text is an empty string, not missing data, for link-only submissions (a story that just posts a URL with no self-text) — this is what Hacker News itself stores for that story, not a scraping gap. Stories with real self-text (Ask HN, Show HN, most comments) return it in full.

How you're charged

• Story alert — billed once per new story since the last check (this is the only charge that scales with change).
• Monitoring check ($0.02) — only when you turn on scheduled monitoring (monitorEnabled), once per target per run, and only when the source responded. One-off runs never pay it: you pay only per result.
• A quiet run bills only the source check ($0.02), never the alert price. This monitor reads the official Hacker News (Algolia) API directly — no chained scraper — caps every call, and passes you only the delta.

Related tools

• Looking for Q&A-style developer discussion instead of link/comment threads? → Stack Overflow Scraper - Questions, Answers, Vote Count

How to use it in 3 steps

1. Click Try for free and fill in Search keywords (keywords).
2. Optional: adjust the other fields; every one has a description and a sensible default.
3. Click Start and download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read them from the API.

Use cases

• Tech research
• Brand mentions

Use it from code (API)

Every Apify Actor is an API. Start a run and read the results with one call.

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("om_kh/hacker-news-scraper").call(run_input={"keywords": ["your product", "competitor name"]})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('om_kh/hacker-news-scraper').call({
    "keywords": [
        "your product",
        "competitor name"
    ]
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

One HTTP call (cURL) — runs the Actor and returns the dataset in the same response:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/om_kh~hacker-news-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keywords": ["your product", "competitor name"]}'

Integrations: n8n, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets

• n8n — the official Apify node, operation Run Actor and get dataset, Actor om_kh/hacker-news-scraper.
• Make — Apify › Run an Actor, then Apify › Get Dataset Items.
• Zapier — Apify › Run Actor; map the dataset items into your next step.
• Google Sheets, webhooks, Slack — add an integration from the Integrations tab of this Actor.
• Schedules — run it every hour or day from Schedules in Apify Console.

Use it from an AI agent (MCP and x402)

Connect Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code or any MCP client to Apify's MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com and add this Actor, om_kh/hacker-news-scraper, as a tool — the agent passes the same JSON as the run input and gets the dataset back.

AI agents that pay with x402 can run it too, without an Apify account: the Actor charges only per result delivered, so an agent pays exactly for what it gets.

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape Hacker News? This Actor collects only publicly available Hacker News data and never logs in. You are responsible for how you use it; check Hacker News's terms and your local law (GDPR, CCPA) if you store personal data, and ask a lawyer if unsure.

Do I need an account, cookies or an API key? No. You only need an Apify account to run it.

What data do I get? Matching stories and comments with points, comment count, author and date. Download it as JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML or XML, or read it from the API.

Am I charged when something fails? No. An input that fails is listed with its reason in the run summary and is never charged.

Can I run it on a schedule? Yes. Create a schedule in Apify Console (hourly, daily, weekly) and connect webhooks, Google Sheets, Slack, n8n, Make or Zapier.

Can I use it from Python, JavaScript or an AI agent? Yes: see the code samples above, or connect AI agents through MCP with the hackernews_search tool.

More Actors from the same author

• Stack Overflow Scraper - Questions, Answers, Vote Count
• Yelp Reviews Scraper - Ratings, Text, Reviewer Name
• App Store & Google Play Reviews Scraper - Ratings
• Quora Scraper - Questions, Answers, Topics by Keyword

Support

Found a bug or have a feature request? Use the Issues tab on this Actor's Apify Store page, or message the author (om_kh) directly through Apify — every report gets a reply.