📰 Hacker News Scraper

Collect stories, comments, jobs, and user data from Hacker News without coding. Browse curated feeds or search with advanced filtering for points, comments, and date ranges. Extract nested comment threads with depth control and monitor tech industry trends. Perfect for competitive intelligence, trend analysis, and startup research.

The Hacker News Scraper collects stories, comments, and user data from top tech discussions with up to 15+ data fields, live comment threads, and karma scores.

✨ What Does It Do

• 📰 Story Title - Track breaking tech announcements and major releases shared by the community
• 🔗 Story URL - Capture original article links to analyze what the tech community is reading
• 💬 Comments - Extract nested comment discussions with configurable depth for conversation analysis
• 👤 Author Information - Identify key contributors and retrieve their karma scores for credibility assessment
• 📊 Points & Comments Count - Measure story popularity and engagement to find trending topics
• 📅 Timestamps - Sort content by creation date to track historical trends or find recent discussions

🔧 Input

• Mode - Choose between browsing curated feeds (Top, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN, Jobs) or running full-text search with filters
• Feed Type - Select which feed to browse: Top Stories, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN, or Jobs. Only used when mode is set to feed
• Search Query - Enter your search term for full-text search across Hacker News. Only used when mode is set to search
• Content Type - Filter results to stories only, comments only, or all content types
• Sort By - Sort search results by relevance or date. Newest first when sorted by date
• Minimum Points - Filter out stories below a certain point threshold to focus on popular content
• Minimum Comments - Only include stories with at least this many comments for discussion-rich content
• Date Range - Filter content by creation date using start and end dates in YYYY-MM-DD format
• Max Items - Set how many items to collect. Free accounts limited to 100, premium accounts up to 1,000,000
• Include Comments - Collect full comment threads for each story. Increases run time but adds conversation context
• Max Comment Depth - Control how deep into nested replies to collect, from 1 to 10 levels
• Max Comments Per Story - Limit the number of top-level comments to collect per story
• Include Author Info - Collect karma and account age for each author. Requires additional requests per author

Example input:

{
  "mode": "feed",
  "feedType": "top",
  "maxItems": 20,
  "includeComments": true,
  "maxCommentDepth": 2,
  "maxCommentsPerStory": 5
}

📊 Output

Each story or comment includes up to 15+ data fields. Download as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

📝 Title	🔗 URL	🌍 Domain
👤 Author	📊 Points	💬 Comment Count
📅 Created At	🎯 Content Type	💡 Story Text
🔑 ID	🔗 HN URL	📋 Comments Thread
👥 Author Karma	📅 Author Created At	⏰ Scraped At

💎 Why Choose the Hacker News Scraper?

Feature	Our Actor	Similar Tools
Browse 6 feed types (Top, New, Best, Ask, Show, Jobs)	✔️	Partial
Full-text search with advanced filtering	✔️	Partial
Filter by points, comments, and date range	✔️	❌
Extract nested comment threads with depth control	✔️	❌
Author karma and account age enrichment	✔️	❌
Up to 1,000,000 results per run for premium accounts	✔️	❌
Export to CSV, Excel, or JSON format	✔️	✔️
No authentication required	✔️	✔️
Real-time data from Hacker News	✔️	Partial
Batch processing with smart rate limiting	✔️	❌
Content type filtering (stories, comments, jobs)	✔️	❌

📋 How to Use

No technical skills required. Follow these simple steps:

1. Sign Up - Create a free account at https://console.apify.com/sign-up?fpr=vmoqkp
2. Find the Tool - Search for "Hacker News Scraper" in the Apify Store and configure your input
3. Run It - Click "Start" and watch your results appear

That's it. No coding, no setup, no complicated configuration. Now you can export your data in CSV, Excel, or JSON format

🎯 Business Use Cases

• 📊 Tech Analyst - Monitor top stories from the last 24 hours with minimum 100 points to identify emerging technologies before competitors discover them
• 💼 Recruitment Manager - Collect all jobs postings weekly from the Jobs feed to benchmark competitor hiring and discover engineering talent pools
• 📈 Market Researcher - Search for AI-related discussions with 50+ comments, then extract comment threads to analyze sentiment and technical challenges in real time

❓ FAQ

🔍 How does it work? The scraper connects directly to Hacker News and pulls live data for feeds and search. No blocking risk, data updates in real time.

📊 Is the data accurate? Yes, data is always current and accurate from Hacker News. Comment threads appear in real time, but deleted comments will not show.

📅 Can I schedule this to run automatically? Yes, you can schedule runs on the Apify platform at any interval you need - daily, weekly, hourly, or based on webhooks.

⚖️ Is scraping Hacker News allowed? Yes. Hacker News encourages data extraction through its public infrastructure. Always check local laws and terms of service.

🛡️ Will Hacker News block me? No. The tool is designed to work smoothly with Hacker News, so you're never blocked. No proxies needed.

⚡ How long does a run take? A typical 20-story run with comments takes 30-60 seconds. Search across all posts takes 2-5 minutes depending on result volume.

⚠️ Are there any limits? Free accounts can collect up to 100 results per run. Premium accounts can collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

🔗 Integrate Hacker News Scraper with any app

• Make - Automate workflows
• Zapier - Connect 5000+ apps
• GitHub - Version control integration
• Slack - Get notifications
• Airbyte - Data pipelines
• Google Drive - Export to spreadsheets

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Browse our complete collection of data extraction tools for more.

🚀 Ready to Start?

Create a free account and collect your first 100 results for free. No coding, no setup.

🆘 Need Help?

• Check the FAQ section above for common questions
• Visit the Apify support page for documentation and tutorials
• Contact us to request a new scraper, propose a custom project, or report an issue at Tally contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Hacker News or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.