Hacker News Who's Hiring Jobs Scraper

Hacker News Who's Hiring Jobs Scraper

Scrape every job posting from the monthly Hacker News Who's Hiring threads, filtered by keyword, remote status, salary, or tech stack. Each row returns the full job description, parsed salary, and remote tag. No API key needed. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

The official Hacker News API returns raw comment trees, not structured job listings. This actor reads the monthly Who's Hiring thread directly, parses each top-level comment into a clean job posting, and applies your filters locally so only the matches you care about land in your dataset. No app registration, no OAuth, and no rate-limit headaches.

Who uses it	What they scrape Hacker News for
Job seekers	Find remote or high-salary roles matching a specific tech stack in the latest thread.
Recruiters	Monitor which companies are hiring for a given skill set and what compensation they offer.
Market analysts	Track hiring volume, salary bands, and remote-work adoption across the tech industry month over month.
Startup founders	Benchmark how competitors describe their open roles and what stack they are hiring for.

What it does

This Actor collects job postings from a specified monthly Hacker News Who's Hiring thread and returns each one as a flat row with the role, company, description, parsed salary, remote tag, and tech stack.

• 📅 Monthly thread targeting: pick any past thread by YYYY-MM or set current for the latest available Who's Hiring post.
• 🔍 Free-text keyword filter: search across the full job posting, including role title, company name, tech stack, and description body.
• 🏠 Remote-only toggle: return only postings that are explicitly tagged as remote.
• 💰 Minimum salary filter: set a USD floor and keep only jobs with a parsed salary at or above that number.
• 🛠️ Stack keyword filter: narrow results to postings that mention a specific technology like Python, Rust, or React.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with Hacker News data

📈 Track hiring trends over time.

A market analyst runs the scraper on the last 12 monthly threads, filters for remote-only postings, and plots the count of Python roles to measure remote-work growth.

🎯 Build a personal job alert.

A developer sets the month to current, the stack to Rust, and the minimum salary to 150000, then runs the actor weekly to catch new high-paying Rust roles.

🏢 Benchmark competitor hiring.

A startup founder scrapes the current thread with a keyword filter for a competitor's name to see which roles they are filling and how they describe them.

💰 Analyze salary bands by stack.

A recruiter collects all postings from the latest thread, exports to CSV, and pivots on the parsed salary column to understand compensation ranges for React versus Python roles.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
Structured job rows	Every top-level comment becomes one flat row with a fixed schema, ready for spreadsheets or databases.
Parsed salary	Heuristic extraction pulls a numeric USD salary from the free-text description when one is present.
Remote flag	A boolean column tells you immediately whether the posting is tagged remote.
Full description	The complete body text of the job posting is preserved in one field.
No API key	Reads the public Hacker News page directly. No Firebase or Algolia API registration required.

How it compares

This actor focuses exclusively on parsing the monthly Who's Hiring threads into structured job rows with salary extraction and filters. The general Hacker News Scraper covers the wider site via the official APIs.

Feature	ParseForge	Hacker News Scraper
Dedicated Who's Hiring thread parsing	Yes, targets monthly threads directly	Yes, supports Who's Hiring extraction
Structured job rows with parsed salary	Yes, heuristic USD salary extraction	Not listed
Remote-only filter	Yes, checkbox filter	Not listed
Minimum salary filter	Yes, numeric USD threshold	Not listed
Stack keyword filter	Yes, filter by technology mention	Not listed
Full-text search across stories and comments	No, focused on job threads only	Yes, via Algolia API

Configure the run

Drive the Actor from a monthly thread identifier and optional filters for keyword, remote status, minimum salary, and tech stack. Filters run as each posting is parsed so only matches reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
 "maxItems": 10,
 "month": "current",
 "minSalary": 0
}

A larger pull:

{
 "maxItems": 200,
 "month": "current",
 "minSalary": 0
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.02 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$2.00
1,000 results	$20.00
10,000 results	$200.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Hacker News Who's Hiring Jobs Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Hacker News through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/hn-whoishiring-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check that the month you entered has a Who's Hiring thread. If you used current and got nothing, the latest thread may not be posted yet. Also, try removing all filters to see if any postings exist, then re-apply filters one at a time.

The salary filter is missing jobs I know should match.

The salary parser looks for a clear USD number. If a posting writes 'competitive salary' or uses a range like '$120k-$160k', the heuristic may not extract a single number. Try lowering or removing the minimum salary filter and review the raw descriptions.

My keyword filter returns too many unrelated jobs.

The keyword filter does a broad text match. Try a more specific term, or combine it with the stack filter to narrow results to postings that mention both your keyword and a specific technology.

The actor runs but the dataset is empty even without filters.

Verify the month format is exactly YYYY-MM. A typo like 2026-5 will not match. Also confirm the thread for that month exists on Hacker News by visiting the site manually.

Can I scrape multiple months in one run?

The actor targets one thread per run. To collect multiple months, run the actor once per month and merge the datasets afterward, or schedule a series of runs with different month inputs.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Does this scraper need an API key or login?	No. It reads the public Hacker News Who's Hiring page directly. You do not need a Firebase or Algolia API key, and there is no OAuth flow.
How do I specify which monthly thread to scrape?	Set the Month field to a YYYY-MM string like 2026-05, or use the word current to always target the latest available Who's Hiring thread.
How does the salary filter work?	The actor uses a heuristic to find a numeric USD salary inside the job description text. The minimum salary filter keeps only postings where that parsed number is at or above your threshold.
What counts as a remote posting?	A posting is flagged as remote when the original comment contains a remote tag. The remote-only checkbox filters your results to only those rows.
Can I search for multiple keywords at once?	The keyword filter accepts a single free-text string and matches it anywhere in the role, company, stack, or description. For multiple terms, run the actor once per term or filter the exported CSV yourself.
Does this scrape the entire Hacker News site?	No. This actor targets only the monthly Who's Hiring job threads. For general stories, comments, or user profiles, use a general Hacker News scraper.
How many job postings can I collect in one run?	You set the maximum with the 'Maximum job postings' field, up to 1,000,000 per run. The actor stops after reaching that count or when the thread is exhausted.
What output formats are supported?	You can export your dataset to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML directly from the Apify run console.
Is the salary parsing always accurate?	Salary parsing is heuristic. It works well on clearly stated numbers like '$150k' or '$120,000', but may miss unusual formats or ranges. Always spot-check the raw description for critical decisions.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Y Combinator. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.