Hacker News Scraper: stories, comments, search, users and "Who is hiring" jobs

Get Hacker News data as clean, structured records in seconds. This Hacker News scraper reads the two official public HN APIs (the Hacker News Firebase API and the Algolia HN Search API) and returns stories, comments, user profiles and monthly "Who is hiring" job posts with ISO dates, points, comment counts, URL, domain and a direct HN link. No browser, no login, no blocking. $0.15 per 1,000 results.

What can this Hacker News scraper do?

• Front-page lists: top (the front page ranking, up to 500), new, best, Ask HN, Show HN and YC job ads, with each story's rank.
• Keyword search: full-text search over stories and comments with date ranges (2026-01-01 or 7 days), minimum points, minimum comments, author filter and type tags (story, comment, ask_hn, show_hn, job, poll, front_page, author_NAME, story_ID). Sort by relevance or newest first; date-sorted searches go past the usual 1,000-hit limit.
• Full comment trees: give story IDs or links and get the story plus every comment, flattened in HN display order with depth, parentId and position, so you can rebuild the thread.
• User profiles: karma, join date, about text, number of submissions, plus their latest stories and comments.
• "Who is hiring" job records: the monthly Ask HN: Who is hiring? thread parsed into one record per company post: company, role, location, remote flag, workplace type (Remote / Hybrid / Onsite), employment type, salary text with numeric min/max/currency/period, visa note, company URL, all links and the full post text. Filter by keywords, remote only or posts with salary.

What data do you get?

Stories and comments: type, id, title, url, domain, author, points, commentsCount, createdAt, text, hnUrl, parentId, plus rank and list (front page), storyId, storyTitle, depth, position (comment trees) and isShowHN, isAskHN, onFrontPage (search).

Users: username, karma, createdAt, about, submittedCount, profileUrl.

Job posts: company, role, location, remote, workplaceType, employmentType, salaryText, salaryMin, salaryMax, salaryCurrency, salaryPeriod, visaSponsorship, companyUrl, links, headerLine, text, postedAt, hnUrl, threadMonth.

All dates are ISO 8601 in UTC. Text is plain text with links expanded to their full URLs.

Who uses it?

• Recruiters and sourcers who want each month's "Who is hiring" thread as a spreadsheet of companies, roles, locations and salaries.
• Founders and marketers tracking mentions of their product, competitors or keywords on Hacker News.
• Developer-relations and research teams measuring developer sentiment from full comment threads.
• Newsletter writers and analysts collecting the front page or the best stories every day.
• AI and data teams building datasets of technical discussion.

How to use it

1. Click Try for free (or Start). With no changes it returns the current top 30 front-page stories in a few seconds.
2. Choose What to scrape: front-page lists, keyword search, stories with comments, user profiles or "Who is hiring" posts.
3. Fill in the fields for that mode (keywords and filters, story links, usernames, or a month like 2026-10).
4. Set Maximum results and run it.
5. Export to Excel, CSV or JSON, or schedule it daily.

Input example

{
  "mode": "frontPage",
  "lists": [
    "top"
  ],
  "maxItems": 30
}

More examples:

• Search: {"mode": "search", "query": "postgres", "tags": ["story"], "dateFrom": "30 days", "minPoints": 100, "sortBy": "date"}
• Comment tree: {"mode": "story", "storyIds": ["https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863"], "maxItems": 5000}
• Hiring: {"mode": "whoIsHiring", "hiringMonth": "2026-10", "hiringKeywords": ["rust", "python"], "remoteOnly": true, "maxItems": 1000}

Output example

From a real default run (top front-page story):

{
  "type": "story",
  "id": 50307190,
  "title": "My favourite PowerMac is a Nintendo Wii",
  "url": "https://virtuallyfun.com/2026/10/29/my-favourite-powermac-is-a-nintendo-wii/",
  "domain": "virtuallyfun.com",
  "author": "DHowett",
  "points": 162,
  "commentsCount": 45,
  "createdAt": "2026-10-30T17:25:15Z",
  "text": null,
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50307190",
  "parentId": null,
  "list": "top",
  "rank": 1
}

How much does it cost?

$0.15 per 1,000 results ($0.00015 each), plus a $0.00005 start fee per run. A result is one story, comment, user profile or job post.

You get	You pay
Top 30 front-page stories	about $0.005
One month's "Who is hiring" thread (about 300 posts)	about $0.05
A 1,000-comment discussion thread	$0.15
100,000 search results	$15

Volume discounts on higher Apify plans. The prices above are for the Apify Free plan. On paid plans the per-result price drops automatically: about 15% lower on Bronze, 25% lower on Silver and 38% lower on Gold and above.

Use it via API, Make, Zapier, n8n or an AI agent

Apify API. Start a run and get the results back in one HTTP request (replace YOUR_API_TOKEN with the token from Apify Console > Settings > Integrations):

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/plotpointtech~hacker-news-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode": "frontPage", "lists": ["top"], "maxItems": 30}'

For longer jobs, start the run asynchronously and read the dataset when it finishes. Official apify-client libraries exist for Python and JavaScript; the API tab on this page has ready-made code.

No-code automation. Connect the tool to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack, Airtable or any webhook with Apify integrations, and use Schedules in Apify Console to run it hourly, daily or weekly.

AI agents (MCP). Give Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code or any MCP-compatible agent direct access to this tool through the hosted Apify MCP server. Add this server URL to your client:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=plotpointtech/hacker-news-scraper

The agent can then call the tool with the same input fields shown above and read the results.

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape Hacker News? This tool does not scrape web pages. It uses the official Hacker News API (published by Y Combinator on Firebase for public use) and the public Algolia HN Search API. All data returned is publicly visible on news.ycombinator.com. You are responsible for how you use it, including any personal data in comments and user profiles, under the laws that apply to you (for example GDPR).

How accurate is the "Who is hiring" parsing? Most posts follow the thread's Company | Role | Location | REMOTE/ONSITE | Salary | URL convention, and those parse cleanly. Free-form posts still return the company, the full text, links and the remote flag, but some fields may be empty. headerLine and text are always included so you can check.

Why is a comment count different from what I see on HN? commentsCount comes from the API and includes comments later flagged or deleted; the comment-tree mode returns only visible comments.

How fresh is the data? Front-page lists and comment trees are live from the official API. Search results come from Algolia's index, which usually lags by a few minutes.

Does it get emails from job posts? No dedicated email field is extracted. The full post text is included as published.

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Plot Point Technologies is not affiliated with Hacker News, Y Combinator or Algolia.

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