Hacker News Scraper — Stories & Comments

Turn Hacker News search into a schedulable feed — monitor a brand, keyword, domain or user across stories and comments, with the full Algolia filter surface. Keyless, sortable by relevance or recency, with points/comment thresholds and tag filters.

Perfect for brand and keyword monitoring, PR alerts, market research, and dev-community analysis.

What you get

Per item (story or comment):

• Core — id, type (story / comment / poll / job), title, url, author, points, numComments
• Text — storyText (self/Ask HN posts), commentText (for comments)
• Threading — parentId, storyId, tags (_tags from Algolia)
• Timing — createdAt (ISO), createdAtTimestamp (Unix seconds)
• Direct link — hnUrl to the item on news.ycombinator.com

Filters & modes

• Keyword search — query across titles, URLs and text.
• By author — pull a user's full history with author.
• By type — tags filter: story, comment, poll, show_hn, ask_hn, front_page (combinable).
• Thresholds — minPoints, minComments, createdAfter (Unix timestamp), plus raw numericFilters clauses.
• Sort — relevance (best match) or date (newest first).

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
query	string	—	Keywords in titles, URLs and text
tags	array	—	story, comment, poll, show_hn, ask_hn, front_page
author	string	—	Only items by this HN username
sortBy	string	relevance	relevance or date
minPoints	integer	—	Minimum points
minComments	integer	—	Minimum comments
createdAfter	integer	—	Only items at/after this Unix timestamp
numericFilters	array	—	Raw Algolia numeric clauses, e.g. ["points<500"]
maxResults	integer	100	Cap on items returned

Provide at least one of query, author, tags, minPoints or minComments.

Example input

{
  "query": "your brand",
  "tags": ["story", "comment"],
  "sortBy": "date",
  "maxResults": 100
}

High-signal stories:

{ "query": "AI agents", "tags": ["story"], "minPoints": 100, "maxResults": 50 }

Example output (one story)

{
  "id": "40001234",
  "type": "story",
  "title": "Show HN: I built an open-source alternative to X",
  "url": "https://example.com/project",
  "author": "pg",
  "points": 342,
  "numComments": 118,
  "storyText": null,
  "commentText": null,
  "parentId": null,
  "storyId": null,
  "tags": ["story", "show_hn", "author_pg", "story_40001234"],
  "createdAt": "2026-07-11T14:22:31.000Z",
  "createdAtTimestamp": 1783736551,
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40001234"
}

Why this actor

• Full filter surface — tags + author + point/comment thresholds + raw numeric filters + relevance/date sort, not a thin one-off.
• Both stories and comments — track a conversation, not just headlines.
• Schedulable feed — run it hourly to watch a brand, keyword, domain, or a specific user.
• Keyless & reliable — public Algolia HN API with retry/backoff.

Notes

• Data is the public Algolia Hacker News Search API — no key, no anti-bot.
• Not affiliated with or endorsed by Y Combinator or Hacker News.

Pricing

Pay per result — $1.50 per 1,000 results. No subscription or platform fees; you only pay for the results you get.

Related actors

• GitHub Search Scraper — repos, users and issues for dev research.
• Stack Exchange Scraper — Q&A across Stack Overflow and sibling sites.
• Reddit / social monitoring actors — pair for broader brand tracking.