Hacker News Scraper

Extract stories, jobs, comments, and user activity from Hacker News using the official HN Firebase API. No login required. Pay-per-result.

Use with AI Agents (MCP)

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=santamaria-automations/ycombinator-scraper

Example prompts:

"Get the top 50 Hacker News stories right now."

"Get all job postings from user whoishiring with comments."

"Get the comments from HN thread 47601859."

What You Can Scrape

1. Story Feeds

Scrape any HN feed — the same tabs you see on the website.

storyType	HN Page	What It Returns
top	/news	Front page stories (ranked by score)
new	/newest	Most recent submissions
best	/best	Highest-scored stories of all time
ask	/ask	Ask HN discussions
show	/show	Show HN project launches
job	/jobs	YC startup job listings

{ "storyType": "top", "maxResults": 30 }

2. Thread Comments

Extract top-level comments from any HN thread by its ID. Works for any story, Ask HN discussion, or monthly "Who is Hiring?" megathread.

{ "storyIds": [47601859], "includeComments": true, "maxCommentsPerStory": 100 }

Find the thread ID in the URL: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601859

You can pass multiple thread IDs to scrape several threads at once.

3. User Activity

Scrape all submissions and comments from any HN user. Covers both /submitted and /threads pages.

{ "usernames": ["whoishiring"], "maxResults": 50 }

Tip: To get "Who is Hiring?" job postings, scrape the whoishiring user's submissions — these are the monthly hiring megathreads. Then use their thread IDs with includeComments to get the individual job posts.

Input

Field	Type	Description	Default
storyType	string	Feed to scrape: top, new, best, ask, show, job	top
storyIds	integer[]	Specific thread IDs to scrape	—
usernames	string[]	HN usernames — scrape all their submissions & comments	—
includeComments	boolean	Also extract comments for each story	false
commentDepth	integer	Reply depth: 1 = top-level, 2 = + replies, 3 = + replies to replies. Max 5.	1
maxResults	integer	Maximum stories/items to return	100
maxCommentsPerStory	integer	Maximum comments (all depths combined) per story	100
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify proxy settings	Auto

Priority: usernames > storyIds > storyType. If multiple are set, the first takes precedence.

Output

Flat table with stories and comments in the same dataset. Filter by type to separate them.

Field	Type	Description
id	integer	HN item ID
type	string	story or comment
title	string	Story title, or first line of comment (company/role for job posts)
author	string	HN username
url	string	External link (stories only)
text	string	Full text/HTML content
score	integer	Points (stories only)
num_comments	integer	Comment count (stories only)
thread_id	integer	Parent story ID (comments only)
thread_title	string	Parent story title (comments only)
hn_url	string	Direct link to item on HN
posted_at	string	ISO timestamp
scraped_at	string	ISO timestamp

Examples

Today's front page

{ "storyType": "top", "maxResults": 30 }

YC startup jobs

{ "storyType": "job", "maxResults": 50 }

"Who is Hiring?" job postings

{ "storyIds": [47601859], "includeComments": true, "maxCommentsPerStory": 500 }

Thread ID 47601859 = April 2026. Find the latest at whoishiring's submissions.

Ask HN discussions with answers

{ "storyType": "ask", "maxResults": 10, "includeComments": true, "maxCommentsPerStory": 20 }

All activity from a user

{ "usernames": ["pg"], "maxResults": 100 }

Multiple threads at once

{ "storyIds": [47601859, 47219668], "includeComments": true, "maxCommentsPerStory": 100 }

Pricing

Event	Price	Description
Actor start	$0.001	One-time fee per run
Item result	$0.50 / 1,000	Per story or comment returned

Examples:

• 30 front page stories → $0.016
• 500 "Who is Hiring" job posts → $0.251
• 10 stories + 200 comments → $0.106

No monthly fees. No minimum spend.

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. Uses the public HN Firebase API — no authentication required.

What's the difference between /jobs and "Who is Hiring"? storyType: "job" returns YC-backed startup listings from the /jobs page. "Who is Hiring?" threads are open community job posts from any company (400–1,000 per month). Use usernames: ["whoishiring"] to find the threads, then storyIds + includeComments to get the posts.

How fast is it? ~10 items/second. 50 stories + 50 comments each = ~800 items in 80 seconds.

Can I get nested/threaded comments? Yes. Set commentDepth: 2 for direct replies, 3 for replies to replies, up to 5 levels deep. All comments are in a flat table with parent_id linking them — reconstruct the tree if needed.

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