Hacker News Lead Finder — Buyer-Intent Posts

This Hacker News scraper turns HN into a lead list: it searches Hacker News for buyer-intent posts and comments — people asking "looking for", "alternative to", "recommendations for" — plus Show HN founders, and returns each as a clean lead with the HN user, the post/comment, a direct link to the thread, and the product/company URL when there is one.

It's a Hacker News lead finder built for founders, marketers, agencies, and sales teams who want to catch demand and new products on HN the moment they appear — without building a scraper or babysitting feeds.

Why this instead of a generic Hacker News scraper?

Most HN scrapers hand you everything and leave you to dig for the handful of threads that actually matter. This one is opinionated: it filters to purchase intent first, so the output is a short, high-signal list. Every lead is a person who just raised their hand — "Ask HN: best CRM for a small team?", "Show HN: my new analytics tool" — so you decide whether to reply in-thread, reach out, or add them to a research list. You can also swap in your own queries for niche-specific buying language.

It runs entirely on Hacker News's public, key-less search API (the HN Algolia API), so there's no login, no API key, and no proxy — and no anti-bot to fight.

What it does

• Searches Hacker News for your queries (or a built-in set of buyer-intent phrases) across stories, Ask HN, Show HN, comments, or stories + comments via the searchIn setting.
• Sorts newest-first and filters to the last N days (daysBack) so you get fresh intent, not a stale dump.
• De-duplicates results, caps the run at maxLeads, and returns each lead with the HN author, title, text, points, HN permalink, and the external/company URL when the item carries one.

Who it's for

• B2B founders & marketers spotting people who need exactly what you sell.
• Agencies sourcing prospects in client niches (developer tools, SaaS, infra, fintech).
• Sales teams building warm, intent-based lists from real HN questions.
• Recruiters & talent teams mining HN — point custom queries at hiring language (e.g. "who is hiring", "is hiring", "hiring remote") across stories/comments to surface companies actively hiring.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
queries	array	built-in intent phrases	Phrases/keywords to search on HN; empty = the built-in buyer-intent set ("looking for", "alternative to", "recommendations for", …).
searchIn	string	story	Which HN content to search: story (incl. Ask/Show/Launch HN), ask_hn, show_hn, (story,comment), or comment.
daysBack	integer	30	Only include items from the last N days (0 = no limit).
maxLeads	integer	100	Stop after this many leads (caps your spend).
hitsPerQuery	integer	30	Results pulled per query (1–1000).
maxConcurrency	integer	4	Parallel queries (1–20).

Example input

{
  "queries": ["looking for", "alternative to", "any recommendations for"],
  "searchIn": "story",
  "daysBack": 14,
  "maxLeads": 50
}

How to run

1. Click Try for free (or open the actor in your Apify Console).
2. Leave queries empty to use the built-in buyer-intent phrases, or enter your own keywords.
3. Pick searchIn — story gives the cleanest leads (Ask HN / Show HN included); choose ask_hn or show_hn to target one, or (story,comment) to widen the net.
4. Set daysBack for freshness and maxLeads to cap your spend.
5. Click Start. When the run finishes, open the Dataset tab and export to JSON/CSV/Excel, or pull it via the API (below).

Run it on a schedule (Apify Schedules) for a fresh HN intent list every morning, or call it from Make / Zapier / n8n via the Apify integrations.

Output

Each item in the dataset:

{
  "type": "lead",
  "source": "hackernews",
  "author": "alice",
  "matchedQuery": "looking for",
  "title": "Ask HN: best CRM for a small team?",
  "text": "Anyone got a good CRM rec? We're 8 people…",
  "points": 14,
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=111",
  "website": "https://acme.example.com",
  "createdAt": "2026-06-03T09:36:48.000Z"
}

Field notes:

• author is the HN username — engage them in-thread via hnUrl.
• matchedQuery is the query that surfaced this item (a built-in phrase, or one of your own queries).
• website is the item's submitted URL — the product/company site for Show HN and most story leads. It's null for plain comments and for self-text posts (we never fabricate it).
• points is HN karma when the API exposes it, otherwise null.
• hnUrl is the canonical news.ycombinator.com/item?id=… permalink to the thread.

Export & API

# Last run's dataset items as JSON
curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/<DATASET_ID>/items?format=json&token=<APIFY_TOKEN>"

Or use the run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint to run-and-wait in a single call — handy for embedding the actor in your own backend.

Limitations

• Intent is matched by your search queries against HN's index — broaden queries to widen the net, or narrow them to sharpen it.
• Comments and self-text posts have no website — only items with a submitted URL (stories / Show HN) carry one.
• Algolia coverage. The HN Algolia API returns the most relevant/recent matches per query, not a complete historical export; pull more hitsPerQuery or run on a schedule for broader reach.
• Rate limits. The API is free and key-less; the actor retries on 429/5xx with backoff and keeps concurrency modest, but very large query sets are paced accordingly.
• No dedicated "Who is hiring?" tag. HN's API has no jobs/hiring tag exposed here — reach hiring threads via custom queries (e.g. "who is hiring") against stories/comments.

Compliance

This actor uses Hacker News's public search API only — it does not log in, post, vote, or message. You are responsible for using the output in line with Hacker News's guidelines and any outreach or marketing rules that apply to you.

FAQ

Do I need a Hacker News account, API key, or proxy? No — it reads the public HN Algolia search API directly, with no login and no proxy.

How is it priced and how do I control cost? Apify Pay-Per-Event — you're charged per lead returned. Set maxLeads to cap spend; duplicate and non-matching items are never charged.

Can I use my own keywords? Yes — fill queries with any phrases or keywords. Leave it empty and the built-in buyer-intent set ("looking for", "alternative to", "recommendations for", …) is used instead, and the matching phrase is recorded in each lead's matchedQuery.

How do I find founders and new products? Set searchIn to show_hn (or keep story, which includes Show HN). For Show HN and most stories the website field is the submitted product/company URL — so you often get a company website for free.

Can I mine Ask HN threads? Yes — set searchIn to ask_hn to focus on questions, or keep story (which includes Ask HN) to capture them alongside other submissions. Ask HN is where buyer-intent questions like "best tool for…" tend to live.

Can recruiters use it for hiring signals? Yes — point queries at hiring language across story or (story,comment) to surface companies actively hiring on Hacker News. There's no built-in jobs tag, so hiring coverage is exactly as broad as the queries you supply.

How fresh is the data? Each run hits the live API and sorts newest-first; use daysBack to bound recency and a schedule to catch intent as it's posted.

Why is website sometimes null? Because that item has no submitted URL — it's a comment or a self-text post. We return null rather than inventing a site.

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Want this turned into outreach?

This actor finds the intent. If you'd like the whole loop — intent discovery, contact enrichment, AI-personalised outreach, and reply handling — done for you, that's what we build at SignalEngine. This actor is a taste of the engine behind it.