Hacker News Search & Monitor

Search every Hacker News story and comment since 2006 - plus the live front page, newest-first monitoring, and per-author history - through the official HN API (Algolia). No login, no scraping, no rate-limit pain.

Why HN data

Hacker News is the earliest reliable signal for developer tools, startup traction, and tech sentiment. A front-page appearance moves markets for dev products. Teams monitor HN for their own launches and mentions, investors watch it for breakout tools, and researchers mine it for tech-discourse history. The official API returns structured JSON for all of it; this Actor adds agent-friendly modes, filters, and pay-per-item pricing.

Modes

• search - relevance-ranked full-text search across all of HN
• latest - newest first; the monitoring mode
• front-page - what is on the front page right now
• author - everything one user has posted or commented

What you get per item

• id, title, url, author
• points, numComments, createdAt
• storyText (self-posts) and commentText
• hnUrl - direct link to the HN discussion

Inputs

Field	Required	Description
mode	yes	One of the four modes
query	no	Full-text query for search/latest, e.g. "AI agents"
tags	no	story (default), comment, poll, show_hn, ask_hn, or empty for all
author	author mode	HN username
minPoints	no	Minimum score filter
dateFrom	no	Only items created on/after this date
maxResults	no	Default 100, max 1000

Examples

This week's Show HN launches with traction:

{ "mode": "search", "tags": "show_hn", "minPoints": 10, "dateFrom": "2026-10-12" }

Everything about a topic, newest first:

{ "mode": "latest", "query": "apify", "maxResults": 200 }

FAQ

Is this the official API? Yes - the HN Algolia API that Hacker News itself documents.

Do I need an account? No.

How far back does it go? All of HN history, back to 2006.

What does it cost? Pay-per-event: $2 per 1,000 items.

Can I monitor mentions continuously? Yes - schedule latest mode runs with dateFrom for incremental pulls; dedupe on id.

What is the rate limit? The API is generous; the Actor pages politely within it.

Pipeline patterns

Launch monitoring. After shipping, run latest with your product name every few hours. HN discussion often starts within minutes of a mention, and early comments are where positioning feedback lives.

Competitor and keyword watch. A scheduled latest query on competitor names or category terms with dateFrom rolling forward gives you a complete mention log; dedupe on id.

Founder/VC watching. author mode on key accounts archives everything they post and comment - the closest thing to a public-thinking feed.

Trend research. search with minPoints over a date range surfaces the discussions the community actually cared about, ranked by relevance - strong grounding for market maps and content research.

Field notes

points and numComments are snapshots at fetch time; re-fetch popular items to track momentum. storyText is set for self-posts (Ask HN, Show HN text), commentText for comments - filter on type to separate them. hnUrl always resolves to the canonical discussion page. The Algolia index lags live HN by under a minute in practice.

More FAQ

Why is front-page capped at one page? HN's front page is inherently ~30 items; for anything deeper use latest or search.

Can I get a full comment tree? This Actor returns flat item rows with IDs; for tree reconstruction, each item's ID joins to news.ycombinator.com/item?id=.

Job posts? Yes - jobs are items too; use search with empty tags to include them.

Why did a known story not appear in search? Very new items can lag the index by a minute; extremely old deleted items are gone for good.

Dead/flagged content? The API still returns flagged stories, which is useful for moderation research.

Cost for big pulls? $2 per 1,000 items - a full year of a niche topic is typically a few thousand items, so cents.

More official-API Actors from SlanLabs

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