Product Hunt Daily Scraper — Pay Per Result

Scrape Product Hunt daily launch leaderboards — product name, tagline, votes, rank, topics, and links.

Two data paths:

1. Public SSR (no token) — fetches the daily leaderboard page and parses embedded Apollo SSR JSON (~20 featured launches per day).
2. Official API v2 (optional token) — GraphQL with pagination for full daily archives.

Store search keywords: Product Hunt scraper · PH daily launches · product hunt leaderboard · startup launches · PH API

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Why this Actor

Need	What you get
Daily launch monitoring	Ranked products with votes, comments, topics
Historical days	dates array or daysBack for batch pulls
Failures that shouldn’t bill	Empty days / HTTP errors → not charged
Reliability wedge	HTTP-only (no browser); backoff + clear rate-limit docs

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Input

{
  "dates": ["2025-08-01"],
  "maxItems": 100,
  "topics": ["artificial-intelligence"],
  "category": "all",
  "requestDelayMs": 500
}

For full pagination beyond ~20 launches/day, add a free developer token:

{
  "dates": ["2025-08-01"],
  "apiToken": "YOUR_PH_TOKEN",
  "maxItems": 500
}

Register at Product Hunt API v2 docs. You can also set PH_API_TOKEN as an environment variable.

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Endpoints used

Mode	Endpoint	Auth
SSR (default)	GET https://www.producthunt.com/leaderboard/daily/{year}/{month}/{day}/{category}	None (public page HTML)
API (optional)	POST https://api.producthunt.com/v2/api/graphql	Bearer token (apiToken or PH_API_TOKEN)

The SSR path reads ApolloSSRDataTransport JSON embedded in the public leaderboard HTML (same data the website renders). The site’s internal /frontend/graphql endpoint is not used — it rejects unauthenticated client calls.

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Output fields

Field	Description
postId	Product Hunt post ID
name	Product / launch name
slug	Post slug
tagline	One-line description
productSlug	Parent product slug when available
launchDate	Leaderboard date (YYYY-MM-DD)
dailyRank	Daily leaderboard rank
weeklyRank	Weekly rank when exposed
monthlyRank	Monthly rank when exposed
votesCount	Upvote count (latestScore in SSR, votesCount in API)
launchDayScore	Launch-day score (SSR only)
commentsCount	Comment count
websiteUrl	Product website (API mode)
productHuntUrl	Canonical Product Hunt post URL
thumbnailUrl	Thumbnail image URL
featuredAt	Feature timestamp
createdAt	Post creation timestamp
topics	Array of { id, name, slug }
makers	Array of { id, name, username } when present
source	ssr or api
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp of this run

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Pricing

Pay-per-event for each delivered launch row (apify-default-dataset-item).

• Empty result days and HTTP failures → not charged

~$0.50 / 1,000 launches on the Store pricing tab (HTTP-only; empty pages free).

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Limitations (honest)

• Terms of Service: Product Hunt’s Terms apply. This Actor reads public leaderboard pages and/or the official documented API. Respect rate limits and do not hammer the site.
• SSR cap: Without apiToken, each day returns roughly the first ~20 featured launches embedded in the page (ads are skipped). Logs warn when more pages exist.
• Rate limits: Cloudflare and Product Hunt may return 403/429 under heavy traffic — use requestDelayMs (default 500 ms) and optional Apify Proxy.
• Official API: ~450 requests / 15 min and query complexity limits apply per API docs. Token required for API mode.
• Topic filter: topics filters client-side after fetch (both SSR and API modes).
• Historical depth: Very old dates may 404 on leaderboard URLs; API mode may work better for deep history.

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Issues / feature requests: use the Actor Issues tab.

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