# Hacker News Search & Who-Is-Hiring Extractor (`snappytools/hackernews-algolia-scraper`) Actor

This Actor queries the free, public Hacker News Algolia search API (hn.algolia.com/api/v1) and turns results into clean, consistently structured dataset records. It supports three modes: stories, comments, and job posts from the most recent monthly "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" thread.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/snappytools/hackernews-algolia-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Snappy](https://apify.com/snappytools) (community)
- **Categories:** Jobs, News, SEO tools
- **Security:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$3.10 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Hacker News Search and Who-is-Hiring Extractor – Hacker News scraper and API export

Give it a keyword, a date range or a points threshold, and get back Hacker News stories, comments or job posts as clean rows. It reads the free, public Hacker News Algolia search API, so there is no login and nothing to set up.

You get one row per story, comment or job post. Each row has the title, author, points, comment count, the Hacker News link, the external link and ISO timestamps. In **hiring** mode it reads the most recent monthly "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" thread and returns one row per job post.

Run it on a schedule from the **Schedules** tab to keep an eye on a topic over time.

### Why this one

- **Three modes in one tool.** Pull stories, comments or Who-is-hiring job posts by changing a single setting.
- **Filters that matter.** Narrow by keywords, a UTC date range and a minimum points count for stories.
- **Consistent fields.** Every row has the same fields, and missing values are `null`, so your spreadsheet or code does not break.
- **Stable links.** Each row carries the item's `hnUrl` on news.ycombinator.com and the `externalUrl` of the linked page.
- **No login.** It only uses public Hacker News data.
- **Cheap and fair.** $3.10 per 1,000 results, and runs with no results cost nothing.

### Quick start

```json
{
  "mode": "story",
  "query": "llm",
  "minPoints": 0,
  "maxItems": 5
}
```

This returns up to 5 recent stories that match "llm", with title, author, points, comment count and links. In a test run on 28 Oct 2026 it returned 5 results.

### What you can use it for

| Who | What for |
|---|---|
| Recruiters and job seekers | Watch Who is hiring posts for a stack, remote roles or visa sponsorship |
| Product marketers and founders | Track mentions of your brand, competitors or category keywords |
| Analysts and investors | Measure tech-trend momentum through points and discussion volume |
| Developer relations teams | Collect community feedback threads for reports |
| Researchers | Build datasets of technology discussions with reliable timestamps |

### How to use it

1. Click **Try for free**.
2. Pick a **Mode**: `story`, `comment` or `hiring`.
3. Enter a **Keyword query**, for example `llm`. In hiring mode it filters job posts, for example `remote rust`. Leave it empty for everything.
4. Optionally set **Created after (YYYY-MM-DD)** and **Created before (YYYY-MM-DD)** to limit the date range. These are ignored in hiring mode.
5. For stories, set **Minimum points** to skip low-scoring posts, for example `100`.
6. Set **Maximum results** (1 to 1,000).
7. Click **Start**.

To keep a topic up to date, schedule the run and compare new rows against the last export.

### What data you get

Each row is one story, comment or job post. These fields come from the sample output for story mode.

| Field | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| `id` | Item ID | `50271343` |
| `type` | Kind of item | `story` |
| `url` | Link to the item on Hacker News | `https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271343` |
| `hnUrl` | Hacker News link | `https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271343` |
| `externalUrl` | Page the story links to | `https://borisivanov.com/notes/local-llm-compile-bench/` |
| `title` | Story title | `Billion-query-per-second lookup tables in C++` |
| `author` | Public HN username | `signa11` |
| `points` | Points the story has | `5` |
| `numComments` | Number of comments | `0` |
| `storyId` | ID of the parent story | `50271088` |
| `createdAt` | When it was posted (UTC) | `2026-10-28T09:43:44.000Z` |
| `scrapedAt` | When it was collected (UTC) | `2026-10-28T10:29:05.851Z` |
| `text` | Body text, or `null` | `null` |

In **hiring** mode, rows also include `threadId`, `company`, `headline`, `location`, `remote` and `visa`.

### Pricing

| Event | Price |
|---|---|
| Result (each row written to the dataset) | $0.0031 |

There is no start fee. Runs with no results cost nothing.

| Run | Cost |
|---|---|
| 100 results | $0.31 |
| 1,000 results | $3.10 |
| 10,000 results | $31.00 |

### Good to know

- **Result cap.** Each run returns at most 1,000 results.
- **Deep history.** Algolia limits deep paging to roughly 1,000 hits per query, so use narrow date ranges for big historical pulls.
- **Data source.** The official public Hacker News Algolia API (hn.algolia.com/api/v1). Only public posts are collected.
- **Hiring fields are best guesses.** `company`, `location`, `remote` and `visa` are read from the usual "Company | Role | Location" first line and can be `null` when a poster does it differently.
- **Filters by mode.** Date filters are ignored in hiring mode, and **Minimum points** applies to stories only.
- **Not affiliated.** This tool isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Hacker News, Y Combinator or Algolia.

### Getting the data out

Download results as Excel, CSV or JSON from the Output tab. Send them to Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make or webhooks from the **Integrations** tab. Every run is available through the Apify API. Schedule runs from **Schedules**.

### Questions or problems

Open an issue on the **Issues** tab and include the run link. I reply within one business day.

### Related tools

- [Public RSS Feed Monitor](https://apify.com/snappytools/rss-feed-monitor): watch RSS feeds for new items
- [Sitemap News Article Extractor](https://apify.com/snappytools/smart-sitemap-article-extractor): pull news articles from sitemaps
- [Workday Career Site Jobs Scraper](https://apify.com/snappytools/workday-jobs-monitor): collect jobs from Workday career sites

# Actor input Schema

## `mode` (type: `string`):

What to extract: 'story' for stories, 'comment' for comments, or 'hiring' for job posts from the latest Who is hiring thread.

## `query` (type: `string`):

Full-text keywords to search for. In hiring mode it filters job posts (e.g. 'remote rust'). Leave empty for all.

## `dateFrom` (type: `string`):

Only include items created on or after this UTC date, format YYYY-MM-DD. Ignored in hiring mode.

## `dateTo` (type: `string`):

Only include items created before the end of this UTC date, format YYYY-MM-DD. Ignored in hiring mode.

## `minPoints` (type: `integer`):

Only include stories with at least this many points. Applies to story mode only.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of records to push to the dataset (1 to 1000).

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "mode": "story",
  "query": "llm",
  "minPoints": 0,
  "maxItems": 20
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "mode": "story",
    "query": "llm",
    "maxItems": 20
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("snappytools/hackernews-algolia-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "mode": "story",
    "query": "llm",
    "maxItems": 20,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("snappytools/hackernews-algolia-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "mode": "story",
  "query": "llm",
  "maxItems": 20
}' |
apify call snappytools/hackernews-algolia-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,snappytools/hackernews-algolia-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/Xm67F9Ju2kuRvg2Of/builds/OnLhwf5Yes2CaKhEz/openapi.json