Hacker News Scraper — Top Stories, Comments, Jobs & More

⚡ Zero authentication required — extracts public Hacker News data via the official Firebase API. No proxies, no cookies, no rate limits.

Quick Start

1. Pick a mode: Top, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN, Jobs, or a specific Item.
2. Set your limit and optional startIndex for pagination.
3. Click Start and get structured JSON in seconds.

Example: Get the top 10 front-page stories

{
  "mode": "top",
  "limit": 10
}

Example: Get the 5 newest stories

{
  "mode": "new",
  "limit": 5
}

Example: Ask HN posts (page 2)

{
  "mode": "ask",
  "limit": 20,
  "startIndex": 20
}

Example: Fetch a specific item with its comments

{
  "mode": "item",
  "itemId": 8863
}

Features

• 7 scraping modes: Top Stories, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN, Jobs, Individual Items
• No auth needed — all data is public via HN's official Firebase API
• No proxy required — direct API access, fast and reliable
• Pagination — use startIndex to fetch pages of results
• Parallel fetching — items are fetched concurrently in batched chunks
• Structured JSON — clean, consistent output with all key fields
• Item mode — fetch any HN item by ID, including comments

Output Fields

Field	Type	Description
id	integer	HN item ID
type	string	Item type: story, comment, job, poll, pollopt
by	string	Username of the author
title	string	Story title (stories only)
url	string	Story URL (stories only)
text	string	Body text (Ask HN, comments)
score	integer	Upvote count
descendants	integer	Number of comments
time	integer	Unix timestamp of submission
parent	integer	Parent item ID (comments only)
kids	array	IDs of child comments
deleted	boolean	Whether the item was deleted
dead	boolean	Whether the item is dead/flagged

How It Works

This Actor uses Hacker News's official Firebase API:

1. List modes (top/new/best/ask/show/job): Fetches the list of story IDs from the API, then fetches each item in parallel batches of 50.
2. Item mode: Fetches a single item by its numeric ID — useful for getting comments or details on a specific story.

Use Cases

• Trend monitoring — Track the top stories and rising topics on HN
• Competitive research — Monitor Show HN launches and startup discussions
• Job market analysis — Scrape job postings from HN's "Who is Hiring" threads
• Content curation — Find popular articles for newsletters or social media
• Academic research — Study online community dynamics and content voting patterns
• Comment analysis — Extract comment threads for sentiment or topic analysis

Why This Scraper?

Hacker News is one of the most influential tech communities with millions of monthly readers. The official Firebase API is fast and free, but scraping it manually requires pagination logic and concurrent fetching. This scraper:

• Uses the fast public API — no browser or HTML parsing needed
• No API key required — the Firebase API is completely open
• Clean defaults — click "Start" with the default inputs and get real results
• All 7 modes in one Actor — no need to switch between different scrapers
• Built-in pagination — fetch hundreds of items with simple startIndex controls

Pricing

This Actor uses Pay-Per-Event pricing. You only pay for results returned, not for pagination or API overhead.

About the Publisher

Built by Thrifty Kiwi, an Apify Creator publishing high-quality, zero-hassle data extraction tools.