Hacker News Scraper: Front Page, Search & Who's Hiring Jobs

What does Hacker News Scraper do?

Hacker News Scraper collects data from Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) in three ways:

1. Live lists with rank: the front page (Top), New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN and YC startup Jobs
2. Full-history search: find every story about a keyword since 2007, filtered by points, comments and date
3. "Who is hiring?" jobs: the monthly Ask HN: Who is hiring? threads turned into structured job posts, with company, roles, locations, remote or on-site, salary, visa mentions, links and the full description

It uses the official Hacker News API and the Algolia HN Search API, so it's fast, reliable and doesn't need proxies.

Why scrape Hacker News?

• Tech trend and brand monitoring: see when your product, competitors or a technology hit the front page, and how many points and comments they get.
• Content and newsletter curation: get the best stories of the day or week automatically.
• Recruiting and job search: export hundreds of startup job posts per month, filtered by skill, city, remote or visa.
• Startup and sales research: find Show HN and Launch HN launches, and companies that are hiring.
• Research and AI datasets: build datasets of headlines, links and engagement over time.

How to use it

1. Pick one or more lists (for example Top), and/or enter search queries, and/or turn on Who is hiring? job posts.
2. Optionally set minimum points or comments, a date range, job keywords or remote-only.
3. Click Start and download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or use the API. Schedule it to run daily.

Input examples

Today's front page:

{ "lists": ["top"], "maxItemsPerSource": 30 }

Every popular story about Postgres in 2026:

{ "searchQueries": ["postgres"], "minPoints": 100, "dateFrom": "2026-01-01" }

Remote Python jobs from the last three hiring threads:

{ "whoIsHiring": true, "hiringMonths": 3, "jobKeywords": ["python"], "remoteOnly": true }

Output examples

Story:

{
  "type": "story",
  "storyId": 45512345,
  "title": "Show HN: An open-source tool for ...",
  "url": "https://example.com/project",
  "domain": "example.com",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45512345",
  "points": 412,
  "commentCount": 187,
  "postedAt": "2026-10-07T14:03:11Z",
  "storyType": "show_hn",
  "list": "top",
  "rank": 3
}

Job post from Who is hiring?:

{
  "type": "job",
  "company": "Acme Corp",
  "roles": ["Senior Backend Engineer"],
  "locations": ["Toronto, ON or REMOTE (Canada)"],
  "workplace": "remote",
  "remote": true,
  "salary": "$150k-$190k",
  "mentionsVisa": true,
  "links": ["https://acme.com/jobs"],
  "description": "Acme Corp | Senior Backend Engineer | ...",
  "postedAt": "2026-10-01T15:12:40Z",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45400001",
  "threadTitle": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2026)"
}

The dataset has two ready-made views: Stories and Who's hiring jobs. Job fields come from the post's first line, as HN posters write it (Company | Role | Location | ...), so a few posts may have partial fields. The full description is always included.

How much does it cost?

Event	Price
Run start	$0.01
Story	$0.005 ($5 per 1,000 stories)
Job post	$0.02 ($20 per 1,000 job posts)

For example, the top 30 front-page stories every day for a month cost about $4.80, and a full monthly "Who is hiring?" thread (about 300 job posts) costs about $6. You can cap any run with Apify's maximum cost per run setting.

FAQ

Does it collect usernames or comments? No. It collects stories and job posts only, without usernames or comment threads.

How far back can search go? To the beginning of Hacker News in 2007.

Do I need an API key? No.

Is it legal? It uses Hacker News' official public API and the Algolia HN Search API. You're responsible for using the data lawfully.

Something isn't working? Open an issue on the Issues tab with your run link, and it'll usually be fixed within a few days.