Product Hunt Daily Launches Scraper — Free

Today's (and yesterday's, and last week's) Product Hunt launches as a feed. Two modes: free RSS (zero-auth, name + tagline + thumbnail) and richer GraphQL (votes, comments, topics, makers — needs a free PH dev token).

✨ Why this Actor

• Free + zero-auth by default — RSS mode requires no API key, no login
• Full GraphQL upgrade path — if you want votes / topics / makers, plug in a free Product Hunt developer token
• Historical backfill — GraphQL mode lets you sweep any date range, not just today
• Cloudflare-bypass-free — Product Hunt fronts their HTML with Cloudflare (which blocks plain scrapers); the RSS feed and GraphQL endpoint are open

🚀 Quick start

Latest launches via RSS (no token needed):

{
  "source": "rss",
  "maxPerDay": 50
}

Last week's launches with full schema (needs PH dev token):

{
  "source": "graphql",
  "developerToken": "YOUR_PH_TOKEN",
  "date": "2026-06-01",
  "daysBack": 7,
  "maxPerDay": 100
}

Auto-detect: use GraphQL if token supplied, else RSS:

{
  "source": "auto",
  "developerToken": "YOUR_PH_TOKEN"
}

📦 Output schema

Field	Type	Notes
ph_id, slug	str	Stable Product Hunt id + URL slug
name	str	Product name
tagline	str	(GraphQL only) one-line pitch
description	str	Plain-text body
url	str	https://www.producthunt.com/posts/<slug>
website	str	(GraphQL only) the product's own URL
thumbnail_url	str	Logo / preview image
votes	int	(GraphQL only) upvote count
comments	int	(GraphQL only) comment count
topics	array	(GraphQL only) topic / tag names
makers	array<{username, name}>	(GraphQL only) maker handles
featured_at, created_at	iso8601
leaderboard_date	YYYY-MM-DD	The leaderboard date this row appears on
source	str	rss or graphql

🎯 Use cases

• Launch-day newsletter — daily digest of new PH launches in your niche
• Auto-tweet trending products — schedule daily, post top 5 to Twitter
• Competitive intelligence — track competitor launches + their vote velocity
• Year-in-review content — pull every launch from a year, write the "Best of 2026" roundup
• Investor signal — products hitting #1 on launch day = potential breakout
• Outreach lists — makers array gives you direct DM targets (founder personas)
• Trend analysis — sweep monthly, see which topics keep showing up in top 10

⚙️ Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Notes
source	str	auto	auto / rss / graphql. auto = graphql if token supplied, else rss
developerToken	str (secret)	—	Free at producthunt.com/v2/oauth/applications
date	YYYY-MM-DD	yesterday UTC	(GraphQL only) anchor date
daysBack	int	1	(GraphQL only) number of days back from anchor
maxPerDay	int	100	Per-day cap

🛠️ How it works

RSS path (default, free):

1. Hit https://www.producthunt.com/feed
2. Parse Atom entries
3. Normalise to the schema (thinner fields — no votes/topics/makers)

GraphQL path (richer, needs token):

1. Sign up at producthunt.com/v2/oauth/applications, create an app, copy your developer token (free, takes 30 seconds)
2. Pass it as developerToken (stored encrypted by Apify as a secret)
3. Actor uses PH's official GraphQL API at api.producthunt.com/v2/api/graphql

⚠️ Tips & caveats

• Today's leaderboard is still moving — PH's daily ranking resets at midnight PT and votes pour in for the next 24 hours. The default anchor (yesterday UTC) gives you stable data.
• RSS schema is thin — no vote counts, no makers, no topics. Get a free dev token for the full schema.
• Cloudflare blocks plain HTTP scrapers — that's why this Actor uses RSS / GraphQL, not HTML parsing. If PH changes either, the Actor will be updated.

🔗 Related Actors

Launch + startup intelligence:

• Y Combinator Companies — many PH launches are YC companies
• Hacker News "Who is Hiring?" — products that hit PH often appear on HN within days
• Reddit Subreddit + Search — search r/SaaS, r/Entrepreneur for PH-launch discussion
• GitHub Trending — open-source PH launches usually go trending the same week

💬 Support

Need a custom PH scraper (collections, makers' profiles, historical analytics)? Email caspersmartwater@gmail.com.

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