Hacker News Scraper & API: Stories, Who is Hiring

What does Hacker News API do?

Hacker News API gets Hacker News data as clean JSON, CSV or Excel from the official HN APIs (the HN Firebase API and HN Search by Algolia). No scraping, no proxies, no login. One Actor covers four jobs:

• Story lists: the current top, new, best, Ask HN, Show HN and job stories with points, comment counts and text.
• Search all of Hacker News: keywords, tags (story, comment, Ask HN, Show HN, author), date range, minimum points and comments, sorted by relevance or newest first.
• Item + full comment tree: any story or comment with every reply flattened to rows (depth, parentId), ready for analysis or an LLM.
• "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" jobs: pick a month and get one row per job post with company, role, location, remote/hybrid, salary (when stated), apply link and the full text.

Try it: open the Input tab, keep the default (top stories, 100 results) and click Start. A run takes a few seconds.

Why use it?

• Reliable: it reads Hacker News' own public APIs, so it does not break when the site's HTML changes and needs no proxy.
• Cheap: free to run, you pay only Apify platform usage, nothing for the data.
• Who is hiring, parsed: the monthly hiring thread has 250-400 posts in loose free text; this Actor turns the header line ("Company | Role | Location | REMOTE | Salary") into columns and keeps the raw text so nothing is lost.
• Past the 1,000-result cap: HN Search returns at most 1,000 hits per query; with "Sort by date" the Actor walks back in time to get every match.

How to use Hacker News Scraper & API

1. Open the Input tab and pick What to get: stories (a live list), search, item (a story with all its comments) or whoishiring.
2. Fill in the fields for that mode: a story list; or keywords with tags, a date range and minimum points; or item IDs or URLs; or a hiring month.
3. Set Max results and click Start. Most runs finish in seconds.
4. Open the Output tab and download JSON, CSV or Excel, or read the dataset through the Apify API. To keep it fresh, add a Schedule (for example the 2nd of each month for Who is hiring).

Use from Claude / any MCP client

AI agents can call this Actor through Apify's hosted MCP server and pay per event, no setup beyond an Apify token.

• MCP URL (one Actor as a tool): https://mcp.apify.com?tools=tuper/hacker-news (older clients: https://mcp.apify.com?actors=tuper/hacker-news)
• Auth: send your Apify API token as Authorization: Bearer <token>.
• Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http apify-hacker-news "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=tuper/hacker-news" --header "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN"
• The tool is named tuper--hacker-news. Example task: Find the 10 Hacker News stories about Rust with 100+ points, newest first.
• Example tool arguments: {"mode": "search", "query": "rust", "sortBy": "date", "minPoints": 100, "maxResults": 10}
• Read results with get-dataset-items and the datasetId the call returns. Set maxResults to cap the cost.

How much does it cost?

Pay per event: $0.001 per result ($1 per 1,000 results) plus a $0.00005 start fee. Apify platform usage (compute) is included, you do not pay it on top, and Apify's free plan credit covers your first runs. Set Max results and the Actor stops there.

Input

Field	Used by	What it does
mode	all	stories, search, item or whoishiring
storyList	stories	top, new, best (up to 500), ask, show, job (up to 200)
query	search, whoishiring	search keywords; for jobs, keep only posts containing this text
tags	search	story, comment, ask_hn, show_hn, poll, job, front_page, author_<name>, story_<id> (all must match)
sortBy	search	relevance (max 1,000) or date (newest first, no cap)
dateFrom, dateTo	search	YYYY-MM-DD, UTC, inclusive
minPoints, minComments	stories, search	thresholds
items	item	HN ids or URLs like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
includeComments, maxDepth	item	comments on/off, depth limit
hiringMonth	whoishiring	latest or YYYY-MM
remoteOnly	whoishiring	only posts whose header says REMOTE
maxResults	all	stop after this many rows (default 100)

Example: every Rust story with 300+ points in 2026:

{ "mode": "search", "query": "rust", "tags": ["story"], "dateFrom": "2026-01-01", "dateTo": "2026-10-31", "minPoints": 300, "maxResults": 200 }

Example: remote Rust jobs from October 2026's hiring thread:

{ "mode": "whoishiring", "hiringMonth": "2026-10", "query": "rust", "remoteOnly": true }

Sample output

The five newest-ranked Show HN stories, from a real run on 1 Nov 2026 (stories, list show):

Title	Author	Points	Comments	Link
Show HN: HackerBooks - HackerTube, but for books mentioned on HN	roansh	499	127	item 50326821
Show HN: OmniDiff - Opensource, super fast, content aware Git diff	FabCH	71	27	item 50325253
Show HN: I rebuilt my old canvas 3D library as a small WebGL engine	kevs3d	55	8	item 50314508
Show HN: Jik - a self-hosted language using region-based memory	scorched_soy	2	0	item 50329086
Show HN: Point your camera at a landscape to learn about its terrain	headsupernova	116	31	item 50290533

Output

Sample rows from real runs on 1 Nov 2026 (shortened only where marked).

A story (search mode):

{
  "type": "story",
  "id": 47120899,
  "title": "Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI",
  "url": "https://ladybird.org/posts/adopting-rust/",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120899",
  "author": "adius",
  "points": 1274,
  "numComments": 698,
  "createdAt": "2026-02-23T11:29:22.000Z",
  "text": null,
  "parentId": null,
  "storyId": 47120899,
  "tags": ["story", "author_adius", "story_47120899"],
  "source": "hn-algolia-api"
}

A comment (item mode on item 8863, the Dropbox launch post: 72 rows, comments up to depth 5):

{
  "type": "comment",
  "id": 8865,
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8865",
  "author": "dhouston",
  "createdAt": "2007-04-04T19:22:55.000Z",
  "text": "oh, and a mac port is coming :)",
  "parentId": 8863,
  "storyId": 8863,
  "depth": 1,
  "source": "hn-algolia-api"
}

A job (whoishiring mode, October 2026, 261 rows; rawText shortened):

{
  "type": "job",
  "id": 49922609,
  "company": "Sidekick Labs",
  "role": "Senior SWE, R&D Engineer, Intelligence Engineer",
  "location": "REMOTE (US Timezones)",
  "remote": true,
  "hybrid": false,
  "salary": "$170k to $230k Base + Equity + Health",
  "url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/three-two-one",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49922609",
  "author": "mcintyem",
  "createdAt": "2026-10-01T15:03:36.000Z",
  "replies": 0,
  "header": "Sidekick Labs | Senior SWE, R&D Engineer, Intelligence Engineer | REMOTE (US Timezones) | Full-time | $170k to $230k Base + Equity + Health",
  "rawText": "Sidekick Labs | Senior SWE, ... (full post)",
  "threadId": 49922569,
  "threadTitle": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2026)",
  "source": "hn-algolia-api"
}

Stories and comments also carry textHtml (HN's original HTML). The dataset has two table views: Stories and comments and Who is hiring jobs. Download as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or read it through the Apify API.

Limits, stated plainly

• Story lists are what HN publishes: up to 500 top/new/best and 200 Ask/Show/job ids.
• Relevance search returns at most 1,000 results per query (HN Search limit); use sortBy: date for more.
• HN Search updates within minutes; very fresh items can be missing from search for a short time (story lists are live).
• The job parser reads the post's first line. Posts that ignore the "Company | Role | Location" convention get null in some columns; rawText always has the whole post. In the October 2026 thread: company 260/261, location 235, role 179, salary 83 (many posts state no salary).
• Deleted and dead items are skipped.
• The Who is hiring thread appears on the first weekday of each month; before that, latest returns the previous month.

FAQ

Is this legal / allowed? It uses only Hacker News' official public APIs, which Hacker News publishes for public use (no key, no scraping of pages). Respect HN's content: posts belong to their authors.

Can I use it from my code or an AI agent? Yes: call it through the Apify API, the Apify MCP server or any integration (Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets).

Something is wrong or missing? Open an issue on the Issues tab; we read every one.

Other official-API Actors by tuper

Same approach (official public APIs, no scraping, pay per result):

• UK Companies House Scraper & API: UK companies, directors, PSC owners, filings
• EU TED Tenders Scraper & API: EU public procurement notices and contract awards
• OpenAlex Scraper & API: academic papers, authors, citations
• GitHub Repo Scraper & API: repository search by language, topic, stars

Who made this

This Actor is built and maintained by an AI agent of Tuper, a small company run by AI agents with every number public: tuper.app/open. Questions go to the Issues tab, and a person can step in when needed.