Hacker News "Who is hiring?" Scraper

Turn the monthly "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" threads on Hacker News into clean rows: company, role, location, REMOTE / ONSITE / HYBRID, salary when the post gives one, apply link, the full post and its date. Read the latest thread or up to 12 months back, and keep only the posts that match your keywords or place.

USD 0.99 per 1,000 posts. Uses the official Hacker News APIs (Algolia HN Search and the HN Firebase API).

What you get

• One row per job post (top-level comments only; replies and job seekers' posts are left out).
• Company, role, location and work mode read from the post's first line, the format most posts follow ("Company | Role | Location | REMOTE | Salary | link"). Posts written as free text keep their full text, so nothing is lost even when a field cannot be read.
• Salary as numbers when the post states one; never guessed.
• Apply link (the first link in the post) and the link to the post on Hacker News.
• Posters' usernames are never collected, and email addresses and phone numbers in posts are removed.

Input examples

The latest thread, every post:

{ "monthsBack": 1, "maxJobs": 1000 }

Remote Rust or Go jobs from the last 6 months:

{ "monthsBack": 6, "keywords": ["rust", "golang"], "remoteOnly": true }

Jobs naming Berlin or London:

{ "monthsBack": 3, "locationContains": "Berlin" }

Who uses it

• Developers looking for work: every matching HN job in one sheet instead of scrolling 400 comments.
• Recruiters and investors: which startups are hiring, every month.
• Researchers: remote share, stacks and salaries over time.

Output: one row per job

Every Actor in this family writes the same columns, so you can merge boards in one sheet or database.

Field	What it holds
jobId	The board's own job id
title, company	Job title and hiring company (as the board shows them)
companyUrl, companyLogoUrl	Company page and logo on the board, when given
location, city, region, postalCode, country	Location as shown, and its parts; country is an ISO code (FR, DE, US...)
remote, workplaceType	true/false and remote, hybrid or onsite, only when the board says so
salaryMin, salaryMax, salaryCurrency, salaryPeriod, salaryText	Salary range as numbers, ISO currency, HOUR/DAY/WEEK/MONTH/YEAR; empty when the board gives none (never guessed)
employmentType, employmentTypeText	FULL_TIME, PART_TIME, TEMPORARY, INTERN, APPRENTICE, CONTRACTOR, FREELANCE..., and the board's own wording
experienceLevel, category, skills	When the board gives them
datePosted, validThrough	ISO 8601 dates
descriptionText, descriptionHtml	Full description as plain text and as HTML
applyUrl, jobUrl	Where to apply, and the job's page on the board
sourceBoard, searchLabel, scrapedAt	Which board, which of your searches found it, when
duplicateKey	The same key for the same ad posted on several boards (or reposted): title without (m/w/d) or H/F tags, company without legal form, city, country. Use it to merge results from several of our board Actors
extra	A few fields only this board has

Contact email addresses and phone numbers inside descriptions are removed: this Actor never collects recruiters' personal contact details.

Job alerts: only new jobs, sent where you work

1. Switch on Only new jobs since the last run and schedule the Actor (daily, hourly). It remembers the jobs it has already delivered for the same searches and filters, in a key-value store on your own account (named job-boards-seen-
2. Paste a Slack or Discord webhook (or a Zapier or Make webhook, which can email you) into Send new jobs to. After each run that found new jobs you get one message with the count and up to 10 jobs with their links. Free: the message is never billed.

Apify's own integrations (Google Sheets, email, webhooks) work too.

Pricing

Pay per job saved: USD 0.99 per 1,000 jobs (USD 0.00099 a job), plus USD 0.002 per run start. No monthly rental, no charge for jobs skipped as duplicates, already seen or filtered out. Set a maximum cost per run in Apify and the Actor stops just before it, keeping everything saved so far.

Use it through the API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/usefulapi~hacker-news-who-is-hiring-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"monthsBack":1,"maxJobs":20}'

Python: ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN").actor("usefulapi/hacker-news-who-is-hiring-scraper").call(run_input={...}), then read the dataset items.

Good to know

• Polite by design: one request at a time per site with a pause between requests, and the site's robots.txt is followed. Runs read public job pages only: no login, no candidate profiles or CVs.
• What a run summary tells you: the OUTPUT record has jobs saved per search, jobs skipped (duplicates, seen before, too old) and why a run stopped early, if it did.
• Is it legal? The Actor reads job ads that the board publishes openly, the same pages a job seeker sees. You are responsible for how you use the data (for example, the board's terms and data protection rules in your country).
• Found a problem? Open an issue on the Issues tab: we answer quickly.