Hacker News Scraper — Stories, Comments & Job Posts

Export Hacker News stories, comments, and job listings using the official HN Firebase API — no API key, no scraping, 100% reliable and always up to date.

Why use this Actor?

• ✅ Uses official HN Firebase API — zero scraping, never breaks
• 🚀 No authentication required — works out of the box
• 💬 Full comment threads — fetch nested comments with configurable depth
• 🎯 Filter by score, age, and category
• 📊 Clean structured JSON — ready for dashboards, AI analysis, or databases

Use Cases

• Market research — what tech topics are trending right now?
• AI training data — high-quality tech discussions for LLM fine-tuning
• Job market monitoring — "Who is Hiring?" threads for recruitment
• Content curation — automate HN digests to Slack, email, or Notion
• Trend detection — track which technologies are gaining momentum

Input

{
  "category": "top",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "includeComments": false,
  "maxCommentDepth": 2,
  "maxCommentsPerStory": 20,
  "minScore": 50,
  "sinceHours": 24
}

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
category	string	"top"	top, new, best, ask, show, job
maxItems	number	100	Maximum number of stories to fetch
includeComments	boolean	false	Fetch full comment threads
maxCommentDepth	number	2	How many reply levels to fetch
maxCommentsPerStory	number	20	Max comments per story
minScore	number	0	Skip stories below this score
sinceHours	number	0	Only fetch stories from the last N hours (0 = all)

Output

{
  "id": 39862510,
  "title": "Show HN: I built a tool that converts any website to Markdown",
  "url": "https://example.com/tool",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39862510",
  "score": 342,
  "by": "username",
  "time": "2025-01-01T12:00:00.000Z",
  "commentCount": 87,
  "type": "story",
  "category": "top",
  "comments": [
    {
      "id": 39862511,
      "by": "commenter",
      "text": "Really cool! How does it handle JavaScript-rendered sites?",
      "time": "2025-01-01T12:05:00.000Z",
      "depth": 0
    }
  ]
}

Category Reference

Category	Description
top	Current top stories (default HN front page)
new	Newest submitted stories
best	All-time best stories
ask	Ask HN posts
show	Show HN posts
job	Job listings from YC-backed companies

Integration Examples

Slack Daily Digest

import json, requests

# Download Actor output
stories = [json.loads(line) for line in open("output.jsonl")]
top5 = sorted(stories, key=lambda x: x["score"], reverse=True)[:5]

blocks = [{"type": "section", "text": {"type": "mrkdwn",
    "text": f"*<{s['url']}|{s['title']}>*\n{s['score']} pts · {s['commentCount']} comments"}}
    for s in top5]

requests.post(SLACK_WEBHOOK, json={"blocks": blocks})

AI Trend Analysis

# Feed HN titles to an LLM for trend summarization
titles = [s["title"] for s in stories if s["score"] > 100]
prompt = f"Summarize the key tech trends from these Hacker News titles:\n" + "\n".join(titles)
# → Send to Claude, GPT-4, etc.

FAQ

Does this use official APIs? Yes. The HN Firebase API (hacker-news.firebaseio.com) is officially maintained by Y Combinator and free to use.

How current is the data? Real-time. The API returns live data, updated as stories are voted and commented on.

Can I fetch "Who is Hiring?" threads? Yes — use category: "job" for job listings. For monthly "Who is Hiring?" megathreads, search for the thread ID on HN and use articleUrls.