Hacker News Scraper

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Fast and reliable scraper for Hacker News using the official Firebase API. No browser needed = cheap & fast.

Features

• Lightning fast - API-based, no browser overhead
• Multiple story types - Top, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN, Jobs
• Score filtering - Filter by minimum points
• Comments support - Optionally fetch top comments
• Author info - Get karma and profile data
• Cost effective - Minimal compute usage

Output Example

{
"id":12345678,
"title":"Show HN: I built a tool to visualize code complexity",
"url":"https://example.com/my-tool",
"score":342,
"by":"techfounder",
"time":1705312800,
"timeISO":"2026-01-15T10:00:00.000Z",
"descendants":156,
"type":"story",
"hnUrl":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345678",
"storyType":"top",
"scrapedAt":"2026-01-16T12:00:00.000Z"
}

With Comments

{
"id":12345678,
"title":"Show HN: I built a tool to visualize code complexity",
"score":342,
"comments":[
{
"id":12345679,
"by":"commenter1",
"text":"This is amazing! I've been looking for something like this...",
"time":1705313400,
"timeISO":"2026-01-15T10:10:00.000Z"
}
],
"commentCount":10
}

Input Parameters

Story Types

Use Cases

• Tech News Monitoring - Track trending tech stories
• Startup Research - Find Show HN launches
• Job Market Analysis - Monitor HN job postings
• Sentiment Analysis - Analyze comments on tech topics
• Content Curation - Build tech newsletters
• Competitive Intelligence - Track mentions of products/companies

Integrations

Export data to:

• JSON, CSV, Excel, XML
• Google Sheets
• Webhooks
• Make (Integromat)
• Zapier

Cost

This actor uses minimal compute because it relies on Hacker News's Firebase API instead of browser automation. Typical run costs less than $0.01 for 100 stories.

Performance

• 100 stories in ~5 seconds (without comments)
• 100 stories with comments in ~15-20 seconds
• Parallel fetching for maximum speed

Why Hacker News?

Hacker News is the premier tech community with:

• 10M+ monthly visitors
• High-quality tech discussions
• Startup launches and job postings
• Direct access from Y Combinator network

Support

Having issues? Open an issue or contact us.

Built with care by flowbot.company

Usage with AI (MCP)

Connect to mcp.apify.com and use natural language:

• "Scrape data using Hackernews Scraper"
• "Get results from Hackernews Scraper"
• "Run Hackernews Scraper with default settings"