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Hacker News Top Stories Scraper
Monitor the latest stories from Hackernews Stories with headline, author, publication date, topic tags, summary and full body content. Trusted by media monitoring, PR teams, brand watchers and competitive intelligence. Run on demand or on a recurring schedule and feed every row into your favourit.
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📰 Hacker News Top Stories Scraper
🚀 Get hacker news top stories data in seconds. Get Hacker News top stories: title, URL, score, author, comment count, story type and posted timestamp via the official Firebase API. data for news monitoring, tech trend analysis and AI research datasets.
🕒 Last updated 2026-05-27 · 📊 13 fields per record · 500+ top stories · Hacker News (top, new, best, ask, show, job)
The Hacker News Top Stories Scraper extracts structured records from Hacker News. Every record captures the canonical fields you would expect from the upstream source - ready for analytics, dashboards, BI tooling, or further enrichment.
The dataset spans hacker news (top, new, best, ask, show, job) and exposes the same data the official source publishes - normalised, paginated, and exportable.
Who uses this data?
| Audience | Use Case |
|---|---|
| Researchers | Build longitudinal datasets for analysis |
| Compliance teams | Monitor regulated entities and filings |
| Journalists | Investigate public records at scale |
| Data analysts | Power BI dashboards and reports |
| Academic researchers | Run quantitative studies on public data |
| Product teams | Embed live hacker news top stories records into apps |
📋 What the Hacker News Top Stories Scraper does
- Queries Hacker News for the latest records
- Supports targeted filtering via the input parameters (see below)
- Returns structured records with 13 fields, no scraping artifacts
- Handles pagination automatically up to your
maxItemslimit - Cleans HTML entities and normalises dates and identifiers
- Delivers results as data, or data via Apify dataset Get
💡 Why it matters: Public-data sources rarely offer bulk Get. This Actor turns the live source into a queryable dataset.
🎬 Full Demo
🚧 Coming soon
⚙️ Input
| Field | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| maxItems | integer | No | Free users: 10. Paid users: optional, max 1,000,000. |
| storyType | string | No | Story Type |
Example 1: Default run (preview)
Example 2: Targeted query
⚠️ Good to Know: Free users are limited to 10 items per run. Upgrade to a paid plan to unlock up to 1,000,000 items.
📊 Output
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
🖼 Image imageUrl | string | - |
📰 Title title | string | - |
🔗 URL url | string | - |
🔑 ID id | string | - |
🔗 HN URL hnUrl | string | - |
📋 Type storyType | string | - |
⭐ Score score | string | - |
✍️ Author author | string | - |
💬 Comments commentCount | string | - |
📅 Posted postedAt | string | - |
📝 Text text | string | - |
🕒 Collected scrapedAt | string | - |
❌ Error error | string | Error message if record could not be retrieved |
✨ Why choose this Actor
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| 🌐 No login required | Public data only - no credentials needed |
| 🔍 Targeted filtering | Search and filter via input parameters |
| 📊 500+ top stories | Comprehensive coverage of hacker news (top, new, best, ask, show, job) |
| 🧹 Clean output | Dates normalised, HTML stripped, arrays flattened |
| ⚡ Fast | Direct source access without browser overhead |
| 🔄 Auto-pagination | Retrieves results up to your maxItems |
| 💾 4 Get | data all available |
| 🛡️ Retry logic | Multi-attempt retry with backoff for reliability |
📈 How it compares to alternatives
| Method | Speed | Scale | Structured Output | Free |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| This Actor | Fast | 1,000,000 records | Yes (13 fields) | 10 free / unlimited paid |
| Manual site search | Slow | Limited per session | No | Yes |
| Bulk data access | Slow setup | Variable | Partial | Variable |
| Custom API script | Variable | Unlimited | Requires dev work | Dev cost |
🚀 How to use
- Create a free Apify account - includes $5 free credit
- Open the Hacker News Top Stories Scraper actor page
- Configure your input - set filters or leave defaults
- Set
maxItems(10 for a quick preview, higher for bulk extraction) - Click Run and wait for the dataset to populate
- access your results as data, or data
💼 Business use cases
Compliance and Due Diligence
Teams use hacker news top stories data to verify entities, monitor regulatory status, and feed downstream pipelines.
Market Research
Analysts map hacker news (top, new, best, ask, show, job) to understand market structure, competitive activity, or regulatory trends.
Lead Generation
Sales teams enrich CRM records with hacker news top stories data to identify prospects and qualify leads.
Investigative Journalism
Reporters use bulk extracts to find patterns, anomalies, and stories hidden in public records.
🔌 Automating Hacker News Top Stories Scraper
Connect this Actor to your existing workflows using Apify integrations:
- Make (Integromat) - trigger a run on a schedule and push results to Google Sheets or a database
- Zapier - automatically Get new records to Airtable, Notion, or your CRM
- Slack - get notified when a monitored entity has new activity
- Webhooks - receive real-time notifications when a run completes
🌟 Beyond business use cases
Academic Research
Study trends, behaviours, and patterns in hacker news (top, new, best, ask, show, job) records across time.
Civic Tech and Transparency
Civic-tech projects build dashboards on top of bulk extracts to surface public-interest insights.
Education
Educators use real hacker news top stories data to teach data analysis and domain knowledge.
Personal Research
Individuals - researchers, hobbyists, family historians - use bulk Get to answer questions that no single web search can.
🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper
Paste a few sample records into ChatGPT, Claude, or another AI assistant and ask it to summarise the dataset, explain fields, identify patterns, or suggest filter combinations.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
🔍 What does this Actor do? It extracts hacker news top stories records from Hacker News into a clean, queryable dataset.
📊 How many records are available? 500+ top stories.
🔑 Do I need an account or API key? No. This Actor uses public sources that require no authentication.
📅 How up-to-date is the data? The Actor queries the source live on every run.
🔍 Can I filter by specific fields? Yes - see the Input section above for all supported filters.
⚡ How fast is the scraper? A typical 10-item preview completes in under 30 seconds.
📄 What output is the output? Records are stored in Apify's dataset storage and can be exported as data, or data.
🏆 Why are some fields null for certain records? Some fields are optional at the source. The Actor returns null rather than fabricating values.
📋 Can I run this on a schedule? Yes - use Apify's built-in scheduler or trigger via Make / Zapier / Webhooks.
💰 Is there a cost to use this Actor? Free users receive 10 records per run. Create a paid account to unlock up to 1,000,000 records per run.
🌍 Does it cover hacker news (top, new, best, ask, show, job)? Yes - see the coverage line above.
🛡️ Is this Actor compliant? The Actor accesses only publicly available data, in line with the source's published terms of service.
🔌 Integrate with any app
Get data directly from the Apify platform to:
Spreadsheets & Databases Google Sheets - Microsoft data - Airtable - Notion - PostgreSQL - MySQL - MongoDB
Automation & Workflows Make (Integromat) - Zapier - n8n - Pipedream - Activepieces
Cloud Storage AWS S3 - Google Cloud Storage - Azure Blob Storage - Dropbox
APIs & Webhooks REST API - Webhooks - Apify API
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| Hacker News Stories Scraper | Pull live Hacker News top stories with score and comments |
💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more public-data scrapers.
Need help? Visit the Apify Discord community or open a support ticket.
Disclaimer: This Actor accesses publicly available data from Hacker News in compliance with the source's terms of service. Data is provided as-is for informational purposes. Verify all records against the official source before relying on them for legal or business decisions.
