Hacker News Scraper: Stories, Comments & Who is Hiring
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Price: $0.20 per 1,000 results, flat on every Apify plan, no start fee. Free-plan cap: up to 100 results per run on the Apify Free plan. Prices checked on 2026-10-15.
The Hacker News Scraper reads stories, comments and monthly “Who is hiring” posts from the official Hacker News APIs and returns one clean row per item.
Turn on “only items new since last run” and schedule it: each run returns just what is new, and a quiet run costs nothing.
Who it is for
Developers, researchers, recruiters and founders who track Hacker News on a schedule and want clean rows instead of pages.
- Pull the top, new or best stories every hour and keep only items you have not seen.
- Collect every comment on one story for research or sentiment work.
- Get the monthly "Who is hiring" posts as one row per company.
- Search stories by keyword and feed them into a dashboard.
Inputs
| Field | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| mode | string | Yes | top (default), new, best, ask, show, job, search, comments or hiring. |
| query | string | No | Search keyword, used when mode is search. |
| storyId | string | No | HN item id. Required for comments; optional for hiring (defaults to the latest thread). |
| maxItems | integer | No | Maximum rows returned and paid for, 1 to 5,000. Defaults to 30. |
| sinceLastRun | boolean | No | Return only items newer than the last run. Defaults to false. |
Example input
{
"mode": "hiring",
"maxItems": 50,
"sinceLastRun": true
}Example output
[
{
"type": "hiring-post",
"company": "ExampleCo",
"headerLine": "ExampleCo | Senior Backend Engineer | Remote (US)",
"remote": true,
"postText": "ExampleCo | Senior Backend Engineer | Remote (US) | ...",
"author": "exampleuser",
"hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=..."
}
]Price
$0.20 per 1,000 results
Free-plan cap: Up to 100 results per run on the Apify Free plan
Billing happens on Apify, not on this website.
Limits
- Up to 100 results per run on the Apify Free plan.
- Search covers stories only, not comments.
- A hiring thread is picked by storyId, not by month.
What it does not do
- It does not extract emails, phone numbers or real names into contact fields. Post text is returned as written.
- It does not scrape HN pages or log in. It uses the official HN Firebase API and the Algolia HN Search API.
- It does not parse salary or location into separate fields.
FAQ
What counts as a result?
One story, comment or hiring post returned.
Do I pay when nothing is new?
No. You get one free no-new-items row. Errors and limit rows are free too.
Where does the data come from?
From the official Hacker News API and the Algolia HN Search API.
Is there a start fee?
No. You pay only the flat price per result.