Hacker News Items Scraper

Hacker News Items Scraper

Scrape Hacker News items from any story list, up to a million per run. Every item comes with its title, URL, score, author, and comment count. No API key or login. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Hacker News is the tech industry's water cooler, but the official Firebase API rate-limits you and returns raw nested data. This Actor reads the public story feeds directly, lets you pick any list from Top to Jobs, and returns each item in one flat, predictable row.

Who uses it	What they scrape Hacker News for
Product managers	Spot which tools and startups are gaining traction on Show HN this month.
Market researchers	Track the topics and technologies the engineering community cares about right now.
Job seekers	Pull the latest Who is hiring? posts and YC-backed job listings into a spreadsheet.
Content curators	Build a daily digest of the highest-scoring articles without manual copying.

What it does

This Actor collects Hacker News items from the top, new, best, ask, show, or job story lists and returns each one as a flat row.

• 📋 Six story lists: top, new, best, ask, show, and job stories, each as a separate run.
• 🔢 Controlled volume: set a hard cap from 1 to 1,000,000 items so you never overspend.
• 📄 Flat output: every item is a single row with title, URL, score, author, and comment count.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with Hacker News data

📈 Track rising startups.

A VC analyst runs the Actor on Show HN every Monday, exports the top 100 items to CSV, and flags companies that hit the front page for the second time.

🧠 Monitor engineering trends.

A developer advocate scrapes the top stories daily, groups titles by keyword, and reports which frameworks and languages are dominating the conversation.

💼 Collect job listings.

A job seeker pulls the latest 200 items from the Jobs list, filters by title keywords, and applies to the five most relevant YC-backed roles.

📰 Curate a newsletter.

A newsletter author scrapes the best stories every morning, picks the three with the highest comment-to-score ratio, and writes a daily briefing.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key	Reads the public feeds directly. No registration, no OAuth, no rate-limit headaches.
Fixed schema	Every item lands as a flat row with the same columns, ready for analysis.
Any list	Top, new, best, ask, show, or job. One Actor covers every official feed.
Scalable	Grab ten items for a quick check or a million for a full archive.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets Hacker News the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	Hacker News Items Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When Hacker News changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor by picking one story list and a maximum item count, and it stops the moment that many items are collected. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
 "maxItems": 10
}

A larger pull:

{
 "maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.021 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$2.10
1,000 results	$21.00
10,000 results	$210.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Hacker News Items Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Hacker News through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/hackernews-items-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting fewer items than my maxItems setting?

The story list may have fewer items available at that moment. For example, the Jobs list rarely has thousands of items. Try a larger list like Top or New, or lower your maxItems to match the available count.

The run failed with a timeout error.

Requesting a very large number of items can take time. Increase the Actor's timeout in the run settings, or lower your maxItems and run it more frequently on a schedule.

Some fields are empty in my dataset.

Not every Hacker News item has every field. Job posts often lack a score, and some items may not have a URL if they are text-only Ask HN posts. Empty fields are expected for those item types.

I need the full text of the linked articles, not the titles.

This Actor returns the Hacker News item metadata only. To get the full article text behind each URL, pair this Actor with a Web Scraper or use a dedicated article extractor on the resulting URL column.

The data looks different from what I see on the Hacker News website.

The Actor reads the same public feed that powers the website. Differences usually come from caching. Run the Actor again after a minute to get the latest state of the list.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Do I need a Hacker News account or API key?	No. The Actor reads the public story feeds that anyone can visit in a browser. No login, no API key, and no OAuth flow.
What is the difference between the story lists?	Top stories are ranked by a points-and-recency algorithm. New stories are the latest submissions in chronological order. Best stories are the highest-scoring items. Ask HN, Show HN, and Jobs are filtered to those specific post types.
How many items can I scrape in one run?	You set the limit. The minimum is 1 and the maximum is 1,000,000 items per run. The Actor stops as soon as it reaches your number.
Does this Actor get comments too?	No. This Actor returns the story-level item: title, URL, score, author, and comment count. It does not fetch the comment threads themselves.
Can I scrape a specific user's submissions?	Not with this Actor. It is built for the six official story lists. To scrape a user's posts you would need a different approach.
What format does the data come in?	You can export your dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify platform. The schema is the same flat row regardless of format.
How often does the data refresh?	The Actor reads the live feed at the moment you run it. Schedule it to run every hour, every day, or on any cron schedule you choose.
Is this faster than the official Firebase API?	It avoids the Firebase API's rate limits and nested JSON. For bulk reads of story lists it is simpler and you control the throughput.
Can I filter by score or author?	The Actor pulls items in the order the list provides them. It does not filter by score or author mid-run. You can filter the exported dataset afterward.
What happens if Hacker News is down?	The Actor will retry automatically and then fail the run with an error message. You can set up automatic retries in the Apify scheduler.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Y Combinator. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.