Scrape Hacker News — Stories, Jobs, Comments & Users

Extract structured data from Y Combinator's Hacker News. Scrape top stories, new stories, job postings, Ask HN threads, Show HN projects, comments, and user profiles. HTTP-only — no Chrome, no Playwright.

What You Can Scrape

• Top stories — title, URL, score, author, comment count
• Job postings — YC startup job listings from the monthly "Who is Hiring" threads
• Comments — full comment threads with nesting and author info
• User profiles — karma, created date, about text
• Ask HN / Show HN — community questions and project showcases
• Search — full-text search across all HN content

Primary Use Cases

• Tech trend monitoring — track what the tech community is discussing
• Startup hiring data — scrape YC startup job postings for market intelligence
• Sentiment analysis — analyze community reactions to product launches or tech news
• Content research — find top-performing content topics for tech blogs
• Competitive intelligence — monitor mentions of your company or competitors

API Example

# Start a run via the Apify API
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/santamaria-automations~ycombinator-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "mode": "top",
    "maxResults": 100,
    "includeComments": true
  }'

# Or use with AI agents via MCP:
# https://mcp.apify.com?tools=santamaria-automations/ycombinator-scraper

Integrations

• n8n / Make / Zapier — trigger runs and process results via webhook
• AI Agents (MCP) — Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, LangChain, LlamaIndex
• Python / Node.js — Apify SDK for programmatic access
• Google Sheets / Airtable — export via Apify integrations

How It Compares

Output Fields