# Hacker News Scraper - Stories, Items & Users (`justfeel/hackernews-scraper`) Actor

Extract Hacker News stories (top/new/best/ask/show/job), specific items, or user profiles via the official Firebase API. Clean JSON, no API key.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/justfeel/hackernews-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Yusuf](https://apify.com/justfeel) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.70 / 1,000 items

This Actor is paid per event and usage. You are charged both the fixed price for specific events and for Apify platform usage.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Hacker News Scraper — Stories, Items & Users

Extract **Hacker News** stories, items, and user profiles as clean JSON — via the official public Firebase API. No API key, no blocking.

### What you get per story/item

```json
{
    "id": 48966190,
    "type": "story",
    "by": "lebovic",
    "title": "Qwen 3.8 Max Preview",
    "url": "https://www.qwencloud.com/pricing/token-plan",
    "score": 96,
    "time": 1784451451,
    "descendants": 40,
    "kids": [48967360, 48967344, 48966879]
}
```

### Three modes

| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Stories** | Top, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN, or Jobs list, up to 500 items |
| **Items** | Specific item IDs (stories, comments, polls, jobs) |
| **User** | User profiles by username (karma, about, submitted item IDs) |

Optionally set `includeComments: true` to attach each story's top-level comments (one level deep, capped by `maxCommentsPerItem`) — kept shallow on purpose so a single run stays fast and bounded.

### Why this scraper

- ✅ **Official API** — Hacker News' own public Firebase backend, not scraped HTML
- ✅ **No API key, no rate-limit walls**
- ✅ **Reliable** — no headless browser to break
- ✅ **Fast** — concurrent fetching for large lists
- ✅ **Structured JSON** — ready for dashboards, alerts, or LLM/RAG pipelines

### Use cases

- **Tech trend monitoring**: track what's trending in tech/startups daily
- **Research & datasets**: build corpora of discussions for NLP/LLM work
- **Community analytics**: user activity and karma tracking
- **Alerts**: watch Show HN / Ask HN for keywords

### Input example

```json
{
    "mode": "stories",
    "listType": "top",
    "maxItems": 50,
    "includeComments": true,
    "maxCommentsPerItem": 10
}
```

### FAQ

**Is this legal?** Reads Hacker News' publicly available Firebase API — no login, no private data.

**Why no full comment trees?** Comment trees can be arbitrarily deep and expensive to walk. `includeComments` fetches one level of top-level replies per story; use `items` mode with a comment's own ID to walk deeper manually.

# Actor input Schema

## `mode` (type: `string`):

What to scrape: a story list, specific items by ID, or user profiles.

## `listType` (type: `string`):

Which Hacker News list to fetch (stories mode only).

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Max number of stories to fetch (stories mode only). HN lists return up to 500 IDs.

## `itemIds` (type: `array`):

Specific Hacker News item IDs to fetch (items mode).

## `usernames` (type: `array`):

Hacker News usernames to fetch profiles for (user mode).

## `includeComments` (type: `boolean`):

For stories/items, also fetch each item's top-level comments (one level deep, not the full thread).

## `maxCommentsPerItem` (type: `integer`):

Cap on top-level comments fetched per story when 'Include top-level comments' is on.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "mode": "stories",
  "listType": "top",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "includeComments": false,
  "maxCommentsPerItem": 10
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("justfeel/hackernews-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("justfeel/hackernews-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{}' |
apify call justfeel/hackernews-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=justfeel/hackernews-scraper",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/4nqFWIxjaGkPumJdV/builds/ODmXJuZJmBvhBKQmO/openapi.json