Hacker News API

Scrape Hacker News data with one API

Name: Hacker News Data API
Brand: SocialCrawl
Availability: InStock

Fetch public Hacker News search hits, stories, comment trees, and profiles as structured JSON with one SocialCrawl API key. Same Post, Comment, and Author schema as every other platform. Reads are priced in credits.

Read the docs How it works Try live

/v1/hackernews

4 active endpoints

GET /v1/hackernews/search
GET /v1/hackernews/story
GET /v1/hackernews/story/comments
GET /v1/hackernews/profile

What Hacker News endpoints does SocialCrawl ship?

Four live read endpoints for public Hacker News data. Keyword search, single stories, nested comment trees, and user profiles. Data API only. No voting, no submission, no private accounts.

Search

1 credit

/v1/hackernews/search

Stories matching a query: title, link, author, points, comment count, and post time. Optional tags can widen results to comments and other item types.

query, tags, numericFilters, hitsPerPage, page

Story

1 credit

/v1/hackernews/story

One story by id: title, link, author, points, comment count, and publish time. Discussion comes from story/comments.

Story comments

1 credit

/v1/hackernews/story/comments

Comment tree for one story: id, author, text, points, time posted, and nested replies.

Profile

1 credit

/v1/hackernews/profile

Public user profile: id, username, bio, karma, and account creation date. Follower and post counts are empty because HN does not expose them.

handle

Hacker News API4 endpoints supported

View docs

Returns Hacker News stories matching a query, each with title, link, author, points, comment count, and post time. Tags can widen it to comments.

Use it to find discussions by keyword, then pass a story id to the story endpoint for its details or its comments.

GET/v1/hackernews/search?query=claude+code

query

query · Free-text search term.

$ curl https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/hackernews/search?query=claude+code \
    -H "x-api-key: sc_YOUR_API_KEY"

— · idle

// Running this live needs your own API key — hit "Try it" to see an example response

How the Hacker News API works

Hacker News is a normal SocialCrawl social surface. You call GET /v1/hackernews/… with an API key, spend credits on live misses, and get a single JSON envelope back. No HN account. No second SDK.

Authenticate every call

Send your key in the x-api-key header. No Hacker News credentials. The same key works across the SocialCrawl catalog.

GET with query params

All Hacker News routes are GET. Pass query, id, tags, page, and filters as query strings. We validate formats before charging.

Pay in credits, not seats

Every Hacker News read costs 1 credit on a live miss. Cache hits cost 0. Empty or hard failures refund.

Read one JSON envelope

Every response is the same shape: success, data, credits_used, credits_remaining, request_id, cached. Search pages carry pagination fields when more hits remain.

The usual integration chain

Most products search first, open a story, then expand comments only when the thread matters.

01Search

GET /v1/hackernews/search?query=…&tags=story

PostList of matching stories with points and comment counts

Find discussions by keyword before you know story ids.

02Story

GET /v1/hackernews/story?id=…

Full Post for one story id

Search titles are not enough when you need the story record.

03Comments

GET /v1/hackernews/story/comments?id=…

CommentList with nested replies[]

Expand the thread only when the discussion is the product job.

04Profile

GET /v1/hackernews/profile?handle=…

Author-shaped user: karma, bio, created date

Resolve who posted once you care about the author.

request

GET /v1/hackernews/search
  ?query=launch+api
  &tags=story
Host: www.socialcrawl.dev
x-api-key: sc_your_api_key_here

# deepen a story
GET /v1/hackernews/story?id=8863
GET /v1/hackernews/story/comments?id=8863

response envelope

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "items": [
      {
        "post": {
          "id": "8863",
          "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863",
          "content": { "text": "Example title" },
          "engagement": { "likes": 1200, "comments": 318 },
          "ext": {
            "points": 1200,
            "author": "pg"
          }
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  "credits_used": 1,
  "credits_remaining": 9999,
  "request_id": "req_…",
  "cached": false
}

What lands in data

Field names match the rest of SocialCrawl where archetypes align. Stories and comments use the same leaves as other platforms.

Authorprofile

id, username, bio, url, ext (karma, created_at); followers and post counts empty on HN

PostList / Postsearch, story

items[].post with id, url, content.text (title), engagement (points, comments), author, published_at, ext

CommentListstory/comments

items[] with author, content.text, engagement, published_at, replies[] for nested discussion

Search hitsenvelope fields

raw Algolia-style hits in list form: objectID, title, url, author, points, num_comments, tags

Inside the gateway

Same request lifecycle as every other /v1 platform endpoint. Hacker News is not a sidecar.

Edge receives the call

Next.js catch-all routes into the Hono social API. We mint a request_id, authenticate the key, then enforce rate limit (600/min) and concurrency (50 in flight per key).

Validate, then debit

Registry lookup finds hackernews/search (or story, comments, profile). Required params run first. Invalid input returns 400 with no charge. Valid calls debit 1 credit atomically before upstream work.

Cache or fetch

A deterministic cache key is built from platform + resource + params. Hit: return immediately, credits_used = 0. Miss: HN Algolia public API via the Hacker News fetcher. Retries on 5xx/network with a circuit breaker if the source is unhealthy.

Normalize and return

Upstream JSON is mapped to Author / Post / PostList / CommentList where field maps apply, validated against the canonical Zod schema, then wrapped in the success envelope and logged for billing audit.

Billing rules that matter in production

Standard live miss: 1 credit
Search, story, comments, profile: all 1 credit
No advanced tier on this platform
No premium tier on this platform
Cache hit: 0 credits
Empty / hard fail: auto-refund
Bad params: 400, never charged
No credits: 402, never charged
Disabled routes: 503, never charged

How we get the data

Hacker News is public-read discussion data. We normalize it into the SocialCrawl schema so your code does not learn Algolia-only hit shapes.

What Hacker News is for this API

Public stories, comments, and user profiles. Read-only surface for research, monitoring, and product jobs. No voting and no submission.

How SocialCrawl reaches it

Public HN Algolia API (hn.algolia.com) behind the SocialCrawl gateway. The platform fetcher composes search and item URLs from query params and ids.

What leaves our edge

A unified JSON envelope: success, data, credits_used, request_id, cached. Stories become Post objects. Comments share CommentList leaves with nested replies.

What we do not ship live

No write endpoints. No private messages. No follower graph (HN does not expose one). Prefer the registry docs for the live inventory.

field map sketch

HN user→ author.*title, url, author, points, comment count

story title + url + text→ post.content.text + ext.*comment text, author, points, nested replies

nested comment tree→ CommentList + replies[]username, bio, karma, account created_at

What this API is used for

The jobs this API is most often used for.

4active Hacker News endpoints in the registry

1 creditflat 1 credit per live miss

Tech discussion search and thread monitoring

Callers concentrate on keyword search, story detail, and story to comments chains. Profiles show up when author context matters. HN search, story, nested comments, and profiles on the shared schema with credit pricing. No HN account and no second client library.

Search and story calls are typically a few seconds on live miss. Large comment trees can take longer than single-story reads.

What people build with the Hacker News API

The jobs Hacker News data is most often used for. Each one is a full recipe with the endpoint chain and pricing.

Social listeningThe technical lane. Story search and full comment threads.

Comment scrapingStory comment threads, the technical lane alongside Reddit.

Market researchThe technical lane. Story search and full comment threads for developer and infrastructure categories.

Use case examples

Common ways teams put this data to work, and the stack each one tends to run.

Tech monitors

Python, cron, Slack bots

Poll search for fixed keywords. Open story plus comments when points or comment velocity jumps.

Research notebooks

Node, notebooks, BI loads

Keyword search across HN, then expand story body and comment trees for product, brand, and competitor language.

Backend product jobs

Go, workers, Explorer

Wire search to story to comments into pipelines. Cache hits keep recurring runs cheap. Same key as the rest of SocialCrawl.

Call it in two lines

Every Hacker News route is one credit per live call. Cache hits are free.

curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/hackernews/search?query=launch+api&tags=story" \
  -H "x-api-key: sc_your_api_key_here"

curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/hackernews/story/comments?id=8863" \
  -H "x-api-key: sc_your_api_key_here"

Hacker News on SocialCrawl

Same key as the rest of the catalog

Platform docs Get an API key

Endpoints

What data does the Hacker News API return?

Every endpoint returns structured JSON in a unified envelope. Computed fields such as engagement rate and content category are included only where the endpoint supports them and the required source inputs are present.

SearchSearch Hacker News StoryGet a Hacker News story Story CommentsGet comments on a Hacker News story ProfileGet a Hacker News user profile

Comparison

How does SocialCrawl compare to Official HN Firebase API + Algolia for Hacker News data?

Same Hacker News data, two very different paths. Auth, rate limits, schema, and cost — side by side.

Feature	SocialCrawl	Official HN Firebase API + Algolia
Authentication	One x-api-key shared across 48 platforms	No key needed, but two separate APIs to learn
Setup	One GET request in the same envelope as your other sources	Firebase for items, Algolia for search: two clients, two response shapes
Rate limits	Handled upstream as part of the service	Generous but unspecified; you build your own backoff
Response schema	Unified data.items shape shared with Reddit, GitHub, and X	Firebase returns raw items one ID at a time; Algolia uses its own hit format
Pricing	1 credit per call; 100 free credits, no card	Free
Data coverage	Search, story, full threaded comment tree, and profile in four calls	Full item coverage, but comment trees mean one request per comment ID

Authentication

SocialCrawl

One x-api-key shared across 48 platforms