Hacker News API
Free, unauthenticated REST API backed by Firebase providing access to Hacker News stories, comments, jobs, polls, and user profiles in real time.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
No API key required — fully open. HTTPS enforced. Public data only. No PII concerns for read operations. Rate limits enforced but generous. Minimal security surface area.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You want free, zero-friction access to Hacker News data for tech news monitoring or community analysis.
Avoid When
You need full-text search, efficient bulk data retrieval, or structured metadata beyond what HN provides.
Use Cases
- • Monitoring top tech stories for trend analysis agents
- • Fetching job listings from the 'Who is Hiring' threads
- • Building HN comment digest tools or summarization agents
- • Tracking new submissions in specific topics or by keywords
- • Academic research on tech community discourse patterns
Not For
- • Full-text search (API has no search endpoint - use Algolia HN search instead)
- • Bulk historical data retrieval (must fetch item by item via Firebase)
- • Commercial content redistribution
Interface
Authentication
No authentication required. Completely open API. Firebase-based, so technically uses Firebase Realtime Database protocol but also exposes REST endpoints.
Pricing
100% free, no signup, no rate limits documented. Maintained by Y Combinator.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ No search endpoint - must use the separate Algolia HN Search API (hn.algolia.com) for full-text search
- ⚠ Top/new/best stories endpoints return only IDs - agents must make individual item fetches for details
- ⚠ Large thread trees require recursive fetching (children arrays contain IDs, not inline data)
- ⚠ Deleted and dead items still appear but with 'deleted: true' or 'dead: true' flags that agents should filter
- ⚠ API is eventually consistent - very new items may not immediately appear in top story lists
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for Hacker News API.
Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.