{"id":"hackernews-api","name":"Hacker News API","homepage":"https://github.com/HackerNews/API","repo_url":"https://github.com/HackerNews/API","category":"data-intelligence","subcategories":["news","tech","community"],"tags":["hackernews","ycombinator","tech-news","free","no-auth","firebase","rest-api"],"what_it_does":"Free, unauthenticated REST API backed by Firebase providing access to Hacker News stories, comments, jobs, polls, and user profiles in real time.","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"],"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.","alternatives":["newsapi","guardian-api"],"af_score":79.9,"security_score":null,"reliability_score":null,"package_type":"mcp_server","discovery_source":["github"],"priority":"low","status":"evaluated","version_evaluated":"current","last_evaluated":"2026-03-01T09:50:05.666368+00:00","performance":{"latency_p50_ms":80,"latency_p99_ms":400,"uptime_sla_percent":99.0,"rate_limits":"No published rate limits; be a good citizen","data_source":"llm_estimated","measured_on":null}}