Hacker News

Hacker News is Y Combinator's technology news aggregation and discussion platform. It exposes a public, read-only Firebase-backed API that gives developers real-time access to stories, comments, jobs, polls, and user profiles across the full HN dataset.

Hacker News publishes 4 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network, including Items API, Lists API, Live API, and 1 more. Tagged areas include Developer Community, Technology News, and Y Combinator.

The Hacker News catalog on APIs.io includes 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Hacker News’ developer surface includes documentation, developer portal, and 14 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

28.3/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 19/100 agent aware Front door AI 3/6 light Heartbeat 67/100 alive saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemium

1 published contract

Developer Community Technology News Y Combinator

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 28.3/100 · thin

Contract Quality 9.2 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 4.0 / 17

Access Clarity 3.1 / 17

Operational Transparency 2.0 / 11

Contract Governance 1.4 / 10

Discoverability 4.9 / 9

Regulatory Posture 1.5 / 15

Agent readiness — 19/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 6 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 9 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 4 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 0 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics does not apply to this provider. The published contracts declare no write operations, and a read-only API cannot create-or-update. The facet is excluded from this provider's denominator entirely — not scored zero. A reference or data API is not deficient for being unable to upsert.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Request/Response Examples +7 pts — share of operations carrying request/response examples; else an Examples / Code Samples link
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document

8 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Access Clarity scores 18.4 — up to +16.3 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 23.8 — up to +15.2 composite points
Contract Quality scores 43.5 — up to +14.1 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/hacker-news/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/hacker-news to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
Raycast Store Extensions (first-party publishers + community-wrapped products)	covered	12.1 (thin)	-	-
Obsidian Community Plugins (third-party APIs the Obsidian plugin ecosystem integrates)	covered	12.1 (thin)	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 4

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Hacker News Items API

Stories, comments, jobs, Ask HNs, polls, and pollopts.

Hacker News Lists API

Top, new, best, ask, show, and job story lists.

Hacker News Live API

Max item ID and recent updates.

Hacker News Users API

User profiles.

Open Collections 5

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Hacker News Items API

OPEN COLLECTION

Hacker News Items Lists API

OPEN COLLECTION

Hacker News Items Live API

OPEN COLLECTION

Hacker News Items Users API

OPEN COLLECTION

Hacker News API

OPEN COLLECTION

Hacker News API pricing

Not yet checked against Hacker News's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-05-04; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Free freemium	Free
Professional paid	Free
Enterprise enterprise	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Free Tier Default: 10 requests per minute
Free Tier Monthly Quota: 1000 requests per month
Professional Tier Default: 100 requests per minute

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Hacker News's documentation. All 5 limits →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Hacker News Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Hacker News Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

Hacker News

SLA

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Hacker News Finops

FINOPS

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Hacker News API Rules

51 rules · 49 errors 1 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Hacker News Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · DMARC

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Hacker News Agentic Access

10 operations

10 operations · 0 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Portal

Portal

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Guidelines

Guidelines

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Security

Security

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

Forums

Forums

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

TermsOfService

TermsOfService

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

About

About

Other 3

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

PublicAPIsListing

PublicAPIsListing

RSS

RSS

Showcase

Showcase

Source (apis.yml)

aid: hacker-news
name: Hacker News
description: Hacker News is Y Combinator's technology news aggregation and discussion platform. It exposes a public, read-only
  Firebase-backed API that gives developers real-time access to stories, comments, jobs, polls, and user profiles across the
  full HN dataset.
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/hacker-news.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/hacker-news/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
access: 3rd-Party
tags:
- Developer Community
- Technology News
- Y Combinator
created: '2026-03-24'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: hacker-news:hacker-news-items-api
  name: Hacker News Items API
  description: Stories, comments, jobs, Ask HNs, polls, and pollopts.
  humanURL: https://github.com/HackerNews/API
  baseURL: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com
  tags:
  - Item
  tags_raw:
  - Items
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/hacker-news-items-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/HackerNews/API
  - type: Rules
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/hacker-news/refs/heads/main/hacker-news-rules.yml
- aid: hacker-news:hacker-news-lists-api
  name: Hacker News Lists API
  description: Top, new, best, ask, show, and job story lists.
  humanURL: https://github.com/HackerNews/API
  baseURL: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com
  tags:
  - List
  tags_raw:
  - Lists
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/hacker-news-lists-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/HackerNews/API
  - type: Rules
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/hacker-news/refs/heads/main/hacker-news-rules.yml
- aid: hacker-news:hacker-news-live-api
  name: Hacker News Live API
  description: Max item ID and recent updates.
  humanURL: https://github.com/HackerNews/API
  baseURL: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com
  tags:
  - Live
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/hacker-news-live-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/HackerNews/API
  - type: Rules
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/hacker-news/refs/heads/main/hacker-news-rules.yml
- aid: hacker-news:hacker-news-users-api
  name: Hacker News Users API
  description: User profiles.
  humanURL: https://github.com/HackerNews/API
  baseURL: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com
  tags:
  - User
  tags_raw:
  - Users
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/hacker-news-users-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/HackerNews/API
  - type: Rules
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/hacker-news/refs/heads/main/hacker-news-rules.yml
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/hacker-news-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/hacker-news-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/hacker-news-finops.yml
- type: PublicAPIsListing
  url: https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/hacker-news-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/hacker-news-domain-security.yml
- url: https://news.ycombinator.com/
  name: Hacker News Website
  type: Website
- url: https://github.com/HackerNews/API
  name: API Documentation
  type: Documentation
- url: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  name: Community Guidelines
  type: Guidelines
- url: https://news.ycombinator.com/legal
  name: Legal
  type: TermsOfService
- url: https://news.ycombinator.com/security.html
  name: Security Policy
  type: Security
- url: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
  name: Lists
  type: Portal
- url: https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
  name: RSS Feed
  type: RSS
- url: https://news.ycombinator.com/ask
  name: Ask HN
  type: Forums
- url: https://news.ycombinator.com/show
  name: Show HN
  type: Showcase
- url: https://www.ycombinator.com/
  name: Y Combinator
  type: About
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Hacker News API — frequently asked questions

Does Hacker News have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 4 APIs from Hacker News, including Hacker News Items API, Hacker News Lists API and Hacker News Live API, and 1 more.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Hacker News API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 4 OpenAPI specifications for Hacker News, each linked for download from this page.

How much does the Hacker News API cost?

APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for Hacker News, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Hacker News API ready for AI agents?

Hacker News has a Kin Score of 28.3 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 19.0 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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