# Hacker News

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/hacker-news/  
**Website:** https://news.ycombinator.com/  
**APIs profiled:** 4

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.

## Kin Score — 31.8 / 100 (thin)

Scored 2026-08-20 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 31.8).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 64.8 |
| Contract Quality | 49.7 |
| Governance | 0.0 |
| Contract Governance | 0.0 |
| Operational Transparency | 18.4 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 23.8 |
| Commercial Clarity | 28.6 |
| Access Clarity | 28.6 |

## Agent readiness — 24.5 (agent-aware)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | yes |
| Agentic Access | derived |
| Reversibility Documented | na |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | no |
| Idempotency | na |
| Error Semantics | no |
| OpenAPI Examples | no |
| Rate Limit Signal | documented |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | na |

## Access

Freemium — onboarding: unknown, pricing: freemium, trial: no (confidence: medium).

## APIs (4)

- **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.

## Agentic access (1)

- **Hacker News Agentic Access** — 10 operations

## Security (1)

- **Hacker News Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · DMARC

## Plans (1)

- **Hacker News Plans Pricing**

## Tags

Developer Community, Technology News, Y Combinator

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Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/hacker-news/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.