Hacker News Has a Free Firebase API — Track What Developers Are Talking About

#discuss #webdev #python #api

The Problem

Every developer wants to know what's trending in tech. Twitter/X is noisy. Reddit requires auth. Google Trends is vague.

But Hacker News has a completely free, unauthenticated Firebase API that gives you real-time access to every story, comment, and user profile.

No API key. No rate limits. No signup.

The API

Base URL: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/

Endpoints

Endpoint	Returns
`/topstories.json`	Top 500 story IDs
`/newstories.json`	Newest 500 story IDs
`/beststories.json`	Best 500 story IDs
`/askstories.json`	Latest Ask HN
`/showstories.json`	Latest Show HN
`/jobstories.json`	Latest job posts
`/item/{id}.json`	Any item (story/comment)
`/user/{id}.json`	User profile

Real Example: Trending Topics Monitor

import requests
from collections import Counter

# Get top 50 stories
top_ids = requests.get(
    "https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json"
).json()[:50]

words = []
for sid in top_ids:
    story = requests.get(
        f"https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/{sid}.json"
    ).json()
    title = story.get("title", "")
    score = story.get("score", 0)
    words.extend(title.lower().split())
    if score > 100:
        print(f"🔥 [{score}] {title}")

# What words appear most in top stories?
common = Counter(words).most_common(15)
print("\nTrending words:", [w for w, c in common if len(w) > 3])

Use Case: Job Market Tracker

# Track "Who is Hiring?" threads
import requests

user = requests.get(
    "https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/whoishiring.json"
).json()

for item_id in user["submitted"][:5]:
    item = requests.get(
        f"https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/{item_id}.json"
    ).json()
    print(f"{item.get('title', 'N/A')} — {item.get('descendants', 0)} comments")