Get a Hacker News story

Try in Playground

Retrieve one Hacker News item by numeric ID: title, submitted URL, author, points, self-post text, poll options and creation time, with the IDs of its direct child comments. Set includeCounts to add the live score and total comment count from the official API. The item type is returned; comment IDs are accepted and return that comment. Use the comments endpoint for the nested discussion.

GET/v1/hackernews/storyx-api-key

Headers

Get your API key

x-api-keystringrequiredheader

Your ScrapeAtlas customer key. Create one on /account/ and set SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY.

Query parameters

idstringrequiredquery

Required numeric Hacker News item ID, as shown after item?id= on news.ycombinator.com.

Example8863

includeCountsenumquery

true adds score and descendants from the official item resource in a second source read. Defaults to false.

one of: true, false

Exampletrue

Response fields

idinteger

Required numeric Hacker News item ID, as shown after item?id= on news.ycombinator.com.

≥ 1

created_atstring

Source creation timestamp.

created_at_iinteger

Source creation Unix time in seconds.

typestring

Source item type: story, comment, poll, pollopt or job.

min 1 chars

authorstringnullable

Submitting username, or null when the source withholds it.

titlestringnullable

Story title; null for comments.

urlstringnullable

Submitted external link; null for self posts and comments.

textstringnullable

Self-post or comment HTML text; null when absent.

pointsintegernullable

Search-index score; null for comments. It can lag the live score.

parent_idintegernullable

Parent item ID; null for top-level stories.

story_idintegernullable

ID of the containing story.

optionsJSON[]

Poll option items when the source provides them.

up to 100 items

requestIdstring

Request correlation identifier.

HTTP attempts, decoded bytes and duration for the operation, including the single shared retry.

accounting.upstreamRequestsinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.responseBytesinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.durationMsnumber

Always included.

≥ 0

successboolean

True when usable data is returned; inspect status and coverage for omissions.

statusenum

success, partial, failed, or challenged. HTTP 200 can be partial.

one of: success, partial

sourceUrlstring

Public Hacker News search, item or user URL for the request.

absolute HTTPS URL

fetchedAtstring

UTC retrieval time.

Complete means this bounded page or tree was returned without known omissions. It does not imply all matching items were enumerated.

coverage.sourcestring

Always included.

coverage.completeboolean

Always included.

coverage.warningsstring[]

Always included.

scoreintegernullableoptional

Live score from the official API; null when it does not serve the item. Present only with includeCounts.

descendantsintegernullableoptional

Total comment count from the official API, including replies at every depth; null when it does not serve the item. Present only with includeCounts.

childreninteger[]

Direct child comment IDs in source order, at most 5,000.

up to 5000 items

HTTP 200 returns the success variant. Check status: partial means usable data with warnings, and failed or challenged requests carry a failure object described in Errors & responses.

Error codes

HTTP	failure.code	Meaning
200	`partial`	Usable data with comment_limit, depth_limit, children_limit or counts_unavailable warnings.
400	`invalid_request`	Missing, duplicate, malformed or unsupported parameters, including a search that selects nothing.
401	`unauthorized`	Missing or invalid worker API key.
404	`not_found`	The source reports a missing item or user.
429	`upstream_rate_limited`	Source throttling; no automatic retry.
502	`upstream_challenged`	Source rejected the unauthenticated request.
502	`unsupported_page`	Malformed, mismatched or non-JSON source data.
502	`response_too_large` `payload_too_complex`	Response exceeded byte or parsing limits.
502	`unsafe_redirect` `request_limit` `upstream_error`	Bounded source retrieval could not complete.
503	`busy`	All worker slots are occupied.
504	`timeout`	Total request deadline expired.

Code example

curl "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/hackernews/story?id=8863&includeCounts=true" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/hackernews/story?id=8863&includeCounts=true",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"
    }
  }
);

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.status, data);

type Result = {
  status: "success" | "partial" | "failed" | "challenged";
  requestId: string;
  [field: string]: unknown;
};

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/hackernews/story?id=8863&includeCounts=true",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": process.env.SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY!
    }
  }
);

const data = (await response.json()) as Result;
if (data.status === "failed" || data.status === "challenged") {
  throw new Error(`Hacker News request failed: ${data.requestId}`);
}
console.log(data);

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/hackernews/story",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    params={
        "id": "8863",
        "includeCounts": "True"
    },
    timeout=60,
)
data = response.json()
print(data["status"], data)

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
)

func main() {
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/hackernews/story?id=8863&includeCounts=true", nil)
	req.Header.Set("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
	resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()

	var data map[string]interface{}
	json.NewDecoder(resp.Body).Decode(&data)
	fmt.Println(data["status"], data)
}

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        var client = HttpClient.newHttpClient();
        var request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .uri(URI.create("https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/hackernews/story?id=8863&includeCounts=true"))
            .GET()
            .header("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
            .build();
        var response = client.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
        System.out.println(response.body());
    }
}

Use your sa_live_… customer key at https://api.scrapeatlas.com.

Responses

Successful result. Synthetic example validated against the runtime contract.

{
  "success": true,
  "status": "success",
  "requestId": "00000000-0000-4000-8000-000000000001",
  "sourceUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-09-11T00:00:00.000Z",
  "coverage": {
    "source": "public_api",
    "complete": true,
    "warnings": []
  },
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 1,
    "responseBytes": 41000,
    "durationMs": 220
  },
  "id": 8863,
  "created_at": "2007-04-04T19:16:40.000Z",
  "created_at_i": 1175714200,
  "type": "story",
  "author": "example",
  "title": "Synthetic story",
  "url": "https://example.test/story",
  "text": null,
  "points": 104,
  "parent_id": null,
  "story_id": 8863,
  "options": [],
  "children": [
    8865,
    8869
  ],
  "score": 111,
  "descendants": 71
}

Missing, duplicate, malformed or unsupported parameters, including a search that selects nothing.

{
  "requestId": "9d2f1c0a-6b1e-4c7d-9a8e-2f3b4c5d6e7f",
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 0,
    "responseBytes": 0,
    "durationMs": 0
  },
  "success": false,
  "status": "failed",
  "failure": {
    "code": "invalid_request",
    "message": "Invalid request: missing, duplicate, unsupported or malformed parameters."
  }
}