# Indie Hackers Scraper - Community Posts & Discussions (`antishock/indiehackers-scraper`) Actor

Extract posts and discussions from the Indie Hackers community. Filter by post type, search term, minimum upvotes and result count. Returns title, author, upvotes, comment count, tags, creation date and post URL for founder research, content curation and bootstrapping trend analysis.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/antishock/indiehackers-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Ryan Zinburg](https://apify.com/antishock) (community)
- **Categories:** Lead generation, Business, Other
- **Features:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 22 total users, 15 monthly users, 73.3% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.00 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Indie Hackers Scraper - Posts & Products

Extract posts or products from **Indie Hackers**, the community where bootstrapped founders discuss building and growing products. Filter by topic, popularity and search term, and export a structured table of what the independent software community is actually talking about, or the revenue-ranked Products Database.

### What you get per post (`type: "posts"`)

| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| `title` | How we got to $10k MRR without ads |
| `author` | the posting account |
| `upvotes` | 142 |
| `commentsCount` | 38 |
| `tags` | \["Growth", "Marketing"] |
| `createdAt` | publication timestamp (often missing, see Notes) |
| `url` | link to the post |

### What you get per product (`type: "products"`)

| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| `title` | Ghost |
| `tagline` | Indie subscription platform for creators |
| `revenueMonthlyUsd` | 840873 |
| `revenueVerified` | true (Stripe-verified) or false |
| `url` | link to the product page |

### Search filters

- **type** - `posts` (full newest-posts feed) or `products` (Products Database)
- **searchQuery** - free text across title, URL, author/tagline and tags
- **minUpvotes** - keep only posts above a popularity threshold (posts only, products have no upvotes)
- **maxItems** - how many items to save

### Example input

```json
{
  "type": "posts",
  "searchQuery": "pricing",
  "minUpvotes": 20,
  "maxItems": 100
}
```

```json
{
  "type": "products",
  "searchQuery": "AI",
  "maxItems": 20
}
```

### Use cases

- **Founder and market research** - see which problems bootstrapped founders raise most often
- **Content curation** - build a newsletter or digest from the highest-signal discussions
- **Product discovery** - find recurring complaints about tools in your category
- **Community trend analysis** - track how topics such as pricing, churn or AI move through the community over time
- **Audience research** - study the language indie founders use before writing marketing copy for them
- **Competitive listening** - catch mentions of a product or category in founder discussions

### Why Indie Hackers

Indie Hackers is one of the few places where small software businesses discuss revenue, pricing and churn openly rather than through a PR filter. For anyone selling to or building alongside bootstrapped founders, it is a more candid signal than press coverage or funding news.

### Notes

- `upvotes` and `commentsCount` are snapshots at scraping time, so repeated runs let you watch a post gain traction.
- Tags are author-chosen and therefore inconsistent; treat them as hints, not a taxonomy.
- `createdAt` is often missing: Indie Hackers only renders a publication date for some post card layouts.
- The Products Database is sorted by Stripe-verified revenue first, so with `maxItems` below the page size you get the highest-revenue products.
- Founder interview transcripts and milestone posts are a different part of the site and are not included.

# Actor input Schema

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of results to save.

## `type` (type: `string`):

Posts: the full newest-posts feed. Products: the Products Database (name, tagline, monthly revenue).

## `minUpvotes` (type: `integer`):

Only return items with at least this many upvotes. Posts only; products have no upvotes and are always 0.

## `searchQuery` (type: `string`):

Optional case-insensitive filter over title, URL, author and tags.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "maxItems": 30,
  "type": "posts",
  "minUpvotes": 0,
  "searchQuery": ""
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "maxItems": 30,
    "type": "posts"
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("antishock/indiehackers-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "maxItems": 30,
    "type": "posts",
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("antishock/indiehackers-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "maxItems": 30,
  "type": "posts"
}' |
apify call antishock/indiehackers-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,antishock/indiehackers-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/XfXDyutNFc1dlrdF8/builds/6XdIBbbElbYIBaZwd/openapi.json