YC Companies Scraper — $5/1K · Companies, Founders & YC Batches

YC Companies Scraper

⚡ Use this Actor in n8n — no code

Building no-code workflows in n8n? Install our community node and drop this Actor straight onto your canvas:

📦 n8n-nodes-apivault-yc-companies

Setup: in n8n go to Settings → Community Nodes → Install, paste n8n-nodes-apivault-yc-companies and confirm → add the new node to your workflow → paste your Apify API token → fill in the input and run.

Scrape the Y Combinator companies directory. Collect available directory records including batch, company context and optional founder details; total coverage changes with the source.

Pricing

$5 per 1000 companies — pay-per-event on every record pushed to the dataset.

The example run fetches 5 companies with full details so you can check the output quickly. Increase maxResults for a larger export, or set it to 0 for the accessible search window, subject to a 10,000-company per-run ceiling and your charge cap.

Input modes

Filter search (default)

{
    "batches": ["Winter 2024", "Summer 2024"],
    "industries": ["B2B"],
    "isHiring": true,
    "maxResults": 3,
    "fullDetails": true
}

Available filters:

• query — free-text search
• batches — "Winter 2024", "Summer 2024", "Spring 2025", etc.
• industries — "B2B", "Consumer", "Fintech", "Healthcare", etc.
• regions — "United States of America", "Europe", "Asia", etc.
• statuses — "Active", "Public", "Acquired", "Inactive"
• tags — "AI", "Marketplace", "Developer Tools", "Crypto"
• isHiring — only companies hiring now
• topCompaniesOnly — only YC "Top Companies" (billion-dollar club)

Direct slugs

{
    "slugs": ["airbnb", "stripe", "dropbox"],
    "fullDetails": true
}

maxResults also limits this mode (default: 5). Duplicate slugs are fetched once; Exact YC company URLs are accepted too. Set maxResults to 0 to process supplied slugs within the 10,000-company safety ceiling and run charge cap.

Output fields

Each record includes:

• slug, name, url, oneLiner, website
• batch (Winter 2009), batchCode (W09)
• industry, subindustry, industries array
• location, city, country, regions
• teamSize — employee count
• status — Active / Public / Acquired / Inactive
• stage — Seed / Growth
• isHiring, isTopCompany — source booleans, or null when unknown
• linkedinUrl, twitterUrl, facebookUrl, githubUrl, crunchbaseUrl
• tags — array
• logoUrl
• launchedAt, yearFounded

With fullDetails: true (recommended):

• longDescription — full "about" text
• founders — array of {name, title, bio, linkedinUrl, twitterUrl}

Use cases

• Company research — build a startup shortlist with available founder and social links; commercial intent and link coverage are not guaranteed.
• VC/Accelerator research — track batch composition, industry shifts
• Talent research — filter isHiring: true for directory hiring signals, then verify actual roles
• Competitive intel — scrape your competitor's batch mates
• Journalism / analytics — compare observed batch and industry fields with documented scope

How it works

1. Fetches Algolia API credentials dynamically from /companies page (YC rotates these keys)
2. Paginated directory search, up to 100 hits per requested page; source limits and available coverage apply
3. Optional per-company /companies/{slug} fetch for founder + socials data

No YC login or user-supplied source API key is needed. The Actor reads the public directory search configuration and public company pages.

Y Combinator directory research and startup shortlists

Use this YC company scraper to organize available directory records by batch, industry, region and lifecycle status, or enrich known company slugs. It helps accelerator researchers compare cohorts and teams prepare a manual company review. A directory field is an observed source value, not verified buying intent, audited headcount or a guarantee that a vacancy is still open.

Goal	Starting configuration	Review with the output
Known-company enrichment	Exact slugs, small maxResults	Company identity and available detail
Batch research	batches plus a cap	Returned cohort and source coverage
Industry exploration	query or industries	Source labels and relevance
Hiring-company shortlist	isHiring	Current job availability independently
Compact export	fullDetails false and field switches	Optional fields omitted deliberately

Inspect one company by slug

{
  "slugs": [
    "stripe"
  ],
  "maxResults": 1,
  "fullDetails": true,
  "maxConcurrency": 1
}

Exact slugs override search filters and always request a company detail page. Setting fullDetails false does not turn this direct mode into a directory-only lookup. Missing company detail can mean an unavailable source, not deletion.

Create a small batch sample

{
  "batches": [
    "Winter 2024"
  ],
  "maxResults": 3,
  "fullDetails": false,
  "maxConcurrency": 1
}

Without additional detail requests, founder biographies and full social link coverage may be unavailable. Keep the batch label with each exported company so later comparisons do not silently mix cohorts.

Explore developer-tool companies

{
  "query": "developer tools",
  "maxResults": 3,
  "fullDetails": false,
  "extractLogo": false,
  "extractFounders": false
}

Query results follow the directory's available search response; they are not a complete or independently ranked market of developer-tool vendors.

Research hiring companies within a broad industry

{
  "industries": [
    "B2B"
  ],
  "isHiring": true,
  "maxResults": 3,
  "fullDetails": false
}

The hiring flag is a directory signal. It does not return individual jobs, recruiter contacts or proof of a company's recruiting budget. Check the company and its actual job listing before citing an opening.

Interpret company and founder fields

Core identity, website and description support joining a directory observation to a known company. Batch, industry, status, teamSize and tags are source labels whose availability and freshness vary. teamSize is not an audited employee count; a missing value is unknown. Founder objects and social links appear only when available in the detail response and enabled by field controls.

For a cohort report, retain slug, source URL, batch and the collection run/date. Compare consistent filter configurations rather than interpreting a capped sample as the entire directory. Source search limits, inaccessible detail pages and directory updates affect completeness. maxResults=0 removes your chosen cap; it does not remove source pagination or coverage limits.

Pricing, export and automation

The active fee is $0.005 per delivered company record ($5/1,000), plus the $0.00005 start event per GB, minimum one, and user-paid platform usage. Three delivered companies have $0.015 in result events before those additional charges. fullDetails adds requests and can increase resource usage without changing the row rate. Use a small maxResults and an Apify run charge cap.

Use Actor apivault_labs/yc-companies-scraper or ID 8iCyIXGoejghN22lw from the Console/API and linked clients. MCP clients can discover apivault_labs--yc-companies-scraper and inspect the current wrapper. Poll the returned run ID, then read its Dataset. The Actor records operational counts in its log/status and also writes structured SUMMARY/ERRORS and a ready-to-download COMPANIES.csv. JSON preserves founder/tag arrays; flatten those intentionally for CSV or Excel. Exporting stored rows does not require a new paid Actor run.

YC directory FAQ

Does this include every YC alum? It collects accessible matching directory records within your limits. No fixed total or universal coverage is guaranteed.

Can I search and supply slugs together? Supplied usable slugs select direct mode and override the search filters. Use separate runs to compare workflows.

Can it monitor changes? Keep dated exports and compare slug identity outside the Actor. There is no persistent change baseline or automatic alert delivery.

Complete company rows, founder links and continuation

Exact slugs now combine the company page with its public directory record by company ID. This restores available industry, regions, stage and source flags. If that optional directory lookup fails, the useful company detail is retained with directoryStatus: "failed"; missing hiring/top signals remain null. status and tags can fall back to the company page. No company data is inferred from the spelling of its name or website.

In search mode, fullDetails: false keeps directory data and skips company-page requests. detailStatus is not_requested; founders/founderCount are unknown (null) rather than an invented zero. With detail enabled, inaccessible detail is marked failed, while a useful directory record can still be delivered. extract... switches omit their field groups. Long descriptions can also come from the public directory when available. No personal email or phone extraction is provided. Existing launchedAt is a source launch time; no parse-date column is added.

Continue a capped search

Read SUMMARY.continuationToken and send it with the same query and filter arrays in the next run. You may adjust maxResults, concurrency and field switches. The token stores page position and already delivered company slugs; it contains no Apify token. It supports a bounded sequence of up to 10,000 remembered company slugs. The live directory can reorder between runs, so this is a continuation aid, not a frozen snapshot or a guarantee of exhaustive export.

Search pages are read in order. Duplicate company slugs are skipped before limits and paid delivery. If a page fails, collection stops at that page and SUMMARY reports PARTIAL or SOURCE_ERROR; it does not silently skip forward. sourceTotalMatches is the source count, not the delivered row count. Algolia's accessible search window can be smaller than that count; sourceWindowLimited reports this and no complete-directory claim is made. Narrow batch or other filters to research a smaller cohort.

Results and diagnostics

Output	Purpose
Dataset	One useful company per row and one company event
COMPANIES.csv	One row per delivered company; readable founder names and LinkedIn/Twitter links
SUMMARY	Delivered rows, effective limit, page counts, source-window coverage, continuation token
ERRORS	Structured source/detail/identity failures; no paid error rows

CSV and diagnostics add no company events. JSON keeps full founder arrays; CSV retains links in the company row. Empty/missing/invalid results create no company events, although the existing start fee and platform usage can apply. An empty object remains a valid five-company default browse. Bad input types, invalid company URLs and negative limits fail before source collection.

The Actor reads the effective run pricing and remaining event allowance before collection and each delivery. A small charge cap can reduce effectiveMaxResults. The cap covers events under Apify's pricing rules; platform usage is additional. After uncertain Dataset delivery or billing, it stops and reconciles with a read-only check. It never retries an uncertain paid push. Inspect Dataset, SUMMARY and run billing before retrying a failed run. Resurrecting a run with a nonempty Dataset is rejected to avoid replaying paid deliveries.

n8n and developer integrations

Use this Actor in your automation or application with the existing community integrations below. An Apify account and API token are required; Actor and platform charges follow the current pricing.

• n8n community node: n8n-nodes-apivault-yc-companies. Install package name n8n-nodes-apivault-yc-companies in a self-hosted n8n instance that permits community packages.
• Python client and examples: GitHub.
• n8n source and usage: GitHub.

These are community packages. Publication on npm does not establish n8n verification or availability in n8n Cloud. Review the linked package README for supported inputs and setup.