A Hacker News RSS feed is your secret weapon for getting the best of tech's most influential community without the noise. It lets you pull the firehose of discussions, new projects, and top stories directly into your own reader or workflow, completely bypassing the main website. For developers, founders, and tech professionals, this isn't just a convenience—it's about taking back control of your information diet.
Why Hacker News RSS Is a Power Tool for Tech Insiders
Unlike algorithm-driven platforms that optimize for engagement, Hacker News (HN) has always been about the quality of the conversation. An RSS feed simply gives you that raw, community-filtered content on your own terms. Integrating HN into your daily routine this way can be a massive unlock and a key part of any strategy to improve developer productivity by filtering out distractions.
Essentially, you can build a personalized dashboard of tech intelligence. You could set up feeds for:
- Keeping a pulse on the industry with the front page headlines.
- Catching emerging trends by monitoring the "Newest" feed.
- Discovering new tools and side-projects from the "Show HN" section.
This kind of direct integration is what makes it such a critical tool. And if you're looking for even more curated tech news, our daily newsletter, Techpresso, delivers concise stories right to your inbox.
Quick Reference Hacker News RSS Feed URLs
Getting Hacker News into your RSS reader is one of the best ways to keep up with the tech world. To make it easy, I've gathered all the essential feed URLs right here.
This list covers both the official feeds provided by Y Combinator and some of the most useful third-party options that offer more filtering capabilities. Whether you just want the front page or need a specific feed for user comments, you'll find the link you need below.
Official and Top Unofficial Hacker News RSS Feeds
Here's a quick-lookup table with the most common and useful Hacker News RSS feed URLs. I’ve categorized them so you can grab exactly what you're looking for without any fuss.
| Feed Category | Description | URL |
|---|---|---|
| Front Page | The main Hacker News front page. High signal, but also high volume. | https://news.ycombinator.com/rss |
| Newest | All new submissions as they come in. Great for spotting rising trends. | https://news.ycombinator.com/newest.rss |
| Ask HN | Only posts asking questions of the community ("Ask HN: ..."). | https://news.ycombinator.com/ask.rss |
| Show HN | Posts where creators are showing off their projects ("Show HN: ..."). | https://news.ycombinator.com/show.rss |
| HN Jobs | The official job board for YC companies and the community. | https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs.rss |
| Unofficial: HN RSS | A powerful third-party service (hnrss.org) for creating custom feeds. | https://hnrss.org/frontpage |
| Unofficial: Algolia | Custom feeds using the Algolia HN Search API for highly specific queries. | http://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=... |
Just copy the URL and add it to your favorite RSS reader. These links are the foundation for building a personalized Hacker News dashboard.
A little trick I've found useful is to combine these feeds with filters inside your RSS app. For example, you can take the main front-page feed and set up a rule to only show you posts with "Show HN" in the title. It's a simple way to see what new projects are hitting the big time without having to check a separate feed.
A Closer Look at the Official Hacker News Feeds
Hacker News itself, run by Y Combinator, offers a handful of official RSS feeds. Getting your Hacker News RSS setup right starts with picking the feed that matches what you want to see.
For most people, the Front Page feed is the perfect starting point. It's a curated stream of the most popular, community-vetted stories, giving you a solid overview of what's currently trending in the tech world.
If you'd rather see everything as it happens, the Newest feed is your best bet. Think of it as an unfiltered firehose of every single submission—ideal if you never want to miss a thing.
Beyond the main story feeds, you can also subscribe to more specialized content. There are separate feeds for Ask HN (community questions), Show HN (new projects and creations), and even Jobs for career opportunities. This lets you zero in on just the type of content you care about most.
Create Custom Feeds with Third-Party Tools
While the official feeds are a great starting point, third-party tools are where you can get truly surgical with your Hacker News consumption. Services like hnrss.org and the Algolia HN Search API let you build custom feeds around specific keywords, authors, or even individual comment threads.
For instance, you could create a feed that only shows posts mentioning "AI models" or one that follows a particular user’s comments across the site. This level of control turns a broad firehose of information into a highly relevant, personal briefing. If you're curious about the mechanics behind this, you can get a good overview by learning about creating an RSS feed from scratch.
These tools are indispensable for professionals who need to track niche topics without wading through unrelated posts. If you're building a workflow around this kind of targeted information, you might find our guide on the best AI news aggregators a helpful next step.
How to Subscribe Using Popular RSS Readers
Once you have the right Hacker News RSS feed URL, adding it to your reader is usually a simple copy-and-paste job. Most apps have an "Add Feed" button or a search bar that handles the rest. Let's walk through how this works in a few of the most popular readers out there.
Feedly and Inoreader
If you're a power user, your best bets are probably Feedly (freemium, Pro plan from $6/month) and Inoreader (freemium, Pro from $8.33/month). With both, you just drop the feed URL into the main search field, and the service finds and adds it for you instantly.
The real magic with these two comes from their paid plans. A Hacker News RSS feed can be a firehose of content, and their advanced filters and rules are perfect for taming the chaos. You can automatically tag, filter, or even hide posts based on keywords or scores.
If you’re looking for more great news sources and tools for developers, check out our Devshot newsletter.
NetNewsWire
For those in the Apple ecosystem who prefer a clean, native, and completely free option, NetNewsWire is a fantastic choice.
Subscribing couldn't be easier:
- Click the
+icon in the toolbar. - Select "New Web Feed."
- Paste your Hacker News URL and click "Add."
Automate Your Workflow with RSS Integrations
Your Hacker News RSS feed is more than just a list of articles—it's a real-time data source you can plug directly into your daily operations. By connecting the feed to automation platforms like Zapier or IFTTT, you can stop passively reading and start putting that information to work.
These services act as a bridge, letting you create custom "if this, then that" recipes. For instance, you could set up a workflow that automatically sends a message to a team Slack channel the moment your company or product gets mentioned on the front page.
Think about the possibilities. You could have a new card added to a Trello board every time a "Show HN" post contains a keyword like "cybersecurity." Suddenly, a simple news feed becomes a curated pipeline of new tools and projects for your team to check out.
This is how you turn the constant stream of information from Hacker News into a genuine, automated asset. If you're looking to build even more sophisticated automations, you might find our guide on using Browse AI for web scraping helpful.
The Long-Tail Traffic Impact of Hacker News RSS
Making it to the Hacker News front page delivers a huge, immediate burst of traffic. But what many people don't realize is that the story doesn't end when your post scrolls out of view. This is where the real, sustained value of the Hacker News RSS network comes into play, driving what's known as long-tail traffic.
Real-world traffic analysis shows that after an initial surge, a story's unique visitors can nearly double over the next four days. This sustained traffic largely comes from aggregators and RSS readers that republish and archive content.
This "long tail" is precisely where RSS shines. The main site might send you an initial wave of 3,500-4,000 unique visitors, but it's the continued exposure through countless RSS feeds that keeps the article alive for days. It's a fantastic mechanism for great content to find its audience over time, long after the initial hype has faded. You can dig into the numbers and discover more insights about front-page stats yourself.
For those tracking online threats, our Cyberpresso newsletter offers daily cybersecurity updates.
Troubleshooting Common Hacker News RSS Issues
Sooner or later, every Hacker News RSS user runs into a hiccup. If your feed suddenly goes quiet, the first thing I always check is the feed URL itself. A simple typo can break everything.
Just copy the feed address and paste it directly into your web browser. If it loads a page of XML code, the feed is working fine. If you get an error, you've found your problem—double-check the URL for any mistakes.
Of course, the issue might not be on your end. Third-party tools like hnrss.org can have their own brief outages. Before you start tearing your setup apart, it’s worth checking their website to see if they’re reporting any downtime.
One common complaint I hear isn't about broken feeds, but about overwhelming ones. The "Newest" feed, for instance, is a firehose of content. Your best bet here is to lean on your RSS reader’s filtering features. Set up rules to only show you posts with keywords you’re interested in—it's the only sane way to keep up without all the noise.
Frequently Asked Questions About Hacker News RSS
Getting started with Hacker News feeds inevitably brings up a few questions. You might be wondering how to create a feed for a specific user, what to do when a feed stops working, or which RSS reader is best for the job.
We've compiled the most common questions we hear and provided straightforward answers to help you solve problems and get the most out of your feeds.
