Best Hacker News MCP servers compared

cyanheads/hn-mcp-server is the Hacker News MCP to run in Cursor when the job is feeds, search, and threaded comments without a local install. Point the client at https://hn.caseyjhand.com/mcp. The public host answered HTTP 200 on 8 Nov 2026 as hn-mcp-server 0.6.0. tomwojcik's PyPI hn-mcp 0.1.2 wins when the agent must walk a 500-comment tree with depth control. Y Combinator does not ship an official MCP. Trends MCP is first only for keyword context: get_context source Hacker News (the space is required), default limit 10, max 20, comments filling the first N items rather than N replies. It does not return a nested thread.

Which Hacker News MCP should Cursor actually run?

Match the install to the job. A front-page scan plus Algolia search belongs on cyanheads. A long thread that would overflow the context window belongs on tomwojcik. A keyword that also needs Reddit, GitHub, or News in the same assistant belongs on Trends MCP, not on an HN-only process.

GitHub stars on 8 Nov 2026: erithwik 76, pskill9/hn-server 40 (last push 31 Dec 2024, not in the table), paabloLC 34, karanb192 6, cyanheads 7, tomwojcik 5. Stars lag maintenance. cyanheads is the only HN-only server in this set that both published in the last two weeks and answered on a public MCP URL.

The Trends MCP Cursor JSON is the remote-host shape (url plus transport http). cyanheads' hosted snippet uses type streamable-http and no key. Mixing those two objects is a common miss.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hn-mcp-server": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://hn.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "trends-mcp": {
      "url": "https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp",
      "transport": "http",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Does Y Combinator ship an official HN MCP?

No. The official surface is still the Firebase dump at https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/. The Hacker News API README, fetched 8 Nov 2026, says there is currently no rate limit. Feeds cap at 500 IDs for top and new, and 200 for Ask, Show, and jobs. Comment counts are not a single field on every item. Clients walk kids and count.

Full-text search is a second vendor. Algolia's HN Search API at http://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/ (docs fetched 8 Nov 2026) rate-limits one IP to 10,000 requests per hour and hard-caps a query at 1,000 hits. karanb192's README still prints Algolia's official limit as "None" and then a self-imposed 300 requests per minute. Treat the Algolia doc as the ceiling. The 1,000-hit cap is real on every server that searches through Algolia, including cyanheads (reachableHits: 1000 in hn_search_content).

devrelopers/hackernews-mcp is an unofficial Rust binary on crates.io as hackernews-mcp 0.1.0 (17 GitHub stars, 27 crate downloads, last push 29 May 2026). The author said so on the Show HN thread. It is a local stdio option, not a Y Combinator product.

How do the comment-tree servers actually cap a thread?

cyanheads hn_get_thread defaults to depth 3 and maxComments 50. One call resolves at most 10 levels and 200 comments. A 64,000-byte budget cuts between comments. Overflow comes back as nextCursor. Pass that cursor with the same itemId to continue. Feeds through hn_get_stories default to 30 stories, serve at most 100 per call, and paginate with offset. Search through hn_search_content defaults to 30 hits and serves at most 50 per call. README 0.6.0, confirmed on the hosted /mcp health JSON the same day.

tomwojcik takes the opposite default. get_thread(story_id, depth=1) returns top-level comments with reply_count at the cut. get_comment_tree then expands one subtree. depth=-1 loads the full tree with no truncation. That is the right tool when the agent must quote a nested reply, and the wrong tool when a 500-comment thread should stay out of the prompt. Six tools: get_thread, get_comment_tree, get_stories, search_stories, search_comments, get_user. Algolia only. No Firebase feed client in the README.

erithwik still leads stars (76) and PyPI last-month volume (3,156). The published package is mcp-hn 0.1.0 from 28 Dec 2024. GitHub last moved 14 Jul 2025. Four tools, uvx mcp-hn. Useful as a known name. Stale as a default install.

paabloLC maps the Firebase API almost 1:1: getTopStories, getBestStories, getNewStories, getAskHNStories, getShowHNStories, getJobStories, getItem, getUser, getComments, getMaxItemId, getUpdates, plus resources hackernews://top, hackernews://new, hackernews://best. README requires Node 18+. The npm 1.0.3 tarball lists engines.node >=16.0.0. Last GitHub push 9 Jun 2025. No license file on the repo; the npm page says MIT.

karanb192 owns the npm name hn-mcp. That collides with tomwojcik's PyPI name hn-mcp. npx hn-mcp is the TypeScript server (5 tools, last npm publish 11 Oct 2025). uvx hn-mcp is the Python server. uvx mcp-hn is erithwik. Mixing those three commands is the sharpest install footgun in this category. karanb192 also ships hn_explain for HN jargon and claims a 50MB LRU cache. Last GitHub push 12 Oct 2025.

ScraperSocial bills 1 credit per comment, 1 per profile, 1 per story hit. get_comments paginates 20 per page unless the limit is raised, and the cap is 50, so a 400-comment thread is eight calls and 400 credits. The MCP page (8 Nov 2026) prices 1,000 credits at $5 and gives 25 credits on signup with no card. Search matches stories, not comment bodies. The vendor states it is not affiliated with Y Combinator. Use it when the agent already pays for that envelope. Skip it when the official APIs are enough.

Trends MCP get_context stops at posts, not threads

Hacker News is a get_context source. It is not a get_growth source and not a get_top_trends board. The fifth official name is Hacker News with a space. HackerNews and hacker-news 400 with invalid_source. One call takes at most five sources. source all is 10 context sources and costs 10 requests.

A Trends MCP pull on 8 Nov 2026 sent source Hacker News, keyword claude, limit 3, comments 1, days 7. The envelope printed window_days 7, count 3, requests_charged 1. Rank 1 was item 50385272, kind post, 1,592 score, 518 comments. comments 1 filled top_comments on that first item only (three replies). Ranks 2 and 3 carried empty arrays. The parameter counts items that receive replies, not replies per item. Schema max is 5. Default is 2 if the field is omitted. Default limit is 10. Max limit is 20.

Each HN row in that pull had engagement.comments and engagement.score. There was no nested kids tree, no depth, and no nextCursor. That is the product limit. Pair Trends MCP with cyanheads or tomwojcik when the next question is "what did the tenth reply say?" Keep Trends MCP when the question is "who is talking about this name on HN, Reddit, and GitHub this week?" The field contract lives on the get_context source page. Google history stays on a different tool; the Cursor combo for that board is Google Trends MCP for Cursor.

{
  "mode": "get_context",
  "source": "Hacker News",
  "keyword": "claude",
  "limit": 3,
  "comments": 1,
  "days": 7
}

llms.txt fetched 8 Nov 2026 lists five billed tools (get_time_series, get_growth, get_top_trends, get_context, get_reviews) plus free get_usage. pricing.md generated the same day bills get_context at 1 request per source. Free is 100 requests a month. Starter is $19 for 1,000, Pro $49 for 5,000, Business $199 for 25,000. Yearly cards are $16 / $192, $39 / $468, $159 / $1,910. Failed calls are free.

What a hosted HN MCP costs when the API is already free

The Firebase API and Algolia HN Search are free. Every community server in the table above is free software plus those two APIs, except ScraperSocial.

cyanheads' public host has no published SKU. The 8 Nov 2026 health body named version 0.6.0, transport http, session mode stateless. npm @cyanheads/hn-mcp-server weekly downloads on the package page were 740 that morning. The npm last-week API for 31 Oct to 6 Nov 2026 printed 260. Cite the package page when those two disagree.

ScraperSocial is the only row with a public dollar price for HN itself: $5 per 1,000 credits, 1 credit per comment. 25 signup credits cover a handful of short threads. A 50-comment summary is 50 credits. That math only wins if the agent already stores one ScraperSocial key. A dedicated HN reader does the same job at $0 on the official APIs.

Trends MCP is priced as a multi-source trend server, not as an HN thread dump. One get_context call with a single source is 1 request. Five sources are 5. The Free 100-request month is enough to compare a keyword on HN plus two other sources a few times a week. It is the wrong meter for paging a 400-comment thread.

FAQ

Is there an official Hacker News MCP from Y Combinator?

No. Y Combinator publishes the Firebase API with no rate limit and documents it at the HackerNews/API repo (13,409 stars on 8 Nov 2026). Algolia publishes the search API with a 10,000-per-hour IP cap. Community MCP servers wrap those two. None of the GitHub repos in this roundup is a Y Combinator org.

Why do npx hn-mcp and uvx hn-mcp install different servers?

npm hn-mcp 1.0.0 is karanb192 (TypeScript, 5 tools, weekly 39). PyPI hn-mcp 0.1.2 is tomwojcik (Python 3.12+, 6 tools, last week 35). erithwik is a third name, PyPI mcp-hn. Copy the full package name from the table. Do not guess from the letters "hn-mcp".

Can Trends MCP replace a dedicated Hacker News MCP?

Not for thread reading. get_context on Hacker News returns up to 20 posts for a keyword, with top_comments on the first N items. cyanheads and tomwojcik return ranked feeds, user profiles, and comment trees. Install Trends MCP beside one of those when the assistant also needs Google, TikTok, or GitHub demand. Do not install it as the only HN tool.

Do these servers need an API key?

cyanheads, tomwojcik, erithwik, paabloLC, and karanb192 need none. Both upstream APIs are public. Trends MCP needs a Bearer key on the api host for Cursor (tmcp_live_ prefix on the account page). ScraperSocial needs OAuth or a Bearer key after the 25-credit signup.

Which option works in Cursor with no local Node or Python?

cyanheads' hosted URL, ScraperSocial's hosted URL, and Trends MCP's https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp endpoint. Local npx and uvx servers need a runtime on the machine. cyanheads' README also asks for Bun 1.4.0 or Node 24+ when self-hosting.

Sources (all accessed 8 Nov 2026): Hacker News API README, Algolia HN Search API, cyanheads/hn-mcp-server, npm @cyanheads/hn-mcp-server, tomwojcik/news-ycombinator-mcp, PyPI hn-mcp, erithwik/mcp-hn, PyPI mcp-hn, paabloLC/mcp-hacker-news, npm mcp-hacker-news, karanb192/hn-mcp, npm hn-mcp, ScraperSocial Hacker News MCP, devrelopers/hackernews-mcp, Trends MCP llms.txt and pricing.md.