Which tools monitor Hacker News?

Four of the ten competitors we researched, plus us: Mentionkit, F5Bot, Syften and KWatch. The larger suites — Brand24, Awario, Mention and Sprout Social — do not list it, and Google Alerts has no Hacker News option.

Is Hacker News on the free plan?

Yes. Hacker News is checked hourly on every plan, Free included, with 10 keywords and the API, MCP server and webhooks.

How fast do I need to be?

Fast. A Hacker News thread does most of its traffic in the first few hours. Keywords you mark Fast are checked every 15 minutes (5 on Plus, 50 on Pro, 150 on Business); the rest are hourly, which is sometimes too late to be the first useful answer.

Does it cover Ask HN and Show HN?

Yes, both, along with ordinary story submissions and every comment underneath them.

Platform

Monitor Hacker News

A single Hacker News thread can decide how a technical audience sees your product for a year. It is small, fast, and unusually consequential — and only four of the ten tools we researched monitor it.

Start free See all ten platforms

[01] WHAT FISHOUT COLLECTS/ HACKER NEWS

What gets collected

Stories and comments, including Ask HN and Show HN.

And the conversation around it

HN threads nest deeply, and a reply five levels down reads as nonsense alone. FishOut links a matched comment to the story or comment it answers when that one is in your project too, because one of your keywords matched it.

Who is on Hacker News

Engineers, founders and technical buyers. HN is where “what are people actually using for X in 2026?” gets asked, and where a bad answer about your product goes uncorrected unless someone is watching.

Worth knowing

HN moves fast and is hostile to marketing. A thread is effectively closed within hours, and a promotional reply does more damage than silence. This is the platform where the speed of the alert and the tone of the draft both matter most.

[02] WHAT YOU FIND THERE/ TRIAGED

Real Hacker News mentions, as FishOut reads them

Every post is read against your project's Brief: a relevance from 0 to 100 with Why chips saying what drove it, and labels such as Asking for recommendations or Complaint. Posts below the threshold go to Filtered with a reason and never count toward your plan. The examples here are illustrative.

Hacker News94

Ask HN: what are people actually using for email in 2026? I looked at AcmeMail and Notchmail this week and cannot tell from the site whether anything leaves my machine unencrypted.

Comparison

Hacker News90

Bramblemail is shutting down its free tier on 1 October. I have four years of mail in there and the export is a single mbox with no attachments.

Has a problem

[03] WHAT TO TRACK/ KEYWORDS

Keyword shapes that work on Hacker News

The same three keywords do not work everywhere. What finds buyers on Hacker News is different from what finds them on Reddit or in the trade press, and getting this wrong is the most common reason a listening tool goes unread.

Your product name, unfiltered

Volume on HN is low enough that you can afford to see everything. A brand keyword here produces a handful of mentions a week, and missing one is worse than reading three that did not matter.

“Ask HN” plus your category

Ask HN threads are direct requests for recommendations from a technical audience, and they close within hours. This is the single highest-value keyword shape on the platform.

Your competitors, including the ones you think are dead

HN threads resurface old tools constantly. A comparison that names you and a competitor from three years ago still shapes how a reader sees the category.

[04] WHO ELSE COVERS IT/ CHECKED

5 of 11 tools monitor Hacker News

Read from each tool's own materials on 5 September 2026, across the ten competitors we track. Coverage changes — a platform can restrict its API without warning — so each comparison page carries the date its facts were checked.

Also covers Hacker News

Does not

Questions

What to watch Hacker News for

The keyword shapes, relevance floors and routing differ by what you are looking for, so each of these is its own setup rather than a filter on this page.

Buyer intent Competitor mentions Bug reports Product feedback