Algolia Hacker News Search
Hacker ApprovedRanked 17 of 38 search engines by recommenders
Free search of Hacker News comments and submissions that finds content hidden by flagging. Critics note keyword-only matching and occasional cache or syncing glitches.
Free search of Hacker News comments and submissions that finds content hidden by flagging. Critics note keyword-only matching and occasional cache or syncing glitches.
27 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 20
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 74%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 20 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Finds content hidden by flagging
“One of the nice things I like about hn.algolia.com is that it doesn’t care about flagging.”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “I Am Not A Number. In memory of the more than 72,000 Palestinians killed” “That way you can still find content that is ordinarily rudely shoved out of view.”
Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “Why is Hacker News like that?” “good to see submissions unfairly flagged off the main page by dishonest groups”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Tell HN: Want a better HN? Visit /newest” Good search interface and usefulness
“hn.algolia.com is a great search interface”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents” “I find the HN search to be quite useful.”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search” “It’s such a joy to use, to share”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Algolia Hacker News Search GitHub Project Archived” Better than Google and Reddit search
“It's pretty good. You appreciate it more when you try to use Reddit's!”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Please Don't” “can be way more useful than google to me”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “I Just Want to Search”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Cache and syncing glitches
“Seems to have some weird cache issues though, had to play around with the ?querystring part to get more results”
Comment from 15 May 2026 in “Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying” “the JS front-end seems to have some syncing bugs”
Comment from 15 May 2026 in “Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying” Feels abandoned or broken
“it feels more like it's abandoned”
Comment from 22 Feb 2026 in “Algolia Hacker News Search GitHub Project Archived” “It is just so horribly broken”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Algolia Hacker News Search GitHub Project Archived” “hn.algolia.com gave me a 502”
Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “Proton Down, except for the site telling you it's down” Keyword search is hard to use
“using the current keyword based search has been consistently giving me a hard time”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “A better way to search Hacker News using LLMs” “Even using algolia, I don't see a way to generate a list in this exact format.”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “ΠFS”
Other search engines people recommend
The four most recommended other search engines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kagi | 732 | 234 | 76% | 13 | 2 yrs106 owners | Approved |
| Google Search | 315 | 1,039 | 23% | 12 | 20 yrs25 owners | — |
| DuckDuckGo | 286 | 204 | 58% | 12 | 3.5 yrs47 owners | — |
| Hister | 81 | 9 | 90% | 9 | 2 mo17 owners | Approved |
| Algolia Hacker News SearchThis page | 20 | 7 | 74% | 10 | — | Approved |
What people said
23 of the 27 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's driven by aggregated user complaints, so it's pretty high-quality.”
“No Javascript Algolia search”
“That way you can still find content that is ordinarily rudely shoved out of view.”
“Good moment to pull specifics from hn.algolia.com.”
“hn.algolia.com gave me a 502”
“can be way more useful than google to me”
“HN (algolia) search also includes in the results any submission or comment by usernames/handles that match the keyword”
“I find the HN search to be quite useful.”
“I suggested using the search box at bottom of most pages as the quickest means.”
“Even using algolia, I don't see a way to generate a list in this exact format.”
“the JS front-end seems to have some syncing bugs”
“Seems to have some weird cache issues though, had to play around with the ?querystring part to get more results”
“discovered that ~432 requests a day at Algolia is enough.”
“One of the nice things I like about hn.algolia.com is that it doesn’t care about flagging.”
“searching HN itself is a great option IMO”
“hn.algolia.com is a great search interface”
“It’s such a joy to use, to share”
“It is just so horribly broken”
“it feels more like it's abandoned”
“Searching HN for individual comments that include jargon that is indicative of knowledge relating to my interests does make me happy.”
“It's pretty good. You appreciate it more when you try to use Reddit's!”
“good to see submissions unfairly flagged off the main page by dishonest groups”
“using the current keyword based search has been consistently giving me a hard time”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.