# hnfaster

> Fast full-text search across 49M Hacker News items using Postgres BM25

hnfaster is a high-speed search interface covering roughly 49 million Hacker News stories, comments, jobs, and polls. It runs live full-text queries on every keystroke directly against Neon Postgres using native BM25 ranking and SQL-over-HTTP without an application-level cache. It serves as both a quick search tool for HN and an open-source reference architecture for database-level search.

Website: https://hnfaster.vercel.app/

## What it is for

- Search Hacker News discussions and comment threads across historical archives
- Filter HN items by type such as stories, comments, and jobs with custom date ranges
- Study an open-source reference implementation of in-database BM25 search on Neon Postgres

## Features

- Indexed search over approximately 49M Hacker News items updated hourly
- In-database BM25 text ranking via Lakebase Search extension in Neon
- Direct SQL-over-HTTP requests on every keystroke without connection pooling
- In-memory caching via pg\_prewarm for table and index data
- Dedicated tabs for stories, comments, and jobs
- Sorting options by relevance or date alongside time-range filters
- Per-user profile and per-item view pages

## Pricing

Free to use and open source

## Details

- Type: Web app
- Category: [Development](https://xiry.app/topics/development.md)
- Open source: yes
- Platforms: Web
- For: Developers and Hacker News readers looking for quick search or Postgres reference architectures
- Alternative to: Algolia Hacker News Search
- Tags: hacker news, postgres, neon, full text search, bm25, nextjs, open source

## Why it was saved

- [@rishi_raj_jain_, 14 September 2026](https://x.com/rishi_raj_jain_/status/2099387257354584289): Fast way to search all of HN including comments; also a reference implementation of doing search entirely at the Postgres layer: BM25 ranking (Lakebase Search) inside Neon Postgres, every keystroke a live SQL-over-HTTP query, no connection pool, pg\_prewarm to keep table + indexes in cache, partial BM25 index per type matching the WHERE clause, deployed on Vercel with no Next.js-level cache.

## Related

- [hn-search](https://xiry.app/resources/hn-search): Full-text search over 49M Hacker News items using Neon Postgres BM25 (GitHub repo, Open source)
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Updated 10 October 2026. Page: https://xiry.app/resources/hnfaster

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