ExploreYC
A free database and API that lets you query information about Y Combinator, a16z-backed, and Product Hunt startups programmatically, instead of manually digging through each company's own site.
🔗 Visit ExploreYC
Description
If you've ever wanted to answer a question like "which YC startups from the last two batches are building developer tools?" you know the only real option used to be manually browsing YC's directory page by page. ExploreYC turns that kind of research into a query: it pulls together startup and funding information from Y Combinator, a16z, and Product Hunt into one place, and lets you access it either through a web interface or a REST API.
ExploreYC is a free API and database platform aggregating startup ecosystem data — company profiles, funding signals, and launch information — from YC, a16z-backed companies, and Product Hunt. It's built for developers, researchers, and analysts who want to query this data programmatically rather than scrape each source separately: think building a dashboard of a specific YC batch, tracking a16z portfolio activity, or feeding startup data into another tool. There's no paid tier currently — the whole thing is free to use.
💬 Our review
The short version: if you need structured data about YC, a16z, or Product Hunt startups for a project, dashboard, or research and don't want to scrape three different sites yourself, ExploreYC hands it to you as a free API.
Its main advantage is simply that it exists and costs nothing — most alternatives are either paid startup-data platforms like Crunchbase and PitchBook (which cover far more ground but require an expensive subscription) or roll-your-own scraping of YC's public directory. For a hobby project, research paper, or quick prototype, ExploreYC is hard to beat on price. The tradeoff is scope and reliability guarantees: as a free, presumably smaller-scale project, there's no visible SLA, and coverage is limited to YC/a16z/Product Hunt rather than the broader startup and funding universe Crunchbase indexes. Good fit for developers and researchers doing lightweight analysis; not a substitute for Crunchbase or PitchBook if you need comprehensive, guaranteed-fresh funding data for business-critical decisions.
📊 Global score
🤖 AI-enriched data
100% gratuit, aucun palier payant identifié
Pros
100% gratuit, y compris l'accès API
Agrège trois sources (YC, a16z, Product Hunt) en un seul point d'accès
Accès programmatique via API, pas seulement une interface web
Évite de scraper manuellement plusieurs annuaires publics
Cons
Pas de SLA visible, fiabilité pour un usage critique incertaine
Couverture limitée à YC/a16z/Product Hunt, pas l'univers startup complet
Projet gratuit sans modèle économique visible = pérennité incertaine
Ne remplace pas des plateformes de funding complètes comme Crunchbase