Automate Product Hunt lead generation with Apify and Google Sheets

ASCN.AI has created an Apify scraper which collects daily information from Product Hunt's product launches (15+ data fields per launch, including the maker's email address, social profile, and others). All lead data is compiled and delivered as structured leads to your Google Sheet no later than 9 AM each day. 1,900+ startup leads can be generated monthly, and it takes less than 48 hours to set up and can be automated at a cost starting from $59 per month.

To automate product leads from Product Hunt using Apify:

• Configure Apify's Product Hunt scraper actor with a date range and product categories of interest.
• Set up a 9 AM daily schedule trigger for automatic scraping.
• Extract product data including the product name, tagline, upvotes, maker email address, and individual maker social profile address.
• Send results via webhook to the automation layer (n8n or Make.com).
• Score leads against your Ideal Customer Profile (using GPT-4o to determine which leads are HOT/WARM/COLD) based on their product launch date.
• Write structured lead rows to Google Sheets or route directly into HubSpot/Salesforce.

On average, between 50 and 100 products from different companies launch on a daily basis on Product Hunt, where each product has a website and email address associated with it; and each company/individual has approximately 48 hours of being live and having access to their email after launching before they become less accessible due to their reluctance or inability to respond (significant engagement, answering all comments, etc). Once they do become less accessible, they will have experienced the 48-hour period that makes it the best time to make contact.

The challenge is finding products before they close off access as described above, which requires manually monitoring Product Hunt & product maker contact info, and compiling this information into a spreadsheet for support (7+ hrs/day). This level of effort will not be sustainable for most teams. Most teams do not even attempt it.

ASCN.AI automates the entire process. Apify scrapes Product Hunt every day to collect data, after which the data are enriched through a series of processes and returned to you by placing leads in your Google Sheet without duplicates and scoring them against your company's Ideal Customer Profile before your first meeting each day.

50 Fresh Start-ups Leads Daily

5-days a-week; capture 50 New Product Launches every day + weekly Top 100 from last week's Upvotes + 1-15+ Data fields per Product.

Quick Facts

• Leads/month: 1900+ total = 50 New Daily + Top 100 of the week previous
• Lead Cost: 0.03-0.05 ea.
• Data Fields per Product: 15+
• Set Up Time: 48 Hours
• Minimum Price: $59/month
• Output as: Google Sheets, HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.
• AI Score Available: GPT-4o HOT/WARM/COLD classification available
• Schedule: captures 50 Daily New Products @ 9 AM + Monday weekly Top 100 Sweep

The 15+ Data Fields Extracted from Each Product

Each Row in your Google Sheet will include the product name/tagline, full description, launch date, category tag (maximum of 3), total number of upvotes, total number of comments, maker name(s), maker Twitter/X handle(s), maker LinkedIn page(s), primary contact email(s) (via website crawling), secondary/CC email(s), product/website URL, product-related/social pages (Discord, Instagram, Youtube, Telegram, WhatsApp), phone numbers (if they exist on public websites), and the product banner image URL.

The Apify Actor Crawls Each Product's Website; not just the Product Hunt Page. For instance: if a founder never added their email to Product Hunt, it may exist on the homepage of their company's website therefore would be captured through the website crawling.

Weekly Top 100 Sweep

Every Monday, the system will capture the previous week of Product Launches; Top 100 Products based on Upvotes. This will provide you with the week's validated winners that are currently trending and have been endorsed by the Product Hunt Community and can depict high-signal for your sales and investor workflows.

ASCN.AI Automates Lead Generation For Products On Product Hunt

In brief - Apify Daily Scrapes Product Hunt, n8n or Make.com Enriches and Routes, and then Google Sheets (or CRM) Receives Structured Leads Row with No Daily Touches for Complete Automation.

1st Step — Apify Scraper Set Up

The Most Efficient Apify Product Hunt Actors use Apollo GraphQL's internal cache to pull data from Product Hunt to provide a more stable scraper build to be able to withstand UI changes. The data structure below the UI will almost always remain the same as the site is redesigned.

ASCN.AI Sets Up: target date range of product releases, filtering of categories (AI, Developer Tools, SaaS, Productivity, Marketing, all), Upvote Thresholds (Set 50 to minimize noise), a predetermined number of products to pull with each run, and Crawl/No Crawl for the website. Each run takes less than 5 minutes when pulling 50 products; however, the cost using Apify will be between $0.82 - $1.60 per run, based on 2026 pay per lead model.

2nd Step — GPT-4o Enrichment and Scoring

Once the raw data leaves Apify, it will have an optional routing to the GPT-4o to score each product against your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP):

1. HOT – target category, 100+ upvotes, email address, signals of B2B product.
2. WARM – they meet all criteria, but lack (1) Qualifier.
3. COLD – outside of ICP or lack of sufficient data.

In the Google Sheet, the HOT leads will be indicated in red. You'll review 10-15 HOT leads instead of the 50 products found. In addition, GPT-4o will provide a personalized (1 line outreach hook) for each HOT Lead based on the specific product, versus a general template, allowing reply rates 3-5 times higher.

Step 3 — CRM and Sheet Automation

In step three, we are automating the process of populating a Google Sheet with the data provided from the Apify webhook. The automated system will remove all duplicates before entering the next available row for each of the products that are being added. The Google Sheets will contain one tab for each week, with the total 15+ fields and the AI score for each of the products added to a single row in the Google Sheet. Additionally, you can push products as they are added directly to HubSpot or Salesforce with custom field mapping and pipeline assignment.

Who This Will Benefit

Automation of leads from Product Hunt is ideal for the sales team that is focused on connecting with startup founders, or software as a service companies that are searching for integration partners, or marketing agencies that are attempting to locate new customers, or investors and venture capitalists that would like to track early stage launches.

Selling and Business Development Teams

Access to founders via Product Hunt provides access to decision-makers and not marketers or gatekeepers. When a company has launched publicly for 24 hours and has listed their product on Product Hunt, every message will be read until they respond. Using personalized outreach within 48 hours after a company's product launch will yield a 15% to 40% reply rate, as opposed to a 2% to 5% reply rate achieved using generic mass mailings.

There are 50 founders that will receive your outreach every day. Assuming you get a 10% response rate to the HOT leads = 190 total conversations per month. Cost to utilize the automation services are $59.00/month.

SaaS Startup Founders and Indie Hackers

Find complementary products for integration or co-marketing partnerships in minutes with an automated solution. ASCN.AI automates the entire complementary products discovery process. No need to have an n8n account, have any knowledge of Apify, or be a developer to utilize the solution. The solution is $59.00/month, and you will be fully functional within 48 hours of signing up.

Marketing Agencies

Each client has their own pipeline. Therefore, you can filter based on product category, create a separate Google Sheet for that client, and deliver as a white labeled product. The clients that require developer tools will receive the products that are issued by AI DevTools. E-commerce clients receive products issued under the categories of Commerce and Marketing. Each client delivers only one agreement to ASCN.AI, yet has multiple custom feeds.

Investors & VCs

Filter by product category and vote approval level to receive 20-30 products each week that signal potential for future deal flow. ASCN.AI can perform additional due diligence steps by enhancing their processes through LinkedIn and Crunchbase enrichments to research leads more thoroughly.

Cost Comparisons

Apify Pricing 2026

In 2026, Apify will generate revenue through a pay-per-event pricing model. Product Hunt Scraper pricing will be between $0.003 - $0.039 per product scraped, and charged based on event and web page crawl status. Therefore, if using Product Hunt Scraper and scraping 50 products per day, Apify will generate between $25 and $48 of revenue from ASCN.AI's customers ($1,000 - $3,000/month).

This means that ASCN.AI will not bill their users separately for using Apify's services.

Lead Qualification Using AI - Enrichment Layer

The optional enrichment layer that utilizes GPT-4o classification helps quickly determine if a lead is HOT, WARM or COLD based on your defined criteria. Furthermore, when leads are classified as HOT, the system will automatically provide each lead with a unique outreach hook. This process will reduce the number of products from 50/day to 10-15 targeted products with each complete product check.

What Does It Mean to Be a HOT lead?

A HOT lead is defined as a product in the AI space (Developer Tools, SaaS), with at least 100 up-votes, with at least one maker provided email address within the product description, or that are B2B (business to business) based on the product description. GPT4 will classify products in accordance with your defined criteria daily using the same consistent procedures each morning with no delays or fatigue.

ASCN.AI provides a unique way to create highly personalized outreach. For every HOT lead, GPT-4o will generate a single line that reads: “Congratulations on launching [product name] — [specific detail from launch] — we help [your relevant service]. Is it worth a quick call?” Please note that this is NOT a template. Each one is personalized for that specific product and only takes 10 seconds for a user to look over. Response rates from HOT leads have been reported to be 3–5 times higher than generic outreach.

Technical Stack

ASCN.AI has set up the technical stack as follows:

Apify (scraper for Product Hunt) → n8n or Make.com (orchestration + enrichment + deduplication using GPT-4o) → Google Sheets or HubSpot/Salesforce (structured delivery of leads). ASCN.AI manages all three areas; including ongoing operations and updates, at this time.

The value of ASCN.AI vs. the value of an $29 n8n template:

ASCN.AI setup in this order:

• Day 1: Apify actor set up and configured, Google account connected. Workflow built. Structure for sheet created/approved.
• Day 2: Full test: manual trigger run, all fields (15+) verified, deduplication completed and scoring verified. You received a walkthrough.
• Day 3: First automated run, 50 leads, sent to your sheet at 9am.

Frequently asked questions:

Do I have to know how to code?

No, ASCN.AI will perform all technical configurations (Apify, workflow building, Google Sheets structure, GPT-4o prompts, continuous maintenance).

Can I filter by category for Product Hunt scrapes?

Yes. AI, Develop, Productivity, Marketing SaaS, Finance — you can filter on any category or combination of categories.

Is it legal to scrape Product Hunt? Is this GDPR compliant?

All extracted data includes information that is fully accessible from Product Hunt and maker operated websites. Data pulled from B2B listings is considered legitimate interest according to GDPR recitals 47. Additionally, ASCN.AI’s pipeline does not scrape user credentials to gain access or extract non-public information.

Can I push the leads into HubSpot or Salesforce?

Yes, each lead will be automatically pushed to the respective CRM. Each lead will be pushed with fully mapped custom fields and will be confirmed to be a unique lead (deduplication) and added to your appropriate pipeline.

Can I scrape multiple clients?

Yes, you will be able to create an individual lead pipeline per client. Each of these pipelines will have specific categories or combinations of categories. All of these lead pipelines will be managed under the same ASCN.AI Service Agreement.

What if Product Hunt changes the design of their website?

The ASCN.AI actor is extracting from the Product Hunt GraphQL database. Therefore, ASCN.AI is resilient to whatever changes occur with their design. In the event Product Hunt makes a change, ASCN.AI will update the configuration at no cost to you.

Can I access historical data from Product Hunt?

Yes, at the time of setup ASCN.AI will conduct a one-time pull of up to 90 days of launch history for all products that will include full contact data for up to 9000 products to use as a starting point.

How long after a launch should I contact the makers?

ASCN.AI recommends that you reach out within the first 48-72 hours of the launch date. Makers will see a minimum of 2 to 3 times higher response rates to outreach messages that reference their specific product during that period versus outreach messages sent one week after the launch date.

The data extracted through this service are publicly accessible from the websites of Product Hunt and the maker. This service does not bypass authentication to obtain or access information (non-publicly accessible). Each user bears the sole responsibility for the use and compliance of all data extracted through this service for commercial outreach under the laws of GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CASL.