n8n-nodes-deep-research

Free, zero-API-key research node for n8n — search the web, Reddit, Hacker News, Wikipedia, news feeds, scrape any page, and run deep multi-source research, all at zero cost.

Features

| Operation | Source | Auth Required | Description | |-----------|--------|---------------|-------------| | Web Search | DuckDuckGo | No | General web search | | Reddit Search | Reddit JSON API | No | Search posts with sort & time filters | | Hacker News | HN Algolia API | No | Search stories, comments, Ask/Show HN | | Wikipedia | Wikipedia API | No | Search articles, get extracts, any language | | News / RSS | Google News, BBC, TechCrunch, Custom | No | Search news via RSS feeds | | GitHub | GitHub Public API | No | Search repos, issues, code, users | | Scrape Web Page | Any URL | No | Fetch page, extract text, links, metadata | | Deep Research | ALL sources combined | No | Aggregates from every source in parallel |

Install

Option 1: Install via npm (recommended)

# In your n8n custom nodes directory
cd ~/.n8n/custom
npm install n8n-nodes-deep-research

Then restart n8n.

Option 2: Install globally and link

# Clone or download this repo
git clone https://github.com/your-username/n8n-nodes-deep-research.git
cd n8n-nodes-deep-research
npm install
npm run build

# Link globally
npm link

# In your n8n custom nodes directory
cd ~/.n8n/custom
npm link n8n-nodes-deep-research

Option 3: Docker

Add to your docker-compose.yml:

volumes:
  - ./n8n-nodes-deep-research:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n-nodes-deep-research

Or in your Dockerfile:

COPY n8n-nodes-deep-research /usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n-nodes-deep-research
RUN cd /usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n-nodes-deep-research && npm install && npm run build

Option 4: n8n Community Install (if published to npm)

In n8n, go to Settings → Community Nodes → Install and search for deep-research.

Usage

1. Open any n8n workflow
2. Add a Deep Research node
3. Select your operation from the dropdown
4. Enter your search query
5. Configure any source-specific options (sort, time filter, etc.)
6. Run the workflow

Example: Search Reddit for product feedback

Operation: Reddit Search
Query: "best mechanical keyboard 2025"
Max Results: 15
Sort By: Top
Time Filter: Past Month

Example: Deep Research on a topic

Operation: Deep Research
Query: "quantum computing applications healthcare"
Max Results: 25

This will run searches across DuckDuckGo, Reddit, Hacker News, Wikipedia, and Google News simultaneously and return all results.

Example: Scrape a web page

Operation: Scrape Web Page
URL: https://example.com/article
Extract Links: true
Max Text Length: 20000

Output Format

Each result is returned as a separate item with these common fields:

{
  "title": "Result Title",
  "url": "https://example.com/page",
  "snippet": "Brief description or excerpt...",
  "source": "duckduckgo|reddit|hackernews|wikipedia|news-google|github"
}

Source-specific extra fields:

Reddit: redditScore, redditAuthor, redditSubreddit, redditNumComments, redditCreatedUtc

Hacker News: hnPoints, hnAuthor, hnNumComments, hnCreated, hnObjectId

Wikipedia: wikiWordcount, wikiTimestamp

GitHub: githubStars, githubForks, githubLanguage, githubTopics

News/RSS: publishedAt, author

Scrape: description, ogTitle, ogDescription, ogImage, textContent, textLength, links, linksCount

Return as Single Item

Enable Additional Fields → Return as Single Item to get all results wrapped in a single item:

{
  "operation": "deepResearch",
  "totalResults": 25,
  "results": [
    { "title": "...", "url": "...", "source": "..." },
    ...
  ]
}

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start development with hot reload
npm run dev

# Build for production
npm run build

# Lint code
npm run lint

# Lint and auto-fix
npm run lint:fix

How It Works (No API Keys Needed)

• DuckDuckGo: Parses their HTML search page (no API key needed)
• Reddit: Uses the public reddit.com/search.json endpoint
• Hacker News: Uses the Algolia HN API (hn.algolia.com)
• Wikipedia: Uses the MediaWiki Action API
• News: Parses RSS/Atom feeds from news sites
• GitHub: Uses the unauthenticated public Search API (60 requests/hour)
• Scraping: Fetches raw HTML and extracts content

Limitations

• DuckDuckGo HTML parsing may break if DDG changes their page structure
• Reddit's public API has rate limits (without OAuth)
• GitHub unauthenticated API: 60 requests/hour
• Web scraping depends on the target page's structure
• No authentication means some rate-limited APIs may be slower

License

MIT