Pull the list of companies in any Y Combinator batch, narrow it by industry, region, status or hiring, then open the profiles worth a closer look. With the Firecrawl plugin, ChatGPT can search Y Combinator companies by batch through Firecrawl Alexandria, reading straight from the public Y Combinator startup directory.
Best for
- Investors and scouts reviewing a new YC batch by sector the week it lands in the directory.
- Founders and job seekers finding YC startups in a batch that are hiring right now.
- Sales and partnerships teams building a list of recent YC companies in one market or region.
Plugins and data providers
Plugin: the Firecrawl plugin. Gives ChatGPT access to the Y Combinator directory tools in Firecrawl Alexandria, billing each lookup to your Firecrawl account.
Data providers in Firecrawl Alexandria
| Provider | Tool | What it returns |
|---|---|---|
| Y Combinator | Batches | Every batch label in the directory with its company count, newest first. |
| Y Combinator | Search | Companies matching an exact batch, industry, region, status (Active, Acquired, Public, Inactive) or tag, plus hiring, Top Companies and nonprofit flags, with optional free-text search. Returns 20 companies per page with one-liner, industry, tags, team size, location, stage and website. |
| Y Combinator | Company | One profile: long description, year founded, team size, location, status and the founders listed with their titles and bios. |
| Y Combinator | Jobs | Open roles on a company's profile, with role, location, remote or onsite, skills, visa notes, and salary or equity text where posted. |
Explore Firecrawl Alexandria data providers across categories
Starter prompt
Change the batch and industry to match your search:
@firecrawl Use Y Combinator's company directory through Firecrawl Alexandria.
First list the YC batches so you use the exact label, then search the
Summer 2026 batch for Fintech companies. Tell me what each tool costs before
you run it.
Give me a short update:
- How many Summer 2026 Fintech companies there are.
- A table with name, one-liner, location, team size and whether it's hiring.
- For up to three that are hiring, their open roles and any salary text.
Use only what the directory returns. If a field is blank, leave it blank.Before you start
- Install Firecrawl in ChatGPT. The button below opens Firecrawl's entry among ChatGPT plugins.
- Sign in to Firecrawl. Every lookup draws on your credit balance there. Create one if you don't have one yet.
- Use YC's batch labels. The directory spells batches out as season and year, such as Spring 2026, so ask ChatGPT to list batches first if you only know the short code.
Limitations of using ChatGPT to search YC companies by batch
A batch list goes stale fast and lives on a page built for browsers, which trips ChatGPT up in five ways.
- The newest batch postdates the model. Models only know what was in their training data up to a cutoff and don't account for later events unless a tool fetches them (OpenAI). On Oct 9, 2026, the directory already listed 123 Fall 2026 companies, a batch no model trained earlier could know.
- Four batches a year, not two. YC now runs Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall batches, and Spring 2025 was its first spring batch (Y Combinator). Memory built on the older two-batch rhythm can leave out half the cohorts in a year.
- The directory needs JavaScript. When we fetched the YC directory as plain HTML, the response carried little beyond the page title, because the company list loads in the browser (Y Combinator). A tool that only reads static text can come back with nothing to count.
- Status changes after Demo Day. A batch tells you when a company went through YC, not whether it's still independent. WorkLife, for example, is listed as Winter 2015 and Acquired (Y Combinator).
- Search answers can be partial or invented. OpenAI warns that what ChatGPT finds through search, and the sources it cites, may be out of date, missing pieces or simply incorrect (OpenAI), and ChatGPT can state made-up facts with confidence (OpenAI). A list of "Summer 2026 fintech startups" pieced together from news posts can pad itself with plausible names.
How it works
A YC batch answer draws on:
- Firecrawl Alexandria: the catalog Firecrawl built so agents can query real data sources. It counts 100+ official providers under paid agreements and public sources such as the YC directory, alongside indexes Firecrawl runs over the open web, papers, code documentation and public-sector sources. In an 845-task benchmark that kept models and prompts fixed, Firecrawl's evaluation scored answers from agents using Firecrawl Alexandria 21% higher in quality than answers from agents on built-in web tools.
- Exact labels: the search tool matches batch, industry, region and tag exactly as YC publishes them, so ChatGPT reads the batch list first and filters on "Summer 2026" rather than guessing "S26".
- Paging to the end: results come 20 at a time, and ChatGPT keeps requesting pages until the directory says there are no more, up to 50 pages for one set of filters.
- Read-only, priced up front: ChatGPT checks each tool's cost before calling it, and the tools only read the public directory. They can't apply to jobs or contact anyone.
Searching YC companies by batch in ChatGPT with and without Firecrawl Alexandria
| From memory and search | From YC's directory | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the list comes from | Training data, news posts and launch roundups | YC's startup directory, read when you ask |
| Newest batch | Often missing or partial | Listed as soon as YC adds the companies |
| Batch labels | Guessed from memory | The exact labels and company counts from the directory |
| Filtering | Whatever the articles happened to mention | Batch, industry, region, status, tag, hiring, Top Companies and nonprofit |
| Completeness | No way to know what's missing | A total count, with paging until the list ends |
| Hiring | Old job posts | The directory's hiring flag and each company's open roles |
| Source | Hard to trace | Y Combinator's own directory, read through Firecrawl Alexandria, whose 100+ official providers span companies, finance, media and government. Explore the catalog |
Build a YC batch search for your goal
Shape the request around what you'll do with the list. If you're scouting a batch as an investor:
@firecrawl Search the Fall 2026 YC batch in Firecrawl Alexandria and page
through every result. Group the companies by industry, count each group,
and list the B2B ones with their one-liner, tags and team size.If you're looking for a job at a young YC startup:
@firecrawl Find Summer 2026 YC companies tagged AI that the directory marks
as hiring. For each, list its open roles with location, remote or onsite,
and any salary or equity text.Both name an exact batch label and say which fields matter, so ChatGPT knows which filters to set and when the list is finished.
Take it further
One region only
@firecrawl List the YC Spring 2026 companies in the Europe region, with city,
one-liner and industry.Who got acquired
@firecrawl Which Summer 2025 YC companies does the directory now list as
Acquired? Give the one-liner for each.A theme inside a batch
@firecrawl Search the Winter 2026 YC batch for "voice agents" and keep only
companies whose one-liner is really about voice.The founders behind a company
@firecrawl Open the YC profile for Pennant and tell me its batch, year
founded, team size and the founders listed with their titles.Prices before anything runs
@firecrawl What Y Combinator tools are in Firecrawl Alexandria, and what
does each one cost per call?What it costs
Browsing the catalog and reading prices costs nothing. Running a tool spends credits from your Firecrawl account, and plans are listed on Firecrawl pricing.
| Y Combinator tool | Returns | Credits per call |
|---|---|---|
| Batches | Every batch label with its company count | 5 |
| Search | One page of up to 20 matching companies | 5 |
| Company | One company profile with its listed founders | 5 |
| Jobs | One company's open roles | 5 |
A full batch costs 5 credits per page of 20, and ChatGPT reports each tool it ran and what it spent.
[ YC batches in ChatGPT ]
Install the Firecrawl plugin and ask ChatGPT who is in the latest YC batch. Checking tools and prices is free.
Related use cases
- How to find startups that just raised money in ChatGPT: see which YC companies raised after Demo Day, using Fireround.
- How to generate B2B leads in ChatGPT: find people to contact at the companies in a batch with Apollo and FullEnrich.
- Fireround: funding rounds and investors for the startups you find in a batch.
Coverage limits
- What YC publishes. Status, hiring and team size are as the directory reports them, and search results carry no funding amounts. Founders appear only on the company profile.
- Upcoming batches are thin. Labels for batches that haven't started yet can show only a few companies, such as three for Winter 2027 on Oct 9, 2026.
- Loose free-text search. A text query matches names and descriptions broadly and can return companies off the topic, so filter on exact labels where you can.