# Newsletter Author Contacts (`aurenic/newsletter-author-contacts`) Actor

Extract Substack newsletter author contacts, emails and publication stats. Keyless, HTTP-only, no login.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/aurenic/newsletter-author-contacts.md
- **Developed by:** [Aurenic](https://apify.com/aurenic) (community)
- **Stats:** 4 total users, 2 monthly users, 96.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.50 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Newsletter Author Contacts

Extract Substack newsletter author contacts, emails and publication stats — keyless, HTTP-only, no login.

### What does Newsletter Author Contacts do?

This actor reads Substack's public archive and About endpoints to build outreach-ready author leads. For each publication it returns the author name, contact email, subscriber count, category, recent post activity and social links. No cookies, no API key, no browser.

### Output fields

| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| publication_name | string | Publication display name |
| publication_url | string | Canonical URL |
| subdomain | string | Substack subdomain |
| publication_id | integer | Substack publication ID |
| author_name | string | Author display name |
| author_email | string | Primary contact email (first match) |
| author_emails | array | All extracted emails (when > 1) |
| email_count | integer | Number of emails found |
| subscriber_count | integer | Subscriber count parsed from the About page |
| description | string | Publication description |
| category | string | Primary post tag |
| latest_post_title | string | Most recent post title |
| latest_post_date | string | Most recent post date (ISO) |
| latest_post_url | string | Most recent post URL |
| post_count_fetched | integer | Posts retrieved in this run |
| social | object | twitter, linkedin, instagram, youtube, website |
| contact_page_url | string | About page URL |
| source | string | `substack` |
| scraped_at | string | ISO timestamp |

### Who is it for?

- **PR and media relations** building journalist contact lists
- **Sponsorship sales** prospecting newsletter owners by category and reach
- **Guest booking** finding podcast-hosting newsletter authors
- **CRM enrichment** auto-filling author emails and subscriber counts
- **Market research** mapping the newsletter landscape by category
- **AI agents and MCP users** pulling creator contacts for outreach

### Pricing

**Pay per result: $1.50 per 1,000 authors.**

Charged only for records actually written to the dataset.

### How to use it

1. Open the actor in Apify Console.
2. Paste Substack publication URLs or subdomains into **Publication URLs**.
3. Optionally add category slugs to **Discovery categories**.
4. Toggle email enrichment on or off.
5. Click **Start** and export as JSON, CSV or Excel.

### Output example

```json
{
  "record_type": "newsletter_author",
  "publication_name": "The Pragmatic Engineer",
  "publication_url": "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com",
  "subdomain": "newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com",
  "publication_id": 458709,
  "author_name": "The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter",
  "author_email": "contact@pragmaticengineer.com",
  "email_count": 1,
  "subscriber_count": 1000000,
  "description": "The #1 software/AI engineering newsletter on Substack",
  "category": "Google",
  "latest_post_title": "The Pulse: Firebase's global outage & poor response",
  "latest_post_date": "2026-10-01T16:43:19.985Z",
  "latest_post_url": "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-firebases-global-outage",
  "post_count_fetched": 5,
  "social": {
    "twitter": "https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz",
    "linkedin": null,
    "instagram": null,
    "youtube": null,
    "website": "https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com"
  },
  "contact_page_url": "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/about",
  "source": "substack",
  "scraped_at": "2026-10-03T12:00:00.000Z"
}
```

### Technical details

- **Stack:** Node.js 24, `apify` SDK, native `fetch`, `cheerio`.
- **Endpoints:** `https://{sub}.substack.com/api/v1/archive` (public archive) and `https://{sub}.substack.com/about` (public About page). No cookies, no API key.
- **Email extraction:** regex scan of the About page HTML plus `mailto:` link extraction, with a blacklist for Substack-owned domains.
- **Subscriber count:** parsed from the About page prose (`"over 1 million readers"`, `"50,000+ subscribers"`, `"10k subscribers"`).
- **Social links:** extracted from About page anchors.
- **Retries:** 429 and 5xx responses are retried up to three times with backoff.
- **Proxy:** defaults to the Apify datacenter pool.

### Known limits

- **Discovery is best-effort.** Substack's category leaderboard pages are JS-rendered, so category-based discovery returns fewer results than URL-driven enrichment. Enrichment of known publication URLs is fully supported.
- **Email extraction depends on the About page.** Publications that don't publish an email in their About page produce `author_email: null`. The actor does not guess or pattern-generate emails.
- **Subscriber counts are approximate.** Parsed from prose, not from an exact API field.
- **Custom-domain publications work.** The actor accepts both `*.substack.com` subdomains and custom domains that route to Substack.
- **Beehiiv and Ghost are not yet supported.** This build covers Substack only.

### FAQ

**Do I need a Substack account?**
No. The archive and About endpoints are public.

**Why is discovery weaker than enrichment?**
Substack's category leaderboard is rendered client-side. The actor can discover slugs but not reliably enumerate publications from them. Paste publication URLs for reliable results.

**Can I get paid-subscriber counts?**
The About page prose occasionally mentions paid subscriber counts, but Substack does not expose an exact paid-tier number publicly.

**What emails does the actor find?**
Whichever contact emails appear on the About page — typically `contact@`, `hello@` or the author's personal address.

### Support

Open an issue on the Actor's page for bugs or feature requests.

### Changelog

#### 0.1 — 2026-10-03

- Initial build. Substack-only newsletter author enrichment.
- Public archive endpoint for recent posts and publication ID.
- About page parsing for author name, description, subscriber count and social links.
- Email extraction via regex scan and `mailto:` link extraction.
- Category-based discovery (best-effort; leaderboard pages are JS-rendered).
- Retries on 429 and 5xx with backoff.
- No login, no cookies, no API key.

# Actor input Schema

## `publications` (type: `array`):

Substack publication URLs or subdomains. Example: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com, https://platformer.news

## `categories` (type: `array`):

Substack category slugs to discover publications from. Leave empty to skip discovery. Example: technology, business, culture.

## `maxPostsPerPublication` (type: `integer`):

Number of recent posts to fetch per publication for stats.

## `maxResultsPerSource` (type: `integer`):

Cap records written per publication or category.

## `enrichEmails` (type: `boolean`):

Fetch the About page and scan for author contact emails.

## `proxy` (type: `object`):

Defaults to Apify datacenter proxy. Substack accepts datacenter IPs.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "publications": [
    "newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com",
    "platformer.news",
    "www.lennysnewsletter.com"
  ],
  "categories": [],
  "maxPostsPerPublication": 5,
  "maxResultsPerSource": 200,
  "enrichEmails": true,
  "proxy": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `dataset` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("aurenic/newsletter-author-contacts").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("aurenic/newsletter-author-contacts").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{}' |
apify call aurenic/newsletter-author-contacts --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,aurenic/newsletter-author-contacts"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/wuLLGneZvXTGRtodi/builds/23GE9Gs5ynidSoP8n/openapi.json