# Substack Scraper: Posts, Full Text & Newsletter Subscribers (`best_apis/substack-scraper`) Actor

Scrape any Substack newsletter without login: posts with full text (Markdown, text or HTML), likes, comments, restacks, authors and tags, plus newsletter subscriber counts and paid plan prices. Keyword search and category leaderboards. $0.40 per 1,000 posts.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/best_apis/substack-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [A Q](https://apify.com/best_apis) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Social media, AI
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per event

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

## Substack Scraper: Posts, Full Text & Newsletter Subscribers

Scrape any **Substack newsletter** in seconds, with no Substack account, login, cookies or API key. Give it newsletter addresses, post links, search keywords or a category, and get clean, structured JSON:

- **Posts**: title, subtitle, link, publish date, type (newsletter, podcast, thread), free or paid
- **Full post text** as **Markdown** (ideal for AI, RAG and LLM pipelines), plain text or the original HTML
- **Engagement**: likes (reactions), comments and restacks, plus word count
- **Authors** (bylines), tags, section, cover image, podcast audio link and duration
- **Newsletter info**: **subscriber count** ("Over 463,000 subscribers"), subscriber and paid-subscriber ranges, bestseller tier, **paid plan prices** (monthly, yearly, founding), author, language, launch date, logo
- **Substack search**: find posts across all of Substack by keyword
- **Category leaderboards**: discover the top (or top paid) newsletters in Technology, Business, Finance, Politics, Crypto, Science and 25+ more categories, with their rank

Works with `name.substack.com` addresses, bare subdomains (`noahpinion`), `open.substack.com` share links and **custom domains** (`www.noahpinion.blog`, `newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com`).

### Pricing: $0.40 per 1,000 posts, full text included

| | This Actor | Typical Substack scrapers on Apify |
|---|---|---|
| Posts (with full text) | **$0.40 per 1,000** | $1.15 per 1,000 metadata, $2.30 per 1,000 with content; others $1 to $15 per 1,000 |
| Newsletter info rows (subscribers, prices) | **$1.00 per 1,000** | $2 to $4 per 1,000 |
| Actor start | $0.0005 per GB of memory (512 MB default) | up to $0.09 per run |

You pay only for rows you receive. Full text costs nothing extra. Set **Max posts per newsletter** or **Max rows in total** to cap a run; your Apify maximum cost per run is always respected.

### Use cases

- **Newsletter sponsorship and partnership research**: rank newsletters in your niche by subscribers and paid plan price before you pitch or buy an ad slot.
- **Content and trend monitoring**: schedule a daily run on the newsletters you follow and send new posts to Slack, Google Sheets, Notion or a webhook.
- **AI, RAG and LLM datasets**: clean Markdown of every free post, with links and images kept, ready for embedding or summarization.
- **Competitor and market research**: see what top writers publish, how often, and which posts get the most likes, comments and restacks.
- **Media monitoring and PR**: search all of Substack for your brand, product or topic.

### Input examples

Latest 20 posts of two newsletters, with full text in Markdown:

```json
{ "newsletters": ["https://www.noahpinion.blog", "bytebytego"], "maxPostsPerNewsletter": 20 }
```

Top 100 Technology newsletters with subscribers and prices only (no posts):

```json
{ "categories": ["technology"], "maxNewslettersPerCategory": 100, "maxPostsPerNewsletter": 0 }
```

Search all of Substack for a keyword:

```json
{ "searchQueries": ["ai agents", "creator economy"], "maxPostsPerSearch": 100 }
```

Everything a newsletter published in the last 7 days, metadata only:

```json
{ "newsletters": ["newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com"], "publishedAfter": "7 days", "maxPostsPerNewsletter": 100, "contentFormat": "none" }
```

Most popular free posts of all time:

```json
{ "newsletters": ["https://www.noahpinion.blog"], "sort": "top", "audience": "free", "maxPostsPerNewsletter": 50 }
```

One specific post:

```json
{ "newsletters": ["https://blog.bytebytego.com/p/ep230-rag-vs-agentic-rag"] }
```

### Output

Post row (content shortened):

```json
{
  "type": "post", "postId": 165262142, "title": "A Visual Guide to AI Agents",
  "subtitle": "How AI agents work, key agentic patterns, benefits and challenges.",
  "url": "https://awesomeneuron.substack.com/p/a-visual-guide-to-ai-agents", "slug": "a-visual-guide-to-ai-agents",
  "publishedAt": "2025-06-08T05:30:00.000Z", "postType": "newsletter", "audience": "everyone", "isPaywalled": false,
  "newsletterName": "AwesomeNeuron", "newsletterUrl": "https://awesomeneuron.substack.com",
  "authors": [{ "name": "Rohit Kumar Tiwari", "handle": "analyticalrohit" }],
  "wordcount": 971, "reactionCount": 267, "commentCount": 24, "restackCount": 189,
  "previewText": "Today, I'll explain what AI agents are, using simple explanations and visuals.",
  "coverImage": "https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/....gif", "tags": [],
  "content": "Today, I'll explain what AI agents are...\n\n> A workflow is a set of connected steps...\n\n# **AI Workflows**\n...",
  "contentFormat": "markdown", "contentIsPreview": false, "searchQuery": "ai agents"
}
```

Newsletter row:

```json
{
  "type": "newsletter", "newsletterId": 35345, "name": "Noahpinion", "url": "https://www.noahpinion.blog",
  "subdomain": "noahpinion", "customDomain": "www.noahpinion.blog", "description": "Economics and other interesting stuff",
  "language": "en", "authorName": "Noah Smith", "authorHandle": "noahpinion",
  "subscribers": 463000, "subscribersText": "Over 463,000 subscribers",
  "subscriberRange": "Hundreds of thousands of subscribers", "paidSubscriberRange": "Tens of thousands of paid subscribers",
  "bestsellerTier": 10000, "paidSubscriptions": true, "currency": "USD", "monthlyPrice": 10, "yearlyPrice": 100, "foundingPrice": 420,
  "hasPodcast": true, "createdAt": "2020-03-28T03:32:51.086Z", "firstPostDate": "2020-11-24T18:26:23.401Z"
}
```

Leaderboard rows also carry `category`, `leaderboard` and `rank`. Inputs that could not be read (not a Substack site, not found) are listed in the `FAILURES` record of the run's key-value store, and the rest of the run continues.

The dataset has three views: **Posts** (overview table), **Post content** and **Newsletters**.

### How it works and limits

The Actor reads the same public JSON that Substack's own website loads for every visitor (archive, post and search pages), politely and with low concurrency. That means:

- **Paid posts** return only the public preview Substack shows to non-subscribers (`contentIsPreview: true`). Subscriber-only content is never bypassed.
- **Subscriber counts** are the figures Substack publishes on the newsletter page (for example "Over 463,000 subscribers"). Some newsletters hide them; then the field is null.
- **Search** returns posts only. Substack Notes, comments and reader profiles are not collected, by design.

### FAQ

**Do I need a Substack account or API key?** No. Nothing to set up.

**How fast is it?** About 50 posts per archive page; 100 posts with full text usually take 10 to 20 seconds.

**Does it work with custom domains?** Yes. Any Substack-hosted newsletter works, whatever its domain.

**Can I get only new posts?** Yes. Schedule the Actor with `publishedAfter` set to your schedule interval (for example "1 day") and connect an integration (Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, webhooks).

**Can I use it from AI agents?** Yes, through the Apify API, the Apify MCP server, or the Python and JavaScript clients:

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("best_apis/substack-scraper").call(run_input={"newsletters": ["bytebytego"], "maxPostsPerNewsletter": 10})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item.get("title") or item.get("name"))
```

```bash
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/best_apis~substack-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"searchQueries":["ai agents"],"maxPostsPerSearch":20}'
```

**Does it collect personal data?** It returns what newsletters publish publicly: posts, bylines and newsletter details. It does not collect emails, subscriber lists, commenters or reader profiles. You are responsible for using the data lawfully (for example GDPR and copyright: posts belong to their authors).

### Related Actors

- [RSS Feed Reader & Finder](https://apify.com/best_apis/rss-feed-reader): read any RSS, Atom or JSON feed.
- [Telegram Channel Scraper](https://apify.com/best_apis/telegram-channel-scraper): posts, views and reactions from public channels.
- [Apple Podcasts Scraper](https://apify.com/best_apis/apple-podcasts-scraper): podcasts, ratings and episodes.
- [Hacker News Scraper](https://apify.com/best_apis/hacker-news-scraper): stories, comments and Who is hiring jobs.

# Actor input Schema

## `newsletters` (type: `array`):

Substack newsletters by address (https://www.noahpinion.blog, https://name.substack.com), bare subdomain (noahpinion), custom domain or open.substack.com link. A post link (https://name.substack.com/p/slug) returns just that post. Leave everything empty for a demo run.

## `searchQueries` (type: `array`):

Optional. Find posts across all of Substack by keyword (Substack's own search), e.g. "ai agents". Notes and comments are never returned.

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

Optional. Pull the top newsletters of Substack category leaderboards, with subscriber counts and prices. Set Max posts per newsletter to 0 to get only the newsletter rows.

## `leaderboard` (type: `string`):

Which category leaderboard to read.

## `maxNewslettersPerCategory` (type: `integer`):

Leaderboard positions to read per category (25 per page).

## `maxPostsPerNewsletter` (type: `integer`):

Newest (or top) posts first, paged through the full archive until this limit. 0 = newsletter info only.

## `maxPostsPerSearch` (type: `integer`):

Search results to keep per query.

## `sort` (type: `string`):

Order of each newsletter's archive.

## `publishedAfter` (type: `string`):

Optional. Only posts newer than this: a date (2026-01-01) or a relative time like "24 hours", "7 days", "3 months".

## `audience` (type: `string`):

Paid posts include only the public preview the newsletter shows to non-subscribers.

## `contentFormat` (type: `string`):

Full body of free posts (and the free preview of paid posts).

## `includeNewsletterInfo` (type: `boolean`):

Add one row per newsletter: subscriber count, author, paid plan prices, language, launch date, logo. Category leaderboard rows are always included.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Hard cap for the whole run, so cost stays predictable.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "newsletters": [
    "https://www.noahpinion.blog",
    "bytebytego"
  ],
  "searchQueries": [
    "ai agents"
  ],
  "leaderboard": "all",
  "maxNewslettersPerCategory": 25,
  "maxPostsPerNewsletter": 5,
  "maxPostsPerSearch": 5,
  "sort": "new",
  "audience": "all",
  "contentFormat": "markdown",
  "includeNewsletterInfo": true,
  "maxItems": 5000
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `overview` (type: `string`):

No description

## `newsletters` (type: `string`):

No description

## `full` (type: `string`):

No description

## `failures` (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 = {
    "newsletters": [
        "https://www.noahpinion.blog",
        "bytebytego"
    ],
    "searchQueries": [
        "ai agents"
    ],
    "maxPostsPerNewsletter": 5,
    "maxPostsPerSearch": 5
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("best_apis/substack-scraper").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 = {
    "newsletters": [
        "https://www.noahpinion.blog",
        "bytebytego",
    ],
    "searchQueries": ["ai agents"],
    "maxPostsPerNewsletter": 5,
    "maxPostsPerSearch": 5,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("best_apis/substack-scraper").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 '{
  "newsletters": [
    "https://www.noahpinion.blog",
    "bytebytego"
  ],
  "searchQueries": [
    "ai agents"
  ],
  "maxPostsPerNewsletter": 5,
  "maxPostsPerSearch": 5
}' |
apify call best_apis/substack-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,best_apis/substack-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

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/vUCeHBbGA3gYlr7Gj/builds/zXjARbBwitNyXgigp/openapi.json