Substack Newsletter Scraper

Scrape posts from any Substack newsletter — titles, full content, reactions, comments, tags, author data, and more. Works with custom domains. No login or API key needed.

Features

• Extracts full post data: title, subtitle, full HTML content, description, word count, cover image, tags
• Scrapes engagement metrics: reactions, comments (with text and reactions), restacks
• Includes author info: name, handle, bio, profile image, Twitter handle
• Includes newsletter info: name, subdomain, custom domain, logo, description
• Captures podcast and audio: podcast URLs, TTS audio URLs when available
• Accepts flexible input: Substack URLs or custom domains — just paste from your browser
• Handles pagination automatically — scrape hundreds or thousands of posts
• No authentication required — uses Substack's public API
• Supports multiple newsletters in a single run
• Lightweight — uses HTTP requests only, no browser needed

How much does it cost?

With Substack Newsletter Scraper, you can scrape 1,000 posts for $2.00 in Apify platform credits ($0.002 per post).

Running on the free plan? You can scrape several hundred posts per month at no cost.

Input

Field	Description	Default
Newsletter URLs	Paste newsletter URLs from your browser (e.g. https://www.lennysnewsletter.com). Works with both Substack subdomains (name.substack.com) and custom domains.	Required
Post Limit	Maximum posts per newsletter (0 = unlimited)	100
Not Older Than	Stop scraping when posts are older than this date (YYYY-MM-DD)	No limit

Output example

Each post is saved as a JSON object:

{
  "postId": 190767098,
  "title": "BOOM: Senate Votes to Block Private Equity from Buying Homes",
  "subtitle": "For 15 years, elites have fought against homeownership...",
  "slug": "boom-senate-votes-to-block-private",
  "url": "https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-senate-votes-to-block-private",
  "date": "2026-03-13T22:39:57.833Z",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-13T23:39:58.809Z",
  "type": "newsletter",
  "audience": "everyone",
  "description": "For 15 years, elites have fought against homeownership...",
  "contentHtml": "<p>Until the Iran war, the main political pressure on...</p>",
  "contentText": "Until the Iran war, the main political pressure on...",
  "wordCount": 2040,
  "coverImageUrl": "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/...",
  "sectionName": null,
  "reactionCount": 320,
  "reactions": { "❤": 320 },
  "commentCount": 8,
  "restackCount": 42,
  "tags": ["Private equity", "housing", "Wall Street"],
  "authorName": "Matt Stoller",
  "authorHandle": "mattstoller",
  "authorBio": "Matt Stoller is Research Director for the American Economic...",
  "authorImageUrl": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e.../915fa1b4-....png",
  "authorTwitter": null,
  "newsletterName": "BIG by Matt Stoller",
  "newsletterSubdomain": "mattstoller",
  "newsletterDomain": "www.thebignewsletter.com",
  "newsletterLogoUrl": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e.../c12cbcf7-....png",
  "newsletterDescription": "The history and politics of monopoly power.",
  "podcastUrl": null,
  "podcastDuration": null,
  "ttsAudioUrl": "https://substack-video.s3.amazonaws.com/video_upload/post/...",
  "comments": [
    {
      "name": "marku52",
      "body": "I don't understand how they intend to keep Wall Street from...",
      "date": "2026-03-14T00:36:45.063Z",
      "reactions": { "❤": 20 }
    }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-03-14T11:40:28.777Z"
}

All output fields

Field	Type	Description
postId	number	Substack post ID
title	string	Post title
subtitle	string	Post subtitle
slug	string	URL slug
url	string	Full post URL
date	string	Publish date (ISO 8601)
updatedAt	string	Last update date (ISO 8601)
type	string	Post type (newsletter or podcast)
audience	string	everyone = free, only_paid = paywalled, only_free = free-only
description	string	Short description / preview text
contentHtml	string	Full HTML content for free posts. Teaser (first few paragraphs) for paid posts.
contentText	string	Truncated plain text (~200 chars)
wordCount	number	Word count
coverImageUrl	string	Cover image URL
sectionName	string	Newsletter section name
reactionCount	number	Total reaction count
reactions	object	Reactions by emoji (e.g. {"❤": 320})
commentCount	number	Number of comments
restackCount	number	Number of restacks
tags	array	Post tags
authorName	string	Author display name
authorHandle	string	Author handle
authorBio	string	Author bio
authorImageUrl	string	Author profile image URL
authorTwitter	string	Author Twitter/X handle
newsletterName	string	Newsletter name
newsletterSubdomain	string	Substack subdomain
newsletterDomain	string	Custom domain (or Substack subdomain)
newsletterLogoUrl	string	Newsletter logo URL
newsletterDescription	string	Newsletter tagline
podcastUrl	string	Podcast audio URL
podcastDuration	number	Podcast duration in seconds
ttsAudioUrl	string	AI-generated text-to-speech audio URL
comments	array	Comments with name, body, date, and reactions
scrapedAt	string	When the data was scraped (ISO 8601)

About paid content

By default, this scraper only collects free posts (audience: "everyone"). Paid/paywalled posts are skipped.

If you turn on "Include Paid Posts", the scraper will attempt to fetch paywalled posts too. However, Substack's public API has limitations for paid content:

• Content is partial — you'll get a teaser (first few paragraphs), not the full article. This is a Substack limitation, not ours.
• Some newsletters block paid posts entirely — the API returns HTTP 403 for paid posts on certain newsletters. These posts are skipped automatically.
• Comments may be empty — if comment permissions are set to paid subscribers only, the API returns no comments.
• No TTS audio — text-to-speech audio is not available for paid posts.

You can always check the audience field in the output to see whether a post is free (everyone) or paywalled (only_paid).

Tips

• Custom domains work the same — www.lennysnewsletter.com and lenny.substack.com both work. Just paste the URL from your browser.
• Use "Not Older Than" to save costs — for recurring scrapes, set a date cutoff so you only fetch new posts.
• Post limit is per newsletter — if you scrape 3 newsletters with a limit of 100, you'll get up to 300 posts total.
• TTS audio — many free Substack posts have AI-generated audio versions. The ttsAudioUrl field captures these when available.