Newsletter Lead Finder: Substack, Ghost & Beehiiv Leads

Find newsletter creators to sponsor, pitch, partner with or recruit. Search Substack and Ghost by keyword or category leaderboard, or bulk-enrich any newsletter URL (Substack, Ghost, Beehiiv, Kit, Buttondown, WordPress…). Every result is one clean lead row per newsletter: subscribers, paid tier and prices, posting cadence, last post date, author, every public social profile, publicly listed contact email, recommendation graph and a 0–100 lead score with reasons.

No login, no API key, no proxy needed. $0.90 per 1,000 leads, no start fee, and newsletters you already received are never charged again.

Why this one

	Newsletter Lead Finder	Typical Substack scrapers
Platforms	Substack + Ghost directories, plus any newsletter URL (Beehiiv, Kit, Buttondown, WordPress, custom domains) in the same row format	Substack only
Discovery	Keyword search, Substack category leaderboards (top / paid / trending, up to 525 each), Ghost Explore sections (Top, Top Revenue, Trending, 30+ topics), bulk URLs & @handles	usually one mode
Repeat runs	Since-last-run memory — never pay twice for the same newsletter	re-charged every run
Filters before you pay	subscribers min/max, paid / free, active within N days, language, must have email/socials, exclude words, min score	few
Lead quality	Cadence (posts/month, last post, days since), lead score with plain-English reasons, contributors, recommendations	raw fields
Price	$0.0009 → $0.0006 per lead, no start fee	$0.001–$0.015 + start fees up to $0.10

Quick start

{ "keywords": ["fintech"], "maxResults": 20, "activeWithinDays": 90 }

More examples:

• Top paid Technology newsletters with a public email: {"categories": ["Technology"], "leaderboard": "paid", "requireContact": "email"}
• Affordable micro-newsletters for sponsorships: {"keywords": ["running", "marathon"], "minSubscribers": 1000, "maxSubscribers": 20000, "activeWithinDays": 30}
• Ghost newsletters earning money: {"categories": ["ghost:Top Revenue"]}
• Enrich your own list: {"urls": ["https://www.lennysnewsletter.com", "www.404media.co", "https://www.therundown.ai", "@noahpinion"]}
• Snowball a niche: add "includeRecommendations": true and feed the recommended URLs into the next run.

Input

Field	What it does
keywords	Topics or names. Substack: Substack's own search (~100 per keyword). Ghost: matched against the Ghost Explore "Top" directory (Ghost has no search). With categories, keywords narrow the category results. crypto* = prefix.
categories	Substack categories (Technology, Business, Finance, Culture, Crypto, Sports, Health & Wellness, …) and Ghost sections (Top, Top Revenue, Most Popular, Trending, New, Programming, …). Loose matching; prefix substack: or ghost: to target one. Unknown names fail fast with the full list.
urls	Up to 1,000 publication URLs, bare domains or Substack @handles. Discovery filters are not applied to URLs you list (contact and score filters are).
platforms	Which directories keywords/categories search (Substack, Ghost).
leaderboard	Substack ranking: all (top by subscribers), paid (bestsellers) or trending.
minSubscribers / maxSubscribers	Public subscriber count bounds. Hidden counts are excluded when a minimum is set.
monetization	any, paid, free.
activeWithinDays	Latest public post must be this recent.
languages	e.g. ["en"]. Unknown language is kept.
requireContact	none, social, email, socialOrEmail.
excludeKeywords, minLeadScore	Drop unwanted leads before you pay.
includeRecentPosts, recentPostsLimit	Latest post titles/links/dates (default on, 5).
includeContactEmails	Read the publication's own About/Contact page for public emails and socials (default on).
includeRecommendations	Newsletters each lead publicly recommends (default off).
maxResults	New leads per run (default 50, max 1,000).
sinceLastRun	Skip newsletters already delivered for the same settings (default on). stateKey shares memory across searches.
notifyWebhookUrl	https URL (Slack/Discord/Zapier/Make/your API) that receives a digest when a run finds new leads.

Categories you can use

Substack: Culture, Technology, Business, U.S. Politics, Finance, Food & Drink, Podcasts, Sports, Art & Illustration, World Politics, Health Politics, News, Fashion & Beauty, Music, Faith & Spirituality, Climate & Environment, Science, Literature, Fiction, Health & Wellness, Design, Travel, Parenting, Philosophy, Comics, International, Crypto, History, Humor, Education, Film & TV, Home & Garden, Games.

Ghost Explore: Top, Top Revenue, Most Popular, Trending, New, Social Web, Personal, Technology, Business, Programming, News, Finance, Culture, Travel, Education, Art, Faith & Spirituality, Health & wellness, Literature, Sport, Entertainment, Productivity, Design, Food & Drink, Music, Crypto, Science, Fiction, Gaming, Nature & Outdoors, House & Home, Fashion & Beauty, Podcasts, Gear & Gadgets, Parenting, History, Climate, YouTubers.

A plain name (e.g. Technology) searches every platform that has it; substack:Finance or ghost:Top Revenue targets one. Matching ignores case and punctuation.

Output

One row per newsletter (type: "newsletter", charged) with: name, url, domain, platform, description, category, leaderboardRank, language, authorName, authorHandle, authorBio, authorProfileUrl, contributors[], subscriberCount, subscriberCountText, audienceTier, paidSubscriberTier, bestsellerTier, isPaid, paidPlans[], monthlyPrice, annualPrice, currency, hasPodcast, createdAt, firstPostDate, lastPostDate, daysSinceLastPost, postsLast30Days, postsLast90Days, postsPerMonth, cadence, recentPosts[], socialLinks (x, linkedin, instagram, youtube, tiktok, facebook, threads, bluesky, mastodon, website, other[]), socialLinksCount, publicContactEmails[], aboutUrl, subscribeUrl, rssUrl, recommendationCount, recommendations[], leadScore, scoreReasons[], matchedBy, retrievedAt.

Free rows: error (one URL couldn't be read), already-delivered (a URL you listed was delivered in an earlier run — set sinceLastRun: false to refresh), no-match (explains which filter removed what). The run summary (OUTPUT record) lists per-source counts, skip reasons, charges and notes. Dataset views: Leads and Contacts.

Example row (trimmed):

{"type": "newsletter", "platform": "substack", "name": "SemiAnalysis", "url": "https://newsletter.semianalysis.com", "authorName": "Dylan Patel", "subscriberCount": 325000, "isPaid": true, "monthlyPrice": 50, "cadence": "several per week", "lastPostDate": "2026-10-23", "postsPerMonth": 9.43, "publicContactEmails": ["sales@semianalysis.com"], "leadScore": 95, "scoreReasons": ["+30 audience 325K+", "+20 posted 6d ago", "+10 9.43 posts/month", "+15 public contact email", "+5 2 social profiles", "+8 runs a paid tier", "+5 bestseller tier 10000+", "+2 recommends other newsletters"], "socialLinks": {"x": "https://x.com/dylan522p", "website": "https://www.semianalysis.com"}}

Pricing

Pay per event newsletter-lead: $0.0009 (Free plan), $0.0008 (Starter), $0.0007 (Scale), $0.0006 (Business) per new lead. No start fee. Filtered-out, already-delivered, no-match and error rows are free. Set Maximum cost per run and the Actor stops cleanly at your limit (and tells you so); since-last-run memory means re-running picks up where it left off.

Data sources & compliance

Only public, no-login pages and endpoints: Substack's public search, category leaderboards, publication About pages and public archives/profiles; Ghost Explore (explore.ghost.org) directory pages and each site's public RSS and /.well-known/recommendations.json; any site's homepage, RSS/Atom feed, sitemap and About/Contact page. robots.txt is respected on every non-Substack site. No paywalled content is read. Emails are only those the publisher prints publicly on its own site (mailto links or visible text) — nothing guessed, no search-engine dorking, no private data. Requests are rate-limited per host. You are responsible for using leads in line with anti-spam law (CAN-SPAM, GDPR/PECR): personalise, identify yourself and honour opt-outs.

Limits & tips

• Substack shows a rounded public lower bound for subscribers ("Over 19,000"); Ghost shows member counts only when the site opts in. Beehiiv/other sites don't publish counts (subscriberCount: null).
• Ghost and other sites rarely expose paid status, so monetization: "paid" keeps only confirmed paid ones (Substack, Ghost Top Revenue, Ghost/Beehiiv upgrade links).
• Beehiiv has no public directory — add Beehiiv newsletters via urls. If a Beehiiv site disables RSS, recent posts come from its public sitemap.
• Substack writers who moved to another platform are followed to their current site automatically.
• Substack search returns at most ~100 profiles per keyword — use several synonyms (e.g. fintech, payments, banking) or categories for bigger lists. The run tells you when every source was exhausted.
• Substack rate-limits busy clients. The Actor stays polite and retries; anything still rate-limited is skipped free (not marked as delivered) and picked up by your next run.

Changelog

• 0.1 — first release: Substack search + leaderboards (top/paid/trending), Ghost Explore, bulk URL enrichment (Beehiiv/Kit/Buttondown/WordPress), since-last-run, lead score, recommendations, webhook.