Substack Publication Recommendations Scraper

Get the publications a Substack publication recommends to its readers, and the publications that recommend it. Each entry carries the publication's name, URL, tagline, author, language, paid status and the recommender's blurb.

Features

• Real-time Substack data — results are fetched live at run time, never cached or stale
• No login, cookies, or proxy configuration needed — just provide the input and run
• Each result is pushed as a separate dataset item, exportable as JSON, CSV, or Excel
• Fast: a typical run finishes in seconds

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
publication	string	no	Publication subdomain (lenny), host (lenny.substack.com, www.lennysnewsletter.com) or any URL on it (max 500 characters). Provide either publication or publication_id.
publication_id	string	no	Numeric publication ID, as returned in publication_id. Provide either publication or publication_id.

Pricing

This Actor is billed per run — a flat $0.003 per run.

• One run returns all matching results for your input, and costs $0.003 — whether it comes back with one result or hundreds.
• You’re only charged when a run succeeds, or when it fails because what you asked for was looked up and doesn’t exist, is private, or isn’t valid: that costs one run ($0.003). Other failed runs are free.

Example output

{
  "publication": {
    "publication_id": "10845",
    "name": "Lenny's Newsletter",
    "subdomain": "lenny",
    "url": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com",
    "logo_url": "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8MSN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F\u2026"
  },
  "recommends": [
    {
      "publication_id": "9047553",
      "name": "early days",
      "subdomain": "earlydaysbymerlin",
      "url": "https://earlydaysbymerlin.substack.com",
      "logo_url": "https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1e2e78d1-1693-48ab-9755-ea88a06e2f23_1080x1080.png",
      "description": "learn about silicon valley companies, people, jobs, and ideas through the eyes of two startup junkies.",
      "author": "merlindotinc",
      "author_name": "Merlin",
      "author_id": "510813323",
      "author_url": "https://substack.com/@merlindotinc",
      "language": "",
      "paid_enabled": false,
      "blurb": "",
      "date": "2026-05-25 20:11:01"
    }
  ],
  "recommended_by": [
    {
      "publication_id": "11624830",
      "name": "YStartUps",
      "subdomain": "ystartups",
      "url": "https://ystartups.substack.com",
      "logo_url": "https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/3e9d7ce7-391a-454e-b54e-a5732b0dde33_1254x1254.png",
      "description": "My personal Substack",
      "author": "deepthiconnects",
      "author_name": "Deepthi",
      "author_id": "496409115",
      "author_url": "https://substack.com/@deepthiconnects",
      "language": "en-gb",
      "paid_enabled": false,
      "blurb": "",
      "date": "2026-10-11 04:59:17"
    }
  ],
  "recommends_count": 11,
  "recommended_by_count": 50
}

About

Maintained by Data Direct — a small suite of fast, reliable Substack and web-data scrapers. Each actor returns clean, structured results with no login, cookies, or proxy setup required. Have a question or a custom data need? Open an issue on this actor.