Substack Newsletter Subscriber & Engagement Scraper

A comprehensive Apify Actor for extracting Substack publication details, subscriber counts (when visible), and author contact information. Perfect for B2B outreach to newsletter creators, market research, and competitive analysis.

🚀 Key Features

• 📊 Publication Metadata: Extract title, description, author info, author ID, categories, and subscriber counts (when publicly visible)
• 📧 Email Discovery: Automatically find author contact emails from About pages and other content
• 🔗 Social Media Links: Extract Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube profiles
• 📝 Flexible Post Scraping: Choose from 3 modes - no posts, post metadata only, or full article content
• 📈 Engagement Metrics: Extract likes, comments, and word counts for each post
• ⚡ Batch Processing: Process multiple newsletters in a single run
• 💰 Pay-per-Event: Only pay for successfully processed newsletters

📋 Input Parameters

Required

• newsletterUrls (array): List of Substack newsletter URLs to scrape
  • Example: [{"url": "https://platformer.substack.com"}, {"url": "https://lennysnewsletter.com"}]
  • Supports both *.substack.com URLs and custom domains
  • Process multiple newsletters in a single run

Optional

• postScrapingMode (string, default: "none"): Controls what post data to extract

  • "none" - Newsletter metadata only (fastest, minimal data usage)
  • "information" - Newsletter metadata + post info (title, date, engagement, preview)
  • "information_and_content" - Newsletter metadata + post info + full article content

• maxPostsPerNewsletter (number, default: 12, max: 12): Number of recent posts to scrape per newsletter (only applies when postScrapingMode is not "none")

• delayBetweenRequests (number, default: 3000, range: 500-10000): Delay in milliseconds between HTTP requests to avoid rate limiting

💡 Example Input

{
  "newsletterUrls": [
    { "url": "https://platformer.substack.com" },
    { "url": "https://lennysnewsletter.com" },
    { "url": "https://andrewsullivan.substack.com" }
  ],
  "postScrapingMode": "information_and_content",
  "maxPostsPerNewsletter": 12,
  "delayBetweenRequests": 3000
}

📊 Output Structure

The output structure varies based on the postScrapingMode setting:

Mode 1: "none" - Newsletter Metadata Only

{
  "author_id": 241262,
  "author_name": "Casey Newton",
  "author_handle": "platformer",
  "author_bio": "Casey Newton is the founder and editor of Platformer...",
  "author_photo_url": "https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/...",
  "email": "casey@platformer.news",
  "twitter_url": "https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton",
  "linkedin_url": null,
  "facebook_url": "https://www.facebook.com/...",
  "instagram_url": "https://instagram.com/crumbler",
  "website_url": "https://www.platformer.news",
  "publication_id": 7976,
  "publication_name": "Platformer",
  "publication_subdomain": "platformer",
  "publication_url": "https://www.platformer.news",
  "publication_description": "News at the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy...",
  "publication_logo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984...",
  "publication_custom_domain": "www.platformer.news",
  "publication_created_at": "2019-03-29T13:28:21.009Z",
  "subscriber_count": 176000,
  "subscriber_count_string": "176K+",
  "subscriber_count_visible": true,
  "follower_count": 209469,
  "is_paid_newsletter": false,
  "payments_enabled": false,
  "founding_plan_name": "Mystery Tier",
  "is_active": true,
  "has_posts": true,
  "has_likes": true,
  "profile_set_up_at": "2021-04-22T18:51:48.648Z",
  "scraped_at": "2025-11-07T19:19:13.110957+00:00"
}

Mode 2: "information" - Newsletter + Post Information

Includes all fields from Mode 1, plus a posts array:

{
  // ... all newsletter metadata from Mode 1 ...
  "posts": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.platformer.news/trump-won-heres-what-comes-next/",
      "title": "Trump won. Here's what comes next.",
      "subtitle": "What a second Trump administration could mean for the internet",
      "date": "2024-11-07",
      "author": "Casey Newton",
      "likes": 13,
      "comments_count": 43,
      "content_preview": "Good morning, and wow. Donald Trump won a second term as president...",
      "word_count": 2051
    }
    // ... up to maxPostsPerNewsletter posts ...
  ]
}

Mode 3: "information_and_content" - Full Article Content

Includes all fields from Mode 2, plus full content for each post:

{
  // ... all newsletter metadata ...
  "posts": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.platformer.news/trump-won-heres-what-comes-next/",
      "title": "Trump won. Here's what comes next.",
      "subtitle": "What a second Trump administration could mean for the internet",
      "date": "2024-11-07",
      "author": "Casey Newton",
      "likes": 13,
      "comments_count": 43,
      "content_preview": "Good morning, and wow. Donald Trump won a second term as president...",
      "word_count": 2051,
      "content": "Good morning, and wow. Donald Trump won a second term as president...\n\n[Full 2000+ word article text extracted here]\n\n..."
    }
    // ... up to maxPostsPerNewsletter posts with full content ...
  ]
}

🔧 Use Cases

• B2B Outreach: Build targeted lists of newsletter creators with contact information for partnership opportunities
• Market Research: Analyze newsletter subscriber counts, engagement metrics, and publishing frequency
• Competitive Analysis: Track competitor newsletters, their growth, and content strategies
• Content Analysis: Extract full article content for competitive research, trend analysis, or content strategy insights
• Lead Generation: Find potential customers or partners in specific niches based on newsletter topics and engagement
• Training Data Collection: Gather high-quality written content for AI/ML applications (respect copyright and usage rights)
• Publishing Patterns: Analyze posting frequency, optimal publishing times, and content length strategies
• Engagement Research: Study which topics, titles, and content formats drive the most likes and comments

💰 Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing:

• You're charged only for newsletters that are successfully processed
• Failed URLs don't incur charges
• Transparent usage-based billing

🏷️ Tags

Newsletter scraping, Substack, B2B outreach, lead generation, market research, email discovery, social media extraction