📚 Substack People Scraper

Scrape Substack author profiles and user information based on keywords. Get detailed data about Substack writers, publications, and their content.

🔍 What does Substack People Scraper do?

This actor allows you to:

• Search and scrape Substack author profiles using keywords
• Extract detailed publication information including name, description, custom domains
• Get author details like bio, photo URL, handle, and social links
• Collect publication themes and styling preferences
• Track subscription and membership states
• Monitor community engagement settings

✨ Features

• 🎯 Keyword-based search targeting
• 📊 Comprehensive profile data extraction
• 🚀 High-performance scraping with Puppeteer
• 🛡️ Built-in anti-detection mechanisms
• ⚡ Parallel processing support
• 🔄 Automatic pagination handling
• 💾 Structured JSON output

💡 Use Cases

• Content creator research
• Newsletter market analysis
• Competitor monitoring
• Audience insights gathering
• Publication trend tracking
• Writer community mapping

📋 Input Parameters

The actor accepts the following parameters:

• keywords: Array of search terms to find Substack authors
• maxItems: Maximum number of results to collect

📦 Output

Results are stored in JSON format containing:

• Author profile details
• Publication information
• Subscription data
• Theme configurations
• Community settings

💪 Benefits

• Save hours of manual research
• Get structured, ready-to-analyze data
• Stay updated on Substack ecosystem
• Discover new writers and publications
• Track industry trends

🔒 Compliance

This actor respects Substack's robots.txt and implements reasonable delays between requests.

Input Example

A full explanation of an input example in JSON.

1{
2    "keywords": [
3        "sam"
4    ],
5    "maxItems": 50
6}

Output sample

The results will be wrapped into a dataset which you can always find in the Storage tab. Here's an excerpt from the data you'd get if you apply the input parameters above:

And here is the same data but in JSON. You can choose in which format to download your data: JSON, JSONL, Excel spreadsheet, HTML table, CSV, or XML.

1[
2    {
3        "keyword": "sam",
4        "id": 294278669,
5        "name": "Samantha",
6        "handle": "clubfemboy",
7        "previous_name": "Femboy Clubhouse",
8        "photo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6e3cbea1-09a6-47a2-849b-4f24598bf777_1224x1224.jpeg",
9        "bio": "I'm a feminine boy that loves fashion, aesthetics, and femininity in the broadest sense. I started dressing ever since I was born and never looked back!",
10        "profile_set_up_at": "2024-12-03T16:48:05.365Z",
11        "tos_accepted_at": null,
12        "profile_disabled": false,
13        "userLinks": [],
14        "publicationUsers": [
15            {
16                "id": 361603,
17                "user_id": 294278669,
18                "publication_id": 435931,
19                "role": "admin",
20                "public": true,
21                "is_primary": false,
22                "publication": {
23                    "id": 435931,
24                    "name": "Club Femboy",
25                    "subdomain": "clubfemboy",
26                    "custom_domain": null,
27                    "custom_domain_optional": false,
28                    "hero_text": "Where every Femboy may become their most beautiful, feminine self.",
29                    "logo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/b9f9b588-5666-41db-9fb1-815e99f1db1d_1280x1280.png",
30                    "author_id": 294278669,
31                    "theme_var_background_pop": "#EA82FF",
32                    "created_at": "2021-08-08T22:01:35.029Z",
33                    "rss_website_url": null,
34                    "email_from_name": null,
35                    "copyright": "Samantha",
36                    "founding_plan_name": "Founding Member",
37                    "community_enabled": true,
38                    "invite_only": false,
39                    "payments_state": "enabled",
40                    "language": null,
41                    "explicit": false,
42                    "is_personal_mode": false,
43                    "author": {
44                        "id": 294278669,
45                        "name": "Samantha",
46                        "handle": "clubfemboy",
47                        "previous_name": "Femboy Clubhouse",
48                        "photo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6e3cbea1-09a6-47a2-849b-4f24598bf777_1224x1224.jpeg",
49                        "bio": "I'm a feminine boy that loves fashion, aesthetics, and femininity in the broadest sense. I started dressing ever since I was born and never looked back!",
50                        "profile_set_up_at": "2024-12-03T16:48:05.365Z"
51                    }
52                }
53            },
54            {
55                "id": 3523594,
56                "user_id": 294278669,
57                "publication_id": 3457346,
58                "role": "admin",
59                "public": true,
60                "is_primary": false,
61                "publication": {
62                    "id": 3457346,
63                    "name": "Femboy Clubhouse",
64                    "subdomain": "femboyclubhouse",
65                    "custom_domain": null,
66                    "custom_domain_optional": false,
67                    "hero_text": "Where every femboy can blossom into their most enchanting, uwu-tastic self~",
68                    "logo_url": "https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/d36784c6-9abe-457c-bec0-ecdafb7c172d_167x167.png",
69                    "author_id": 294278669,
70                    "theme_var_background_pop": "#FF6719",
71                    "created_at": "2024-12-03T16:48:08.340Z",
72                    "rss_website_url": null,
73                    "email_from_name": null,
74                    "copyright": "Femme",
75                    "founding_plan_name": null,
76                    "community_enabled": true,
77                    "invite_only": false,
78                    "payments_state": "enabled",
79                    "language": null,
80                    "explicit": false,
81                    "is_personal_mode": false,
82                    "author": {
83                        "id": 294278669,
84                        "name": "Samantha",
85                        "handle": "clubfemboy",
86                        "previous_name": "Femboy Clubhouse",
87                        "photo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6e3cbea1-09a6-47a2-849b-4f24598bf777_1224x1224.jpeg",
88                        "bio": "I'm a feminine boy that loves fashion, aesthetics, and femininity in the broadest sense. I started dressing ever since I was born and never looked back!",
89                        "profile_set_up_at": "2024-12-03T16:48:05.365Z"
90                    }
91                }
92            }
93        ],
94        "subscriptions": [
95            {
96                "user_id": 294278669,
97                "id": 635974553,
98                "visibility": "public",
99                "membership_state": "free_signup",
100                "type": null,
101                "is_founding": false,
102                "email_settings": {
103                    "2474": "individual",
104                    "2519": "individual",
105                    "2520": "individual",
106                    "22019": "individual",
107                    "39917": "individual"
108                },
109                "section_podcasts_enabled": [
110                    2520,
111                    39917,
112                    22019,
113                    2474,
114                    2519
115                ],
116                "publication": {
117                    "id": 1,
118                    "name": "On Substack",
119                    "subdomain": "on",
120                    "custom_domain": null,
121                    "custom_domain_optional": false,
122                    "hero_text": "Resources, stories, and news for the writers, podcasters, musicians, video creators, and culture makers publishing on Substack. ",
123                    "logo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ba81cfff-7bc5-4aef-866e-864d0942c42d_1000x1000.png",
124                    "author_id": 41856304,
125                    "theme_var_background_pop": "#FF6719",
126                    "created_at": "2017-12-12T04:37:34.302Z",
127                    "rss_website_url": null,
128                    "email_from_name": "Substack",
129                    "copyright": "Substack",
130                    "founding_plan_name": "Founding Member",
131                    "community_enabled": true,
132                    "invite_only": false,
133                    "payments_state": "disabled",
134                    "language": null,
135                    "explicit": false,
136                    "is_personal_mode": false,
137                    "author": {
138                        "id": 41856304,
139                        "name": "Substack Team",
140                        "handle": "substackteam",
141                        "previous_name": "Substack Writers",
142                        "photo_url": "https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a0cc9b93-5469-46f3-b2c9-ee0392b93a64_1000x1000.png",
143                        "bio": "Resources, news, and stories for @Substack writers and creators.",
144                        "profile_set_up_at": "2022-06-16T19:10:43.399Z"
145                    },
146                    "theme": {
147                        "publication_id": 1,
148                        "background_pop_color": "#FF7731",
149                        "cover_bg_color": "#ffffff",
150                        "color_links": null,
151                        "web_bg_color": "#ffffff",
152                        "home_posts": "custom",
153                        "font_preset_heading": "fancy_serif",
154                        "font_preset_body": "fancy_serif",
155                        "font_family_headings": null,
156                        "font_family_body": null,
157                        "font_size_body_desktop": null,
158                        "font_family_ui": null,
159                        "print_secondary": null,
160                        "custom_css_web": null,
161                        "custom_css_email": null,
162                        "default_post_header_variant": null
163                    }
164                }
165            }
166        ],
167        "subscriptionsTruncated": false,
168        "hasGuestPost": false,
169        "primaryPublication": {
170            "id": 435931,
171            "subdomain": "clubfemboy",
172            "custom_domain_optional": false,
173            "name": "Club Femboy",
174            "logo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/b9f9b588-5666-41db-9fb1-815e99f1db1d_1280x1280.png",
175            "author_id": 294278669,
176            "user_id": 294278669,
177            "handles_enabled": false,
178            "explicit": false,
179            "is_personal_mode": false
180        },
181        "max_pub_tier": 2,
182        "hasActivity": true,
183        "hasLikes": true,
184        "lists": [],
185        "rough_num_free_subscribers_int": 10000,
186        "rough_num_free_subscribers": "Tens of thousands",
187        "bestseller_badge_disabled": false,
188        "bestseller_tier": null,
189        "subscriberCountString": "24K+ subscribers",
190        "subscriberCount": "24K+",
191        "subscriberCountNumber": 24000,
192        "hasHiddenPublicationUsers": false,
193        "visibleSubscriptionsCount": 1,
194        "slug": "samantha",
195        "previousSlug": "femboy-clubhouse",
196        "isSubscribed": false,
197        "isFollowing": false,
198        "followsViewer": false,
199        "scrapedAt": "2025-02-10T05:12:00.935Z"
200    },
201    ...
202]