📚 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.

{
    "keywords": [
        "sam"
    ],
    "maxItems": 50
}

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.

[
    {
        "keyword": "sam",
        "id": 294278669,
        "name": "Samantha",
        "handle": "clubfemboy",
        "previous_name": "Femboy Clubhouse",
        "photo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6e3cbea1-09a6-47a2-849b-4f24598bf777_1224x1224.jpeg",
        "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!",
        "profile_set_up_at": "2024-12-03T16:48:05.365Z",
        "tos_accepted_at": null,
        "profile_disabled": false,
        "userLinks": [],
        "publicationUsers": [
            {
                "id": 361603,
                "user_id": 294278669,
                "publication_id": 435931,
                "role": "admin",
                "public": true,
                "is_primary": false,
                "publication": {
                    "id": 435931,
                    "name": "Club Femboy",
                    "subdomain": "clubfemboy",
                    "custom_domain": null,
                    "custom_domain_optional": false,
                    "hero_text": "Where every Femboy may become their most beautiful, feminine self.",
                    "logo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/b9f9b588-5666-41db-9fb1-815e99f1db1d_1280x1280.png",
                    "author_id": 294278669,
                    "theme_var_background_pop": "#EA82FF",
                    "created_at": "2021-08-08T22:01:35.029Z",
                    "rss_website_url": null,
                    "email_from_name": null,
                    "copyright": "Samantha",
                    "founding_plan_name": "Founding Member",
                    "community_enabled": true,
                    "invite_only": false,
                    "payments_state": "enabled",
                    "language": null,
                    "explicit": false,
                    "is_personal_mode": false,
                    "author": {
                        "id": 294278669,
                        "name": "Samantha",
                        "handle": "clubfemboy",
                        "previous_name": "Femboy Clubhouse",
                        "photo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6e3cbea1-09a6-47a2-849b-4f24598bf777_1224x1224.jpeg",
                        "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!",
                        "profile_set_up_at": "2024-12-03T16:48:05.365Z"
                    }
                }
            },
            {
                "id": 3523594,
                "user_id": 294278669,
                "publication_id": 3457346,
                "role": "admin",
                "public": true,
                "is_primary": false,
                "publication": {
                    "id": 3457346,
                    "name": "Femboy Clubhouse",
                    "subdomain": "femboyclubhouse",
                    "custom_domain": null,
                    "custom_domain_optional": false,
                    "hero_text": "Where every femboy can blossom into their most enchanting, uwu-tastic self~",
                    "logo_url": "https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/d36784c6-9abe-457c-bec0-ecdafb7c172d_167x167.png",
                    "author_id": 294278669,
                    "theme_var_background_pop": "#FF6719",
                    "created_at": "2024-12-03T16:48:08.340Z",
                    "rss_website_url": null,
                    "email_from_name": null,
                    "copyright": "Femme",
                    "founding_plan_name": null,
                    "community_enabled": true,
                    "invite_only": false,
                    "payments_state": "enabled",
                    "language": null,
                    "explicit": false,
                    "is_personal_mode": false,
                    "author": {
                        "id": 294278669,
                        "name": "Samantha",
                        "handle": "clubfemboy",
                        "previous_name": "Femboy Clubhouse",
                        "photo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6e3cbea1-09a6-47a2-849b-4f24598bf777_1224x1224.jpeg",
                        "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!",
                        "profile_set_up_at": "2024-12-03T16:48:05.365Z"
                    }
                }
            }
        ],
        "subscriptions": [
            {
                "user_id": 294278669,
                "id": 635974553,
                "visibility": "public",
                "membership_state": "free_signup",
                "type": null,
                "is_founding": false,
                "email_settings": {
                    "2474": "individual",
                    "2519": "individual",
                    "2520": "individual",
                    "22019": "individual",
                    "39917": "individual"
                },
                "section_podcasts_enabled": [
                    2520,
                    39917,
                    22019,
                    2474,
                    2519
                ],
                "publication": {
                    "id": 1,
                    "name": "On Substack",
                    "subdomain": "on",
                    "custom_domain": null,
                    "custom_domain_optional": false,
                    "hero_text": "Resources, stories, and news for the writers, podcasters, musicians, video creators, and culture makers publishing on Substack. ",
                    "logo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ba81cfff-7bc5-4aef-866e-864d0942c42d_1000x1000.png",
                    "author_id": 41856304,
                    "theme_var_background_pop": "#FF6719",
                    "created_at": "2017-12-12T04:37:34.302Z",
                    "rss_website_url": null,
                    "email_from_name": "Substack",
                    "copyright": "Substack",
                    "founding_plan_name": "Founding Member",
                    "community_enabled": true,
                    "invite_only": false,
                    "payments_state": "disabled",
                    "language": null,
                    "explicit": false,
                    "is_personal_mode": false,
                    "author": {
                        "id": 41856304,
                        "name": "Substack Team",
                        "handle": "substackteam",
                        "previous_name": "Substack Writers",
                        "photo_url": "https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a0cc9b93-5469-46f3-b2c9-ee0392b93a64_1000x1000.png",
                        "bio": "Resources, news, and stories for @Substack writers and creators.",
                        "profile_set_up_at": "2022-06-16T19:10:43.399Z"
                    },
                    "theme": {
                        "publication_id": 1,
                        "background_pop_color": "#FF7731",
                        "cover_bg_color": "#ffffff",
                        "color_links": null,
                        "web_bg_color": "#ffffff",
                        "home_posts": "custom",
                        "font_preset_heading": "fancy_serif",
                        "font_preset_body": "fancy_serif",
                        "font_family_headings": null,
                        "font_family_body": null,
                        "font_size_body_desktop": null,
                        "font_family_ui": null,
                        "print_secondary": null,
                        "custom_css_web": null,
                        "custom_css_email": null,
                        "default_post_header_variant": null
                    }
                }
            }
        ],
        "subscriptionsTruncated": false,
        "hasGuestPost": false,
        "primaryPublication": {
            "id": 435931,
            "subdomain": "clubfemboy",
            "custom_domain_optional": false,
            "name": "Club Femboy",
            "logo_url": "https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/b9f9b588-5666-41db-9fb1-815e99f1db1d_1280x1280.png",
            "author_id": 294278669,
            "user_id": 294278669,
            "handles_enabled": false,
            "explicit": false,
            "is_personal_mode": false
        },
        "max_pub_tier": 2,
        "hasActivity": true,
        "hasLikes": true,
        "lists": [],
        "rough_num_free_subscribers_int": 10000,
        "rough_num_free_subscribers": "Tens of thousands",
        "bestseller_badge_disabled": false,
        "bestseller_tier": null,
        "subscriberCountString": "24K+ subscribers",
        "subscriberCount": "24K+",
        "subscriberCountNumber": 24000,
        "hasHiddenPublicationUsers": false,
        "visibleSubscriptionsCount": 1,
        "slug": "samantha",
        "previousSlug": "femboy-clubhouse",
        "isSubscribed": false,
        "isFollowing": false,
        "followsViewer": false,
        "scrapedAt": "2025-02-10T05:12:00.935Z"
    },
    ...
]

Related Actors

• 📚 Substack Posts Scraper - Extract comprehensive post data including titles, authors, and engagement metrics from Substack
• 📚 Substack Publications Scraper - Get detailed newsletter and publication information from Substack search results
• 🔍 Substack Notes Scraper - Extract notes and comments with user info and engagement metrics from Substack
• 📊 Substack Leaderboard Scraper - Scrape top performing newsletters data from Substack leaderboards
• 📄 Article Content Extractor - Extract clean article content and metadata from any web page
• 🔍 Medium User Search Scraper - Find and extract detailed Medium user profiles from search results
• 📝 Medium Posts Search Scraper - Get comprehensive article data from Medium's search results
• 📚 Medium User Posts Scraper - Extract detailed post data from Medium user profiles
• 👥 Medium Following Scraper - Get information about Medium users' following lists
• 👥 Medium Followers Scraper - Extract Medium user followers data and profile details
• 📚 Goodreads Book Scraper - Get comprehensive book and author data from Goodreads
• 📚 Goodreads Review Scraper - Extract detailed book reviews and ratings from Goodreads
• 🎯 Twitter Email Scraper - Find Twitter users and their email addresses based on keywords
• 📧 Discover & Verify Professional Emails - Find and verify professional email addresses with smart pattern generation
• 🔍 Google News Scraper - Collect up to 5000 news articles with flexible search options