Substack Scraper - Newsletters, Posts & Authors

Discover Substack newsletters by category and leaderboard rank, then scrape every post, author and publication. This Substack scraper uses the public Substack API to pull newsletter archives and publication metadata — no login, no API key, no proxy.

🟢 No Substack account. No login. No proxy. Export to JSON, CSV, Excel or XML.

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What you get

Per post (recordType: post):

• postId / postSlug — Substack post identifiers
• postTitle / postSubtitle — headline and subtitle
• postType — newsletter, podcast, thread, etc.
• audience — free or paid
• postDate — publish timestamp
• canonicalUrl — link to the post
• coverImage — cover image URL
• reactions / restacks — engagement counts
• wordCount — article length
• podcastUrl / podcastDuration — podcast fields when present
• sectionName — publication section

Per publication (recordType: publication):

• publicationName / subdomain / customDomain / publicationUrl
• authorName / authorId
• publicationDescription — hero text
• language / category / publicationCreatedAt
• free / paid / founding subscription benefits
• logoUrl / coverPhotoUrl / podcastFeedUrl

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Use cases

• Content & trend research — track which newsletters and posts are gaining traction across 30+ categories.
• Newsletter / creator lead generation — build lists of publications in a niche with authors, domains and tiers.
• Competitive intelligence — monitor a competitor's posting cadence, audience mix (free vs paid) and engagement.
• Market research — analyze topics, word counts and reactions across a category leaderboard.
• Archive backups — export a full publication's post archive to JSON or CSV.

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How to use

1. Click Try for free / Start.
2. Either add Category Slugs (e.g. technology, finance, crypto) with a Ranking Mode (leaderboard / paid / all), or paste Direct Newsletter URLs (subdomain, bare name or custom domain).
3. Set Max Publications Per Category and Max Posts Per Publication (0 = publication-only mode).
4. Optionally filter by date range, keyword, audience (free/paid) or language.
5. Run and export as JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML or XML.

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FAQ

Do I need a Substack login or API key?

No. The actor uses Substack's public API and archive endpoints, which serve publication and post metadata anonymously. No account, key or proxy is needed.

Can I scrape a specific newsletter directly?

Yes. Add it to Direct Newsletter URLs — it accepts a subdomain (lennysnewsletter.substack.com), a bare name (lennysnewsletter) or a custom domain (www.lennysnewsletter.com).

Can I get only free or only paid posts?

Yes. Use the Audience Filter to restrict results to free-only or paid-only posts, or keep all for both.

Which export formats are supported?

Each run is stored in an Apify Dataset, downloadable as JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel, HTML or XML, or available via the Apify API.

Is this a Substack API alternative?

Yes. Substack has no official public data API for bulk export, so this actor acts as an unofficial Substack API alternative — it reads the public archive endpoints to return structured newsletter, post and author data.

How do I export Substack data to CSV or JSON?

Run the actor on a category leaderboard or direct newsletter URL, then download the resulting Apify Dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel or XML. This gives you a clean Substack newsletter data export with no manual copy-paste.

Can I scrape Substack without an API key or login?

Yes. The scraper pulls Substack publication and post data anonymously through public endpoints, so you can scrape Substack without login, without an API key and without a proxy.

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Changelog

2026-06-07

• Docs: added coverage for Substack API alternative, exporting Substack data to CSV/JSON, and scraping Substack without login or API key.