Substack Scraper: Posts and Newsletter Finder

Two tools in one Actor:

1. Posts: collect posts exposed by a publication's public archive, including supported public HTTPS custom domains. Fields include title, subtitle, date, authors, tags, reactions and paywall status. When content is available, free posts return plain text and paid posts return only their public preview.
2. Newsletter finder: browse the categories currently exposed by Substack and collect available public metadata: subscriber size labels (e.g. 1.1M+), paid tier labels, bestseller badge, author, language and launch date.

No login, browser or proxy is required. Availability, field coverage and directory rankings depend on Substack's public endpoints. Private network addresses and non-HTTPS custom domains are rejected.

Who uses it

• Sponsors and marketers: build a list of newsletters in your niche, sized by audience, to buy sponsorships or pitch partnerships.
• Writers and growth teams: study what works for competitors: most popular posts, reactions, comments, length, free vs paid.
• Researchers and AI builders: collect clean text from free posts for analysis, summaries or RAG.
• Investors and analysts: track creator businesses and categories over time.

How to use it

Posts mode

• Add publications: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com, astralcodexten, https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com.
• Choose Newest or Most popular, a max per publication, and optionally:
  • Posted within the last N days;
  • Free posts only;
  • Keywords in title or subtitle.

Newsletter finder mode

• Pick categories, e.g. Technology, Finance.
• Optionally narrow the list:
  • Languages, e.g. en;
  • Minimum subscribers, e.g. 10000;
  • Keywords in the name or author bio.

Download as JSON, CSV or Excel, or connect via API, Zapier, Make, n8n. Schedule it to watch publications for new posts.

Output examples

Illustrative records. Optional fields may be null; a post's detailStatus reports available, unavailable or not_requested.

{
  "type": "post",
  "publication": "www.lennysnewsletter.com",
  "title": "All of the Lenny & Friends Summit talks are now online!",
  "url": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/all-of-the-lenny-and-friends-summit",
  "postDate": "2026-09-29T13:15:57.512Z",
  "isPaywalled": false,
  "authors": ["Lenny Rachitsky"],
  "wordCount": 1276,
  "reactions": 292,
  "comments": 8,
  "restacks": 5,
  "content": "Full plain text of the post…"
}

{
  "type": "newsletter",
  "category": "Finance",
  "name": "The Capitalist",
  "url": "https://www.thecapitalistmag.com",
  "author": "Matthew Miller",
  "subscribers": "740K+",
  "paidTier": "Hundreds of paid subscribers",
  "bestseller": "Bestseller 1000+",
  "hasPaidPlan": true,
  "language": "en",
  "createdAt": "2025-04-14T22:20:11.478Z"
}

Pricing

See the Actor's Pricing tab for the current result price, any run-start fee and applicable platform charges. The result event is emitted only for unique matching posts or newsletters sent to the dataset, after filters and deduplication. Set a maximum total charge per run in Apify; the Actor stops saving after the SDK reports that limit.

Run outcomes and limits

• SUMMARY.status is complete, no_matching_results, partial, stopped_cost_limit or failed. If every source is invalid or fails, the run fails. A valid empty archive or no matches is a successful zero-match run. complete means processing finished within your filters and caps, not that every publication or post was discovered.
• Inspect failures and detailFailures for partial data. A post can retain its basic archive metadata when the optional text request fails; the missing text is not claimed as complete.
• An active postedWithinDays filter excludes missing, invalid and future dates. unknownDatesSkipped and futureDatesSkipped report those exclusions. Sorting by newest does not guarantee all old or pinned posts precede every recent post, so filtered runs may scan much of an archive.
• Limits apply to unique saved results. The same newsletter in several selected categories is saved once under the first matching category. Deduplication is within a run only; subsequent scheduled runs can return and charge the same records again.
• Archive scans have a 1,000-page safeguard; category scans have a 100-page safeguard. Repeated pages and malformed responses produce explicit failures rather than false empty success. HTTP requests time out after 30 seconds and responses are capped at 16 MiB.

Good to know

• Paid posts return only the public preview: the Actor never bypasses paywalls.
• Subscriber sizes are public labels or ranges, not exact audience measurements. A minimum subscriber filter compares the numeric lower bound; missing or unparseable values are excluded.
• The category directory is a subset selected by Substack, not a complete list of newsletters. Category availability can change.
• Only public endpoints are requested. Published articles and author bios can contain names or contact details. Review your intended reuse and permissions before exporting or republishing content.