Snapchat Discover Publisher Show Extractor

Read Snapchat's public Discover surface without a Snapchat account. This actor collects the current Discover feed for a chosen country and locale, looks up publisher and show pages, expands a show's full season history, and pulls the snaps and HLS video URL of individual episodes.

Everything is read from public, anonymous web endpoints. No cookies, login, API key, or proxy setup is needed.

What this actor does

• Three modes - the Discover feed, publisher/show profiles, or individual episode pages
• Country and locale aware - choose from 249 countries and 61 Snapchat locales
• Story filters - shows, public user stories, publishers or all
• Publisher depth - profile, subscriber count, seasons, latest episodes and optional full history
• Episode media - HLS playback URLs and every snap preview, with optional per-episode enrichment
• Reliable pagination - tap-ID cursor pagination with retries, host fallback, a circuit breaker and migration-safe state
• Empty fields are omitted - never null, blank or placeholder values

Data source

Snapchat serves Discover as a server-rendered page plus a public web GraphQL endpoint used by its own web player. This actor reads both:

• snapchat.com/discover for a small embedded snapshot (used as an automatic fallback)
• the public web-stories GraphQL endpoint for the paginated Discover feed, publisher season lists, and episode media
• snapchat.com/p/<publisherId> for publisher profiles and the latest episodes

All requests are ordinary HTTP requests from the actor container. Media links point at Snapchat's public CDN and were verified to return 200 from a clean client.

Modes

Mode	What you get	Typical input
discover (default)	One row per story currently in the Discover feed. Shows include the episode title, creator profile, preview snap, and HLS track.	country, locale, storyTypes, maxStories
byPublisher	One row per publisher/show: profile, subscriber count, season summary, the latest episodes, and optionally every episode in every season plus episode media.	publisherUrlsOrIds, includeEpisodes, maxEpisodesPerPublisher, includeEpisodeMedia
byEpisodeUrl	One row per episode URL with publisher context, every snap preview, and the playable HLS URL.	episodeUrls

The Discover feed is paginated automatically: the actor keeps requesting the next batch and stops at maxStories, when Snapchat returns no new stories, or when the safety round limit is reached.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	select	discover	Which surface to collect.
maxStories	integer (1-500)	50	Maximum records pushed. Discover stories, publisher rows, and episode rows all count one each.
country	select	US	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country context. All countries are listed.
locale	select	en-US	Language and region hint for the Discover feed (61 common Snapchat locales).
storyTypes	select	all	all, shows, publicUserStories, or publishers. Discover mode only.
publisherUrlsOrIds	string list	[]	Publisher/show page URLs, story.snapchat.com links, or bare business profile UUIDs. byPublisher only.
episodeUrls	string list	[]	Episode URLs shaped like snapchat.com/p/<publisherId>/<storyId>. byEpisodeUrl only.
includeEpisodes	boolean	false	Expand every season into its full episode list. byPublisher only.
maxEpisodesPerPublisher	integer (1-2000)	100	Episode cap across all seasons of one publisher.
includeEpisodeMedia	boolean	false	Fetch each episode's snap list and HLS URL. byPublisher only.
proxyConfiguration	proxy	empty	Optional advanced override. Leave empty; the actor works without a proxy.

Example: Discover feed

{
  "mode": "discover",
  "country": "US",
  "locale": "en-US",
  "storyTypes": "shows",
  "maxStories": 40
}

Example: publisher with full episode history

{
  "mode": "byPublisher",
  "publisherUrlsOrIds": ["https://www.snapchat.com/p/efd8a13d-b69a-41d0-9c04-d19f87829798"],
  "includeEpisodes": true,
  "maxEpisodesPerPublisher": 80
}

Example: one episode

{
  "mode": "byEpisodeUrl",
  "episodeUrls": ["https://www.snapchat.com/p/dcb36ae8-b313-4eef-b24c-ccc20fe4d872/3137397659916288"]
}

Output per record type

The dataset contains one object per record. Every record has a recordType, a sourceUrl, and a scrapedAt timestamp. Empty fields are omitted instead of written as null.

recordType: "discoverStory"

Field	Description
storyKey, storyId, storyType, title, tapId	Story identity and type (SHOW, PUBLIC_USER_STORY, or PUBLISHER). storyKey is the unique feed key; storyId is Snapchat's story ID and equals the creator's username for public user stories, so it can repeat when one creator has several stories in the feed.
thumbnailUrl	Cover image URL.
publishedAt	Publish time in ISO 8601 UTC.
videoTrackUrl	HLS playlist for show episodes.
creator	businessProfileId, title, bio, username, badge, profile images, primaryColor.
previewSnap	snapId, mediaUrl, mediaPreviewUrl, mediaType, index.
totalSnaps	Number of snaps in the story.

recordType: "publisher"

Field	Description
publisherId, publisherTitle, publisherUrl	Publisher identity and public page.
bio, subscriberCount, publisherType, username, badge	Profile metadata.
profilePictureUrl, squareHeroImageUrl, snapcodeImageUrl, primaryColor	Brand images and color.
websiteUrl	Present only when the profile lists one.
seasonCount, seasons	Season IDs, season numbers, declared episode counts, and actual counts when expanded.
declaredEpisodeCount	Sum of the season list's declared counts.
latestEpisodes	The 13-14 latest episodes embedded in the page.
episodes, episodesReturned	Full season history and its size when includeEpisodes is on.
episode objects	storyId, title, storyType, thumbnailUrl, videoTrackUrl, publishedAt, seasonNumber, episodeNumber, storyUrl; with includeEpisodeMedia: snapCount and snaps[].

recordType: "episode"

Field	Description
storyId, title, storyType, storyUrl	Episode identity.
publisherId, publisherTitle	Publisher context.
seasonNumber, episodeNumber	Present when the publisher page exposes them.
thumbnailUrl, videoTrackUrl	Cover image and playable HLS URL.
snapCount, snaps	Each snap's snapId, index, mediaType, mediaUrl, mediaPreviewUrl, intervalStartTimeMs.

recordType: "error"

Invalid or unavailable inputs produce a diagnostic row instead of failing the run:

{
  "recordType": "error",
  "status": "not_found",
  "message": "Snapchat has no public publisher page for this ID.",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.snapchat.com/p/3c33e049-a638-4b4e-9960-78a2b87a9992",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-11T14:00:00+00:00"
}

Use cases

• Media monitoring - track which publishers and shows are on Discover
• Publisher research - profile publishers, their subscriber counts and season output
• Content benchmarking - compare show formats, episode cadence and media availability
• Trend analysis - collect regional Discover feeds over time
• Episode and media archives - resolve episode pages into snap previews and HLS playback URLs

FAQ

Do I need a Snapchat account, cookies, or a proxy? No. Every surface used here is public and works anonymously. The optional proxy field exists only for users who want a specific connection.

Why does the Discover feed return fewer rows than maxStories? The feed is finite and changes constantly. The actor keeps paginating until Snapchat returns no new stories. A run that asks for 500 rows can legitimately end with the size of the current feed.

Why do some publisher IDs return a not_found error? Discover contains public user stories and retired shows that do not have a publisher page. The actor reports the missing page per input and continues with the remaining inputs.

Why is videoTrackUrl missing from some publisher season rows? Snapchat's season list does not include the HLS track. Enable includeEpisodeMedia to fetch each episode's media detail, or use byEpisodeUrl for a single episode.

Can I get every episode of a long-running show? Yes. Set includeEpisodes to true and raise maxEpisodesPerPublisher. The actor walks each season's cursor. A small number of rows can differ from the season list's declared count because Snapchat's declaration and its episode endpoint do not always agree.

Are the media URLs permanent? They are public CDN URLs that returned 200 during verification. Snapchat may rotate or expire individual assets; the actor stores the URL it received, not a copy of the media.

Limitations

• Discover availability and publisher pages depend on the country context. Some pages answer 451 (region-restricted); the actor reports that as an error row.
• Per-snap mediaUrl is populated by Snapchat for only a small subset of snaps (usually the first snaps of an episode). Preview images are available for almost every snap.
• Publisher season lists occasionally declare more episodes than the season endpoint returns. The actor reports both numbers.
• Snapchat's web GraphQL schema is undocumented and can change. The /discover server-rendered snapshot is kept as an automatic fallback, but it only carries a small number of stories.
• Spotlight posts, creator profiles, comments, and transcripts are separate surfaces and are not part of this actor.