Substack Newsletter Scraper

What does Substack Newsletter Scraper do?

Substack Newsletter Scraper extracts newsletter metadata and recent posts from Substack — the leading platform for independent writers and paid newsletters. Search by keyword (e.g. "finance", "AI", "politics") or browse top newsletters by category. No login required. Runs on the Apify platform with scheduling, proxy rotation, and API access built in.

Why use Substack Newsletter Scraper?

• Market research: Find the top newsletters in any niche with subscriber counts and growth signals
• Content intelligence: Track what topics top writers are covering and how audiences engage
• Lead generation: Identify influential newsletter authors for sponsorships or partnerships
• Competitive analysis: Monitor competitor newsletters and their paid vs free content strategy
• Investment / media research: Discover emerging media brands before they go mainstream

How to use Substack Newsletter Scraper

1. Open the actor on Apify and click Try for free
2. Enter a Search Query (e.g. finance) or a Category ID (e.g. 153 for Finance, 4 for Technology)
3. Set Max Publications (how many newsletters to scrape) and Max Posts per Publication
4. Click Start — results appear in the Output tab in seconds

Common category IDs

ID	Category
4	Technology
62	Business
153	Finance
96	Culture
76739	U.S. Politics
76740	World Politics
76741	Health Politics
103	News
134	Science
118	Crypto
18	History
94	Sports
11	Music
355	Health & Wellness
339	Literature
284	Fiction
13645	Food & Drink
109	Travel
114	Philosophy
34	Education
15414	Climate & Environment
15417	Art & Illustration
49715	Fashion & Beauty
61	Design
387	Comics
223	Faith & Spirituality
1796	Parenting
49692	Humor
51282	International
76782	Film & TV
76866	Home & Garden

Input

{
  "query": "artificial intelligence",
  "maxPublications": 50,
  "maxPostsPerPublication": 5
}

Or browse by category:

{
  "categoryId": 153,
  "maxPublications": 100,
  "maxPostsPerPublication": 10
}

Output

Each item in the dataset represents one newsletter with its recent posts embedded:

{
  "id": 5076800,
  "name": "AI In Finance",
  "subdomain": "finstoryai",
  "base_url": "https://finstoryai.substack.com",
  "hero_text": "Helping CFOs turn numbers into stories...",
  "language": "en",
  "created_at": "2025-05-20T17:04:26.053Z",
  "payments_state": "enabled",
  "subscriber_count": "Over 12,000 subscribers",
  "subscriber_magnitude": 10000,
  "paid_subscriber_magnitude": 1000,
  "author_badge": {"type": "bestseller", "tier": 1000},
  "posts": [
    {
      "id": 208547842,
      "title": "Anthropic just released Claude Opus 5",
      "slug": "anthropic-just-released-claude-opus",
      "canonical_url": "https://finstoryai.substack.com/p/anthropic-just-released-claude-opus",
      "post_date": "2026-07-31T12:15:22.317Z",
      "audience": "everyone",
      "wordcount": 1137,
      "reaction_count": 56,
      "comment_count": 1,
      "restacks": 9,
      "tags": ["CFOs", "AI"],
      "authors": [{"name": "AI In Finance", "handle": "finstoryai"}]
    }
  ]
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Data table

Field	Description
name	Newsletter name
subdomain	Substack subdomain
base_url	Full newsletter URL
subscriber_count	Human-readable subscriber count string
subscriber_magnitude	Subscriber order of magnitude (100, 1000, 10000…)
payments_state	enabled = has paid tier
author_badge	Bestseller badge tier
posts[].title	Post title
posts[].post_date	Publication date (ISO 8601)
posts[].audience	everyone = free post, only_paid = paywalled
posts[].reaction_count	Likes/hearts count
posts[].restacks	Number of restacks (reposts)

Pricing

• $0.05 per run start
• $0.03 per newsletter scraped

Scraping 100 newsletters costs approximately $3.05. The free Apify tier gives you enough credits to test before subscribing.

Tips

• Use categoryId instead of query to get the top-ranked paid newsletters in a category — these are sorted by subscriber count
• Set maxPostsPerPublication: 0 to only collect newsletter metadata (faster, cheaper)
• Combine with scheduling to track growth: run weekly and compare subscriber magnitudes over time
• Substack does not rate-limit aggressively — proxy is optional for normal volumes

FAQ & Disclaimers

Is scraping Substack legal? This actor only accesses publicly available data through Substack's official mobile API — the same data visible to anyone without logging in. No paywalled content is accessed.

Why no full article text? Full article body requires authentication. This actor returns metadata and previews only.

Known limitations: Subscriber count is a magnitude string (e.g. "Over 12,000"), not an exact number — Substack does not expose exact counts publicly.

Support: Open an issue in the Issues tab on this actor's page. Custom solutions available on request.