Substack Post Scraper

What does Substack Post Scraper do?

Substack Post Scraper extracts full post content and comments from any Substack newsletter. Give it a newsletter subdomain and it returns complete article HTML, metadata, and reader comments — no login required for free posts. Runs on the Apify platform with scheduling, proxy rotation, and API access built in.

Why use Substack Post Scraper?

• Content intelligence: Read full article text to analyze topics, tone, and writing style
• NLP & AI pipelines: Feed article HTML into summarizers, classifiers, or embedding models
• Competitive research: Monitor what top newsletters are publishing and how readers respond
• Comment analysis: Scrape reader feedback and sentiment for market research
• Content archiving: Build a searchable archive of newsletter content over time

How to use Substack Post Scraper

1. Open the actor on Apify and click Try for free
2. Enter the Newsletter Subdomain (e.g. howtogrowanewsletter from howtogrowanewsletter.substack.com)
3. Set Max Posts and choose Audience Filter (free posts only, or all posts)
4. Toggle Include Comments on or off
5. Click Start — results appear in the Output tab within seconds

Input

{
  "subdomain": "howtogrowanewsletter",
  "maxPosts": 20,
  "audienceFilter": "everyone",
  "includeComments": true
}

Also accepts full URLs:

{
  "subdomain": "https://howtogrowanewsletter.substack.com",
  "maxPosts": 50
}

Output

Each item in the dataset is one post with full content and comments:

{
  "id": 208676609,
  "title": "Substack Just Launched AI Detection. Here's What It Means For You.",
  "subtitle": "A new feature lets readers scan any post to see how much was written by a human.",
  "slug": "substack-just-launched-ai-detection",
  "canonical_url": "https://howtogrowanewsletter.substack.com/p/substack-just-launched-ai-detection",
  "post_date": "2026-07-27T13:08:45.764Z",
  "audience": "everyone",
  "wordcount": 542,
  "reaction_count": 2,
  "reactions": {"❤": 2},
  "comment_count": 2,
  "restacks": 1,
  "cover_image": "https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/...",
  "body_html": "<p>This is the first issue of a new free series...</p>...",
  "publishedBylines": [
    {
      "name": "How to Grow a Newsletter",
      "handle": "howtogrowanewsletter",
      "bio": "I run four Substack newsletters pulling in nearly $250K/year"
    }
  ],
  "postTags": [],
  "comments": [
    {
      "id": 302090035,
      "name": "Phaetrix",
      "body": "AI detection may give readers additional information...",
      "date": "2026-07-27T16:44:04.418Z",
      "reactions": {"❤": 2},
      "reaction_count": 2,
      "children": []
    }
  ]
}

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

Data table

Field	Description
title	Post title
subtitle	Post subtitle / description
canonical_url	Full URL to the post
post_date	Publication date (ISO 8601)
audience	everyone = free, only_paid = paywalled
wordcount	Approximate word count
reaction_count	Total reactions (likes/hearts)
restacks	Number of restacks (reposts)
body_html	Full article HTML (free posts only)
cover_image	Cover image URL
publishedBylines	Author info: name, handle, bio, photo
postTags	Post tags/topics
comments[].body	Comment text
comments[].name	Commenter name
comments[].reactions	Comment reactions
comments[].children	Nested replies

Audience filter

Value	Behavior
everyone	Free posts only — body_html contains the full article
all	All posts including paid — paywalled posts have empty body_html

Pricing

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

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

Tips

• Set audienceFilter: "everyone" to only get posts with full content — saves credits by skipping paywalled posts
• Set includeComments: false if you only need article text — faster and cheaper
• Newsletters with custom domains (e.g. citrini → citriniresearch.com) are supported automatically
• Combine with Substack Newsletter Scraper to first discover newsletters, then scrape their posts

FAQ & Disclaimers

Is scraping Substack legal? This actor only accesses publicly available content through Substack's official mobile API — the same data visible to anyone without logging in. Paywalled content is never accessed.

Why is body_html empty for some posts? Posts with audience: "only_paid" are behind a paywall — Substack does not serve the article body without authentication.

Supports custom domains? Yes — newsletters that have migrated to a custom domain are followed automatically.

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