Substack Newsletter Intelligence: Top Writer Tracker

Track Substack publications at scale. Each row carries the publication identity, writer name, tagline, description, cover image, subscriber count parsed from the public about page, paid tier flag, external links (Twitter / X, LinkedIn, GitHub, YouTube), and optional recent posts with comment counts and free vs paid mix. Pay per publication row. No auth required.

Built for ad networks pitching sponsored newsletters, creator economy VCs scouting paid writers before they break out, agencies building newsletter benchmarks for clients, content marketers studying competitive editorial calendars, talent reps sourcing writers, and aspiring writers reverse engineering top performers' posting cadence and paid post ratio.

Keywords this actor ranks for: substack api, substack scraper, substack newsletter tracker, substack subscriber count, newsletter intelligence, creator economy data, substack writer profile, paid newsletter tracker, substack discovery, sponsored newsletter prospecting, newsletter sponsorship sales, creator economy investment, substack analytics.

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Why this actor

Other newsletter tools	This actor
Sparkloop, Beehiiv recommend network: $99 to $499 per month per seat	Pay per row scraped. No seat license.
Manual subdomain by subdomain browsing	Structured JSON one row per publication.
English / US only	Works on any Substack publication globally.
Top level data only	Optional recent posts with audience flag (everyone vs paid) and comment count.
Drop writer external links	Pull writer's X, LinkedIn, YouTube, GitHub for outreach.
Free vs paid posting cadence hidden	paidPostFraction and postsPerWeek derived from the archive API.
Last post date unknown	lastPostAt parsed from the most recent post.

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How it works

flowchart LR
    A[Subdomains<br/>Publication URLs<br/>Search queries] --> B[Seed router]
    B --> C[About page<br/>{sub}.substack.com/about]
    B --> D[Search page<br/>substack.com/search/{term}]
    D --> E[Harvest publication cards<br/>via rendered DOM]
    E --> C
    C --> F[Parse HTML<br/>meta tags + body text]
    F --> G[Subscriber count<br/>writer name + paid flag<br/>external links]
    F --> H{fetchRecentPosts?}
    H -->|yes| I[/api/v1/archive<br/>public JSON]
    I --> J[Recent posts<br/>audience + comments<br/>paid mix + cadence]
    G --> K[(Publication row)]
    J --> K

About pages are server rendered and include the subscriber count in plain text ("446,000 subscribers"). The archive API is public, returns one row per post with title, audience (everyone vs paid), comment_count, and post_date. We derive paidPostFraction, postsPerWeek, and lastPostAt from the post window.

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What you get per row

flowchart LR
    R[Publication row] --> R1[Identity<br/>subdomain url aboutUrl]
    R --> R2[Pitch<br/>name writerName tagline coverImage]
    R --> R3[Tier<br/>hasPaidTier description]
    R --> R4[Audience size<br/>subscriberCount subscriberCountText]
    R --> R5[Cadence<br/>recentPostCount postsPerWeek lastPostAt]
    R --> R6[Monetization signal<br/>paidPostFraction]
    R --> R7[Outreach<br/>externalLinks]
    R --> R8[Recent posts<br/>title audience commentCount url]

paidPostFraction is the share of recent posts gated for paid subscribers. Combined with subscriberCount, it's a usable proxy for monthly recurring revenue tier (writers with a high paid fraction + high subscriber count are the buyers ad networks chase).

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Quick start

Daily snapshot of named top writers

{
  "subdomains": ["noahpinion", "platformer", "stratechery", "garbageday", "lennysnewsletter"],
  "fetchRecentPosts": true,
  "maxRecentPosts": 12
}

Discover by topic across queries

{
  "queries": ["AI safety", "product management", "creator economy"],
  "maxPublications": 100,
  "fetchRecentPosts": true
}

Direct publication URLs including custom domains

{
  "publicationUrls": [
    "https://noahpinion.substack.com",
    "https://www.platformer.news",
    "https://stratechery.com"
  ],
  "fetchAuthorLinks": true
}

Lightweight outreach list (no post enrichment)

{
  "queries": ["sales prospecting", "B2B SaaS"],
  "maxPublications": 50,
  "fetchRecentPosts": false,
  "fetchAuthorLinks": true
}

---

Sample output

{
  "subdomain": "noahpinion",
  "url": "https://noahpinion.substack.com/",
  "aboutUrl": "https://noahpinion.substack.com/about",
  "name": "Noahpinion",
  "writerName": "Noah Smith",
  "tagline": "Economics and other interesting stuff",
  "description": "Economics and other interesting stuff. Click to read Noahpinion, by Noah Smith, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.",
  "coverImage": "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/.../subscribe-card.jpg",
  "subscriberCount": 446000,
  "subscriberCountText": "446,000 subscribers",
  "hasPaidTier": true,
  "externalLinks": [
    "https://twitter.com/Noahpinion",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@noahpinion"
  ],
  "sourceQuery": null,
  "recentPostCount": 12,
  "paidPostFraction": 0.5,
  "lastPostAt": "2026-05-13T09:40:06.112Z",
  "postsPerWeek": 4.2,
  "recentPosts": [
    {
      "id": 197453444,
      "title": "Trump actually started to decouple America from China",
      "subtitle": "And other notes on the tariff war",
      "slug": "trump-actually-started-to-decouple",
      "postDate": "2026-05-13T09:40:06.112Z",
      "audience": "everyone",
      "type": "newsletter",
      "commentCount": 312,
      "wordcount": 2840,
      "podcastDuration": null,
      "url": "https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/trump-actually-started-to-decouple"
    }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-15T22:00:00.000Z"
}

---

Who uses this

Role	Use case
Ad network / Sparkloop seller	Pitch sponsored newsletter slots. Filter by subscriber count and paidPostFraction.
Creator economy VC	Scout breakout writers. Watch postsPerWeek + subscriberCount over time.
Agency	Benchmark client newsletters against category leaders.
Content marketer	Reverse engineer top performers' editorial cadence, paid mix, and post topics.
Talent rep	Build outreach lists from externalLinks (writer's X, LinkedIn).
Newsletter founder	Compete intel on competitor cadence and tier strategy.
Aspiring writer	Find writers in your niche to study and learn from.
Recruiter	Source senior writers and journalists publishing under their own name.

---

Input reference

Field	Type	What it does
subdomains	string[]	Direct Substack subdomain slugs. Skip discovery, jump to enrichment.
publicationUrls	string[]	Direct publication URLs (substack.com subdomain or custom domain pointing back).
queries	string[]	Substack search terms. Renders substack.com/search/{term} via Playwright.
fetchRecentPosts	boolean	Pull recent posts from the public archive API.
maxRecentPosts	integer	Recent posts per publication. 12 is the Substack default page.
fetchAuthorLinks	boolean	Pull writer's external links (X, LinkedIn, YouTube, GitHub).
maxPublications	integer	Hard cap on rows per run.
maxResultsPerQuery	integer	Cap on publications harvested per search query.
dedupe	boolean	Skip subdomains already pushed in previous runs.
navigationDelayMs	integer	Pause between page loads. 1000 to 3000 ms is safe.
concurrency	integer	Parallel browser pages. 3 to 6 is safe on residential.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify proxy. Datacenter is fine for Substack.

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API call

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_USER~substack-newsletter-intelligence/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "queries": ["AI safety", "creator economy"],
    "fetchRecentPosts": true,
    "maxPublications": 100
  }'

---

Pricing

The first 3 publication rows per run are free so you can validate the schema before paying. After that, one charge per publication row regardless of how many enrichment fields you turn on. Recent posts, paid post fraction, posting cadence, and author links are included at no extra per row charge.

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FAQ

Do I need a Substack account?

No. The actor only touches the public /about page and the public archive API that any anonymous web visitor can see.

Why do some publications return null for subscriberCount?

Substack only displays a subscriber count once a publication crosses a threshold (commonly 1,000). Small publications display "Subscribe" without a count. The field stays null in that case.

Does it work for custom domains?

Yes. Many Substack publications front a custom domain (example: stratechery.com). The actor follows the custom domain to /about. If a publication switched fully off Substack, /about will 404 and the row will be skipped.

How fresh is the data?

Each run hits the live /about page and archive API. Subscriber counts and recent posts reflect what Substack shows at scrape time.

Will Substack block me?

Substack is lightly defended. Datacenter proxy works for low volume. Switch to residential past a few hundred requests in a short window. Navigation delay of 1500 ms is the default safe band.

How is this different from Beehiiv's recommend network?

Beehiiv's recommend network is a closed marketplace for cross promotion between newsletters on Beehiiv. This actor pulls open public data on Substack publications, which is a different platform and a different buyer profile (sponsorship sellers, VCs, agencies).

Can I track a writer over time?

Run the actor on an Apify schedule and store snapshots. The dataset will have one row per scrape per subdomain. Plot subscriberCount, postsPerWeek, paidPostFraction over time to spot inflection points.

What is the audience field on a post?

Substack tags every post with audience set to one of: everyone (free), only_paid (paid only), founding (founding tier only). The actor passes this through unchanged so you can compute paid mix or filter to free posts only.

Can I get post body content?

Not in this actor by design. Post body extraction is a different shape (one row per post, paid wall handling, image extraction). For full post bodies pair this actor with Apify's Website Content Crawler pointed at the post URLs returned here.

Why only 12 recent posts by default?

Twelve is the Substack archive page size. You can raise maxRecentPosts up to 100 for deeper history at no extra per row charge.

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Related actors

• LinkedIn Creator Ranker. Pair Substack writer data with LinkedIn creator engagement for full creator economy coverage.
• LinkedIn Pulse Articles Scraper. Cross check Substack writers who also publish on LinkedIn Pulse.
• GitHub Trending Scraper. Catch dev writers cross posting between Substack and GitHub.
• HN Lead Monitor. Surface Hacker News mentions of Substack publications for sponsor leads.
• Reddit Lead Monitor. Same applied to Reddit, useful for tracking newsletter recommendations.
• Website Content Crawler. Pipe recentPosts[].url into the crawler for full body extraction with paid wall handling.
• Lead Enrichment Pipeline. Pipe writer external links through the enrichment pipeline for direct outreach contact info.