Substack Scraper — Newsletters, Posts & Creator Leads (Subscribers, Pricing, Emails)

Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Substack Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. "Substack" is referenced only to describe the publicly available website this Actor collects data from.

Extract complete Substack data — search newsletters by keyword, browse category leaderboards, and pull the fields other scrapers miss: free-subscriber counts, paid-subscriber tiers, real paid pricing (monthly / yearly / founding), podcast details, the recommendation network, and full author profiles. Optionally turn every creator into a ready-to-contact lead by crawling their own website for contact emails, phone, and socials.

No login, no cookies, no browser — fast first-party JSON extraction with 99%+ reliability.

Why this Substack scraper?

Most Substack scrapers return a thin slice — a title, a date, maybe a subscriber number. This actor reads Substack's own public API and ships the richest dataset in the category, across newsletters, posts and authors in one run:

Data	Typical scrapers	This actor
Search by keyword + category leaderboards	partial	✅ both
Free subscriber count	partial	✅
Paid-subscriber tier (e.g. "Thousands of paid subscribers")	❌	✅
Real paid pricing — monthly / yearly / founding + currency	❌	✅
Accepts sponsorships (ad-sales signal)	❌	✅
Podcast title / description / flags	❌	✅
Recommendation network (who recommends whom)	❌	✅ opt-in
Posts — reactions, restacks, comments, word count	partial	✅ opt-in
Full post content (HTML + plain text)	❌	✅ opt-in
Author profiles — followers, bio, external links, all publications	❌	✅ opt-in
Creator contact emails (from their website)	❌	✅ opt-in
Lead score (0–100) per newsletter	❌	✅
No start fee	❌ many charge per run	✅ pay per result only

Use cases

• Creator & newsletter lead generation — Substack creators are active buyers and sellers: they want tools, sponsors, cross-promotion, and ghostwriters. Score them by audience (freeSubscriberCount, paidSubscriberTier) and reach them directly (supportEmail, contactEmails).
• Sponsorship & ad-sales prospecting — find paid newsletters that acceptsSponsorships, ranked by subscriber tier and niche, with contact data attached.
• Market & competitor research — track category leaderboards, paid pricing, posting cadence, and engagement (reactions, restacks, comments) across any topic.
• Content & trend analysis — pull posts with full content for summarization, RAG, sentiment, and topic modeling.
• Influencer / partnership discovery — map the recommendation network to find who the top newsletters endorse.

How to use

1. Sign up for Apify — the free plan is enough to try this actor.
2. Open the Substack Scraper, enter search queries and/or categories (or paste Substack URLs), and click Start.
3. Watch results stream into the dataset table.
4. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS — or pull results programmatically via the Apify API.

Input

{
    "searchQueries": ["artificial intelligence"],
    "categories": ["Technology", "Business"],
    "maxPublications": 200,
    "includePosts": true,
    "maxPostsPerPublication": 20,
    "includeRecommendations": true,
    "includeAuthorProfiles": true,
    "enrichContactEmails": true,
    "onlyPaidPublications": false,
    "minFreeSubscribers": 1000
}

• searchQueries — keywords to search publications (each returns full newsletter profiles).
• categories — category leaderboards by name (Technology, Business, Finance, Culture, U.S. Politics, Food & Drink, Sports, …) or numeric id.
• startUrls — direct publication URLs (https://newsletter.substack.com or a custom domain), post URLs (.../p/the-slug), or author profiles (https://substack.com/@handle).
• maxPublications (default 100) — cap on unique publications from search + categories.
• includePosts / maxPostsPerPublication / includePostContent — add recent posts, and optionally their full HTML + plain text.
• includeRecommendations (default false) — add each newsletter's recommendation network as a recommends array.
• includeAuthorProfiles (default false) — emit one author record per unique creator (followers, bio, links, all publications).
• enrichContactEmails (default false) — crawl the publication's own website (home + about/contact, max 3 pages) for emails, phone, and extra socials. Substack never exposes emails — this is the only way to get them.
• onlyPaidPublications / minFreeSubscribers — filters.
• monitorMode (default false) — emit only publications/posts not seen in previous runs (see below).

Output

One record per newsletter (type: "publication"), plus optional post records (type: "post") and author records (type: "author"):

{
    "type": "publication",
    "id": 89120,
    "name": "Astral Codex Ten",
    "subdomain": "astralcodexten",
    "url": "https://www.astralcodexten.com",
    "customDomain": "www.astralcodexten.com",
    "publicationType": "newsletter",
    "tagline": "P(A|B) = [P(A)*P(B|A)]/P(B), all the rest is commentary",
    "authorName": "Scott Alexander",
    "authorHandle": "astralcodexten",
    "authorBio": "Psychiatrist, blogger…",
    "freeSubscriberCount": 91000,
    "paidSubscriberTier": "Thousands of paid subscribers",
    "bestsellerTier": 1000,
    "isPaid": true,
    "currency": "USD",
    "monthlyPrice": 10,
    "yearlyPrice": 100,
    "foundingPrice": 300,
    "acceptsSponsorships": false,
    "hasPodcast": true,
    "supportEmail": "astralcodexten@substack.com",
    "website": "https://www.astralcodexten.com",
    "contactEmails": ["scott@slatestarcodex.com"],
    "contactSocials": { "twitter": "https://twitter.com/slatestarcodex" },
    "recommends": [
        { "name": "Slow Boring", "subdomain": "slowboring", "url": "https://www.slowboring.com" }
    ],
    "leadScore": 86,
    "category": "Technology",
    "searchQuery": "artificial intelligence",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-14T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Monitoring mode

Turn on monitorMode to make the actor remember every publication and post it has already returned (in a named key-value store) and emit only new ones on the next run. Combine it with Apify Schedules to:

• watch a category or keyword for newly launched newsletters,
• alert on new posts from a set of newsletters you track,
• keep a CRM topped up with fresh creator leads.

Monitoring mode is independent of the scheduler: Schedules decide when a run starts; monitoring decides what counts as new. Use a distinct monitorStoreName per tracked target to keep histories separate.

How much does it cost to scrape Substack?

This Actor uses Apify's pay-per-event pricing: you are charged only for the results it delivers, with no monthly rental and no start fee. The events it can charge are:

• Publication Scraped - One newsletter profile: subscribers, paid pricing, podcast, sponsorship signal, support email, recommendation network + 0-100 lead score.
• Post Scraped - One post: date, audience, reactions, restacks, comments, word count, podcast - plus full content when enabled.
• Author Profile Scraped - One creator profile: followers, subscriber band, bestseller tier, external links, all publications.
• Creator Lead Enriched - Crawls a publication's own website for contact emails, phone & socials (the lead wedge); charged only when it runs.

The current price of each event is shown on the Pricing tab of this page. Set a maximum total charge on the run if you want a hard cap on spend, and use the input limits to control how much the Actor fetches.

Automate & schedule

Run this actor on autopilot and pull results into your own stack:

• Apify API — start runs, fetch datasets, and manage schedules over REST.
• apify-client for JavaScript and apify-client for Python — official SDKs.
• Schedules — run it hourly/daily/weekly to monitor new newsletters, posts, or leads.
• Webhooks — trigger downstream actions (CRM import, Slack alert, email sequence) the moment a run finishes.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('scrapesage/substack-scraper').call({
    searchQueries: ['fintech'],
    categories: ['Finance'],
    maxPublications: 200,
    enrichContactEmails: true,
    onlyPaidPublications: true,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} newsletters & creator leads`);

Integrate with any app

Connect the dataset to 5,000+ apps — no code required:

• Make — multi-step automation scenarios.
• Zapier — push new creator leads straight into your CRM.
• Slack — get notified when a monitored search finds new newsletters.
• Google Drive / Sheets — auto-export every run to a spreadsheet.
• Airbyte — pipe results into your data warehouse.
• GitHub — trigger runs from commits or releases.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

The output is clean, LLM-ready JSON. You can call this actor from Claude, ChatGPT, or any agent framework through the Apify MCP server — ask your assistant to "find the top AI newsletters on Substack and list their contact emails" and let it run this scraper for you.

Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is agent-ready — AI agents can discover it, run it, and pay for it autonomously, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses pay-per-event pricing and limited permissions, so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

• x402 — an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the Apify MCP server — no account, no API key.
• Skyfire — agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.

More scrapers from scrapesage

Build a complete creator & event lead-gen stack:

• Eventbrite Scraper — events + organizer leads (prices, emails, socials).
• Sched Conference Scraper — sessions, speakers & sponsors from Sched event sites.
• Whova Event Scraper — attendees, agendas, and sponsors from Whova event apps.
• Swapcard Exhibitor Scraper — exhibitor lists and booth data from Swapcard trade shows.
• Facebook Ad Library Scraper — competitor ad intelligence (Meta + Instagram).
• Google Ads Transparency Scraper — who's advertising what on Google.
• LinkedIn Jobs Scraper — job postings as hiring-intent signals.
• Bark Listing Scraper — service-provider leads from Bark.
• Airbnb Scraper — listings, prices, and availability.

Tips

• Exhaust a niche: combine searchQueries (keywords) with categories (leaderboards) to cover both long-tail and top newsletters; raise maxPublications.
• Best leads: set onlyPaidPublications: true + minFreeSubscribers + enrichContactEmails: true to get monetizing creators with real contact data and a high leadScore.
• Cost control: posts, recommendations, author profiles and email enrichment are all opt-in, so you only pay for what you turn on; email enrichment only runs for publications that actually have a website.
• Monitoring: combine monitorMode with Schedules to track only new newsletters/posts.

FAQ

How do I scrape the top newsletters in a topic? Put the category name in categories (e.g. Technology, Finance) to pull its leaderboard, and/or add keywords to searchQueries.

Where do the emails come from? Never from Substack (they don't publish creator emails). With enrichContactEmails on, the actor visits the newsletter's own public website and extracts publicly listed contact emails — the same thing a human visitor would see. Many newsletters also expose a supportEmail directly.

Does it expose exact paid-subscriber counts? Substack hides exact paid counts, but publishes a tier band (e.g. "Hundreds/Thousands of paid subscribers") which this actor returns as paidSubscriberTier, plus the exact freeSubscriberCount for most newsletters.

Can I export to Google Sheets, CSV, or Excel? Yes — one click in the dataset view, or automatically on every run via the Google Drive integration.

Is scraping Substack legal? This actor collects publicly available data only. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with applicable laws (GDPR/CCPA for personal data) and Substack's terms.

A field is null — why? Some newsletters genuinely don't publish a price (free-only), a website, or a podcast. Fields are null only when the data doesn't exist, not because the scraper skipped them.

Data & lawful use

This Actor reads only what Substack publishes to logged-out visitors: it does not log in, use cookies or session tokens, create accounts, or reach anything behind a sign-in. Names, handles, bios and engagement figures are public, but they relate to identifiable people, so treat the output as personal data. If you are in the EU or UK you are the data controller for what you do with it: have a lawful basis (usually legitimate interest for research, marketing analytics or B2B prospecting), honour access and deletion requests, and do not use the output for spam or unsolicited messaging.

Under Apify's Standard Actor Contract, which governs your use of this Actor, you are the controller of any personal data in your input and output and scrapesage acts only as your processor: that data is processed solely to run your job, written only to your own Apify storage, never used for any other purpose and never shared onward. If you need help with a data-subject request that involves this Actor's output, open an issue on the Issues tab.

Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Substack Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

"Substack" and any related marks are the property of their respective owners and are used here only in a descriptive, nominative sense - to identify the publicly accessible website from which this Actor collects data. This Actor is not an official Substack product, is not authorised or certified by Substack Inc., and does not distribute Substack software. It collects only publicly available information; you are responsible for ensuring your use of that data complies with applicable laws, regulations and the terms of the source website.

Need help?

Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab, or visit the Apify help center. Feature requests are welcome — this actor is actively maintained.