Substack Newsletter Posts & Engagement

Posts from any Substack publication: title, subtitle, date, free/paid, word count, reactions, comments and restacks, plus full text of free posts.

Why this actor

• Engagement metrics per post; never touches paywalled content.
• Pay only for results: $0.50 per 1,000 posts, no start fee, failed lookups are free.
• Robust: automatic retries with exponential backoff, respects Retry-After, per-item error rows instead of crashed runs.
• Clean, flat JSON/CSV/Excel output ready for Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n, Clay, or the Apify API.

Use cases

• Newsletter competitive research
• Content trend analysis
• Sponsor prospecting

Input

Field	Type	Description
publications	array	Substack subdomains or URLs (custom domains work too).
maxPostsPerPublication	integer	Newest first.
includeContent	boolean	Full text of free posts only (paywalled content is never accessed).
maxItems	integer	0 = no limit. Caps cost.

Example input:

{
  "publications": [
    "platformer",
    "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com"
  ],
  "maxPostsPerPublication": 5
}

Output

Each dataset item looks like this (real sample from a test run, long fields trimmed):

{
  "publication": "https://platformer.substack.com",
  "title": "Why Platformer is leaving Substack",
  "subtitle": "We\u2019ve seen this movie before \u2014 and we won\u2019t stick around to watch it play out",
  "url": "https://platformer.substack.com/p/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack",
  "postDate": "2024-01-12T01:00:49.665Z",
  "audience": "everyone",
  "isPaid": false,
  "type": "newsletter",
  "wordCount": 4030,
  "reactions": 729,
  "comments": 59,
  "restacks": 210,
  "coverImage": "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Rd9a!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fda659d0f-c333-4a80-a312-6370de63f061_1024x1024.png",
  "authors": [
    "Casey Newton"
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-15T00:01:04+00:00"
}

Rows that could not be processed contain an error field and are not charged.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: $0.0005 per post (= $0.50 / 1,000). Use Max results to cap spend. Apify's free plan credit covers thousands of results per month.

Integrations & API

Run on a schedule in Apify Console, call via the Apify API / Python & JS clients, or connect to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack and webhooks. Works as a tool for AI agents via Apify MCP.

FAQ

Is this an official tool? No. It is an independent actor and is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by the data source or any trademark owner named here.

Is it legal? The actor only reads publicly available data from public endpoints, without logins, and does not bypass paywalls or access controls. You are responsible for using the data in line with applicable laws (e.g. GDPR) and the source sites' terms.

Something broke? Open an issue in the Issues tab; we typically respond within 24 hours and ship fixes fast.