Substack Scraper – Subscriber Counts, Newsletters & Posts

Scrape Substack newsletters without login or API keys. Get each newsletter's subscriber count, paid subscriber tier, subscription prices, author bio and X/Twitter, plus posts with likes, comments, restacks, word count and optional full text.

Discover newsletters by category, too (Technology, Business, Finance, Crypto and 28 more), straight from Substack's leaderboards.

What you can use it for

• Sponsorship & influencer marketing: find newsletters in your niche with their audience size, then shortlist the best fit for ads.
• Lead generation: build lists of creators with subscriber counts, paid status and X/Twitter handles.
• Competitor & content research: see which topics and formats get the most likes, comments and restacks.
• Market research: compare pricing of paid newsletters in a category.
• AI / LLM datasets: collect clean full-text posts for summarization, RAG or trend analysis.

How to use it

1. Add newsletters. Paste newsletter URLs or pick Substack categories to discover new ones, and choose how many posts to read.

2. Click Start. Each newsletter's profile comes first, then its latest posts.

3. Get clean data. One row per newsletter with subscriber count, prices and author, plus one row per post. Export it as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read it through the API.

How to scrape Substack

1. Create a free Apify account (no credit card needed to start) and open this Actor.
2. Pick the newsletters. Paste newsletter links or names in Newsletters, or use Discover by category to find the top newsletters of a topic.
3. Get the numbers. Leave Get subscriber counts & prices on to see subscriber counts and paid-plan prices.
4. Add posts (optional). Turn on Include posts, set Max posts per newsletter and Posts published after. Add Include full post text if you want the article body for AI or analysis.
5. Click Start. Results appear in the Output tab while it runs.
6. Download or connect. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read the dataset through the API, Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets or a webhook.
7. Automate it. Open Schedules and run weekly with Posts published after set to last week to track new posts.

Tips

• Subscriber counts are only shown by newsletters that make them public; the rest return no count.
• Substack now shows subscriber counts as ranges ("Over 266,000 subscribers", label 266K+). freeSubscriberCount is that lower bound; use subscriberCountLabel for the public label.
• Combine Discover by category with subscriber counts to build a lead list of newsletters in a niche.
• Paid posts return their free preview only.

Output: newsletter

{
  "type": "publication",
  "name": "Lenny's Newsletter",
  "url": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com",
  "freeSubscriberCount": 1200000,
  "subscriberCountLabel": "1.2M+",
  "paidSubscribersLabel": "Tens of thousands of paid subscribers",
  "paidEnabled": true,
  "monthlyPrice": 20,
  "yearlyPrice": 200,
  "priceCurrency": "USD",
  "authorName": "Lenny Rachitsky",
  "authorBio": "Writing • Angel investing • Advising",
  "authorTwitter": "https://x.com/lennysan",
  "authorProfileUrl": "https://substack.com/@lenny",
  "language": "en",
  "hasPodcast": true,
  "firstPostDate": "2019-06-14T15:00:48.833Z"
}

Output: post

{
  "type": "post",
  "publicationName": "Lenny's Newsletter",
  "title": "How to tell if a startup has a moat",
  "url": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-tell-if-a-startup-has-a-moat",
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-13T12:45:41.160Z",
  "isPaid": true,
  "wordCount": 4153,
  "likes": 240,
  "comments": 0,
  "restacks": 5,
  "authors": [{"name": "Dan Hockenmaier", "handle": "danhock", "isGuest": true}],
  "tags": ["Career"],
  "contentText": "… (when Include full post text is on)"
}

Input

Field	Description
publications	Subdomains (lenny), *.substack.com URLs or custom domains
categories	Discover newsletters from Substack category leaderboards
maxPublicationsPerCategory	How many newsletters per category
enrichPublications	Subscriber counts, prices and author socials (recommended)
includePosts / maxPostsPerPublication / postsSince	Which posts to return
includePostContent	Full HTML + clean text (paid posts: free preview only)

Pricing

Pay per result, no monthly rental:

Event	Price
Newsletter (with subscriber count, prices, author socials)	$3.00 per 1,000 newsletters
Post	$1.00 per 1,000 posts

Example: 200 newsletters from a category with their last 10 posts each cost $2.60. Set "Maximum cost per run" in the run options to stay within budget. The Actor stops cleanly at your limit.

Use with AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, MCP)

Add the Actor as a tool through the Apify MCP server: https://mcp.apify.com?actors=smoldesk/substack-scraper. Then paste this into your agent's system prompt or tool notes, so it knows when to call it:

Tool: smoldesk/substack-scraper (Substack Scraper, Apify)
Use it when: the user wants Substack newsletter data: subscriber counts, paid tiers and prices, author social links, top newsletters in a category, or posts with likes, comments and full text. No login needed.
Don't use it when: the user wants paywalled post content (only the free part is public), subscriber email lists, Medium or Beehiiv newsletters, or anything that needs a Substack login.
How to call: run the Actor with JSON input and read the dataset items. Results cost money per item, so keep the counts small unless the user asks for more.
Example input: {"publications": ["lenny", "pomp"], "includePosts": true, "maxPostsPerPublication": 10}

Questions an agent can answer with it:

• Which Substack newsletters in the tech category have the most subscribers, and what do they charge?
• Summarize Lenny's last 10 posts and which ones got the most likes.
• Find the Twitter and LinkedIn links of these newsletter authors.

Your agent can pay for its own runs. This Actor is approved for agentic payments on Apify, so an agent with a Skyfire token or an x402 wallet can call it and pay per result without an Apify account. Skyfire: use https://mcp.apify.com?payment=skyfire. x402: buy a prepaid Apify token with USDC. Setup: Apify agentic payments docs.

Use with AI (LangChain / LlamaIndex / CrewAI)

Turn on includePostContent and each post's contentText is clean plain text, ready for summarization, trend analysis or RAG. With LangChain (pip install langchain-apify):

from langchain_apify import ApifyWrapper
from langchain_core.documents import Document

apify = ApifyWrapper()  # reads APIFY_API_TOKEN
loader = apify.call_actor(
    actor_id="smoldesk/substack-scraper",
    run_input={"publications": ["lenny"], "includePosts": True, "maxPostsPerPublication": 20, "includePostContent": True},
    dataset_mapping_function=lambda p: Document(
        page_content=p.get("contentText") or "",
        metadata={k: p.get(k) for k in ("type", "url", "title", "publicationName", "publishedAt", "likes")},
    ),
)
docs = [d for d in loader.load() if d.metadata["type"] == "post"]

Already have a run? Load its dataset with ApifyDatasetLoader(dataset_id="<run's dataset ID>", dataset_mapping_function=...). LlamaIndex: ApifyActor from llama-index-readers-apify. CrewAI / Claude / MCP clients: add it as a tool via the Apify MCP server: https://mcp.apify.com?actors=smoldesk/substack-scraper.

Limitations

• Subscriber counts are what Substack shows publicly (e.g. "1.2M+"). Some newsletters hide them.
• Paid posts only include the free preview text.
• Only public data is collected. No login, emails or private subscriber lists.

FAQ

Does Substack have an API? Not an official public one. This Actor reads the same public pages and endpoints any visitor's browser loads, so you get structured data without an API key or login.

Can I get subscriber emails? No. Subscriber lists are private. You get the public subscriber count and the author's public profile and X/Twitter.

Do I need proxies? No. It works without a proxy.

Is it legal? This Actor only collects data that Substack publishes openly to every visitor. Respect copyright when reusing post content, and follow privacy laws when contacting creators.

Feedback

Found a bug or missing a field? Open an issue in the Issues tab. If the Actor saved you time, a short review on this page helps other people find it.

Code examples and a quick reference are also on GitHub: smoldesk/substack-scraper.

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