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 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.
• 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 (LangChain / LlamaIndex / CrewAI)

Turn on includePostContent and each post's contentText is clean plain text, ready for summarisation, 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.

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