Substack Scraper

Scrapes posts and publication details from Substack newsletters, including those on custom domains. No login is required.

Input

Field	Description
publications	Subdomains (lenny), Substack URLs (https://lenny.substack.com) or custom domains (www.lennysnewsletter.com).
maxPostsPerPublication	Newest first. Default 50. Set to 0 to return publication records only.
postedAfter	Optional. Stop at posts older than this date.
includeContent	Include post text and HTML. Default true.
includePublicationInfo	Include one record per publication. Default true.

{
  "publications": ["https://www.lennysnewsletter.com", "astralcodexten"],
  "maxPostsPerPublication": 100,
  "postedAfter": "2026-01-01"
}

Output

Each item has a type of post, publication or error.

Post

{
  "type": "post",
  "publicationUrl": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com",
  "id": 219482066,
  "title": "How to tell if a startup has a moat",
  "subtitle": "A framework for assessing whether the company you're considering joining is built to last",
  "url": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-tell-if-a-startup-has-a-moat",
  "date": "2026-10-13T12:45:41.160Z",
  "postType": "newsletter",
  "audience": "only_paid",
  "isPaywalled": true,
  "wordcount": 4153,
  "reactionCount": 352,
  "commentCount": 2,
  "restacks": 18,
  "authors": [{ "name": "Dan Hockenmaier", "handle": "danhock", "id": 2607892 }],
  "tags": ["Career"],
  "coverImage": "https://substackcdn.com/...",
  "podcastUrl": null,
  "contentText": "...",
  "contentHtml": "..."
}

Publication

{
  "type": "publication",
  "name": "Lenny's Newsletter",
  "url": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com",
  "subdomain": "lenny",
  "customDomain": "www.lennysnewsletter.com",
  "description": "Deeply researched product, growth, and career advice...",
  "language": "en",
  "hasPaidPlans": true,
  "paidPlans": [{ "interval": "month", "amount": 20, "currency": "usd" }],
  "rankingDetail": "Tens of thousands of paid subscribers",
  "createdAt": "2019-..."
}

API usage

Run the Actor and get results in one request:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/solarg~substack-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"publications": ["lenny"], "maxPostsPerPublication": 50}'

With the JavaScript client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('solarg/substack-scraper').call({"publications": ["lenny"], "maxPostsPerPublication": 50});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

With Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("solarg/substack-scraper").call(run_input={"publications": ["lenny"], "maxPostsPerPublication": 50})
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items

You can also schedule runs in Apify Console and send results to Google Sheets, Slack, webhooks, Zapier, Make or n8n through Apify's integrations.

Pricing

• $1.00 per 1,000 posts (content included)
• $0.002 per publication record

Platform usage is included in the price.

Limitations

• Paid posts return only the free preview that Substack shows publicly. Paywalled content isn't accessed.
• Comments are not included.

Notes

Report problems in the Issues tab.