📧 Substack Lead Gen — Newsletter Leads (100 Free/Run)

Extract B2B lead data from Substack newsletters: author profiles, subscriber counts, contact info, pricing, and activity metrics. Perfect for outreach, sponsorship prospecting, and market research.

🎯 What It Does

Two powerful modes for generating newsletter leads:

• 🔗 URL Mode — Provide specific newsletter URLs, get detailed profiles
• 🔍 Discovery Mode — Pick a category (technology, business, finance...), discover the top newsletters with subscriber metrics

📊 Data You Get Per Newsletter

Field	Example
Newsletter	The Pragmatic Engineer
Author	Gergely Orosz
Subscribers	241,000
Twitter	@GergelyOrosz
Paid tier?	Yes — $15/mo
Posts/month	8.2
Category	Technology
Has podcast	Yes

Plus 25+ more fields including bio, custom domain, logo URL, creation date, bestseller tier, and more.

🚀 Use Cases

• 📨 Cold outreach to newsletter authors — Author name, Twitter handle, bio
• 💰 Sponsorship prospecting — Subscriber count + pricing data to evaluate ROI
• 📈 Market research — Map the newsletter landscape in any category
• 🏢 Competitive intelligence — Track newsletters in your space
• 🎯 Influencer discovery — Find thought leaders by category and audience size

⚙️ Input

URL Mode

{
    "urls": [
        "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com",
        "https://platformer.news",
        "https://lenny.substack.com"
    ]
}

Discovery Mode

{
    "category": "technology",
    "newsletterType": "paid",
    "maxResults": 100
}

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
urls	string[]	—	Newsletter URLs (substack.com or custom domains)
category	string	—	Category for discovery mode (e.g., "technology")
newsletterType	select	all	Filter: all, paid, or free
maxResults	number	50	Max newsletter profiles to return
includeActivityMetrics	boolean	true	Calculate posting frequency

💡 Provide either urls OR category — or both!

📂 Available Categories

Technology, Business, Finance, Culture, Politics, Science, Health, Food, Sports, Music, Art & Illustration, Faith, Climate, Education, Podcasts, and more.

📋 Output Example

{
    "name": "The Pragmatic Engineer",
    "description": "Big Tech and high-growth startups, from the inside.",
    "url": "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com",
    "substackUrl": "https://pragmaticengineer.substack.com",
    "customDomain": "newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com",
    "logoUrl": "https://substackcdn.com/image/...",
    "language": "en",
    "createdAt": "2019-07-15T00:00:00.000Z",
    "authorName": "Gergely Orosz",
    "authorHandle": "pragmaticengineer",
    "authorBio": "Writing about big tech and startups...",
    "authorPhotoUrl": "https://substackcdn.com/image/...",
    "twitterHandle": "GergelyOrosz",
    "websiteUrl": "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com",
    "socialLinks": [
        { "platform": "twitter", "url": "https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz" }
    ],
    "subscriberCount": "241,000",
    "subscriberCountEstimate": "241K+",
    "paidSubscriberDetail": "Thousands of paid subscribers",
    "bestsellerTier": 1,
    "hasPaidSubscription": true,
    "monthlyPriceCents": 1500,
    "yearlyPriceCents": 15000,
    "lastPostDate": "2026-02-25T12:00:00.000Z",
    "estimatedPostsPerMonth": 8.2,
    "category": "Technology",
    "hasPodcast": true,
    "hasCommunity": true,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-02-27T10:30:00.000Z"
}

💰 Pricing

🎁 First 100 Leads FREE Every Run

Every run includes 100 newsletter profiles at no charge — just pay the one-time actor start fee of $0.00005 (less than a tenth of a cent). No credit card needed on Apify's free plan.

After the free tier, you pay $1.00 per 1,000 newsletter profiles.

Volume	Lead Cost	Actor Start	Total
100 newsletters	$0.00 (free tier)	$0.00005	~$0.00
500 newsletters	$0.40	$0.00005	$0.40
1,000 newsletters	$0.90	$0.00005	$0.90
10,000 newsletters	$9.90	$0.00005	$9.90

💡 How it works: The first 100 results per run are always free. Only results beyond 100 are charged at $0.001 each. The actor start fee ($0.00005) is charged once per run regardless of volume.

🔥 67% cheaper than alternatives ($3/1K elsewhere).

⚡ Performance

• Discovery mode: ~25 newsletters per API call (very fast)
• URL mode: ~1 newsletter per second
• HTTP-only: No browser needed — lightweight and reliable
• Rate limited: Built-in delays to respect Substack's servers

🔗 Related Actors

• Substack Scraper — Scrape full posts and content from Substack newsletters