Substack Scraper — Cheapest & Fastest Newsletter Data Extractor

Extract posts, full article content, and engagement data from any Substack newsletter. Works with both custom domains and .substack.com URLs. No login required.

⚡ Why this Substack scraper?

Most Substack scrapers on Apify use browser automation — they're slow, expensive, and break constantly. This one is different:

• 💰 Cheapest on Apify: Just $0.30 per 1,000 posts. Competitors charge $5–$20 per 1K.
• 🚀 Fastest: Uses a dual RSS + API approach — no browser, no Playwright, no Puppeteer. 50 posts in under 10 seconds.
• 🛡️ Most reliable: No headless browser means no anti-bot blocks, no timeouts, no flaky runs.
• 📊 Most data: 25 fields per post including full HTML content, engagement metrics, and author data.
• 🔓 Paid post content: Extracts content from paywalled posts via RSS (preview or full, depending on the newsletter's settings).

📦 What data can you extract?

Each post includes 25 data fields:

• 📝 Content: Full article HTML, plain text, word count
• 🏷️ Metadata: Title, subtitle, slug, URL, cover image, publish date
• 👤 Author: Name, handle, profile image
• 📈 Engagement: Reaction count, comment count, restack count
• 🗂️ Classification: Tags, audience type (free/paid), post type
• 🎧 Audio: Voiceover URL (when available)
• 📰 Newsletter: Name, description, homepage URL

💲 How much does it cost?

The Substack scraper uses pay-per-event pricing — you only pay for what you scrape:

• $0.30 per 1,000 posts

Example costs:

What you scrape	Posts	Cost
1 newsletter, last 50 posts	50	$0.015
5 newsletters, 20 posts each	100	$0.03
10 newsletters, 100 posts each	1,000	$0.30
Full archive of a large newsletter	5,000	$1.50

That's 10–60x cheaper than other Substack scrapers on Apify.

🎯 Use cases

• 📊 Newsletter analytics: Analyze what topics and formats get the most engagement
• 🔍 Competitive intelligence: Track competitor newsletters and their output
• 📚 Content research: Study content strategies of top Substack writers
• 📡 Media monitoring: Monitor Substack publications for new posts
• 🎯 Lead generation: Find active newsletter authors and creators in your niche
• 📰 Data journalism: Build datasets of newsletter content for analysis
• 🎓 Academic research: Collect newsletter data for media and communication studies
• 🔎 SEO research: Analyze newsletter content for keyword and topic trends
• 📈 Market research: Track industry trends across multiple newsletters

📥 Input

Field	Type	Description	Default
urls	array	Newsletter URLs (required). Supports custom domains and .substack.com subdomains.	—
maxPosts	number	Max posts to extract per newsletter. Set 0 for all posts.	50
includeContent	boolean	Extract full article content. Disable for faster metadata-only runs.	true
contentFormat	string	html, text, or both	both
dateFrom	string	Only posts published after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).	—
dateTo	string	Only posts published before this date (YYYY-MM-DD).	—
sortBy	string	newest or oldest	newest

💡 Example input

{
    "urls": [
        "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com",
        "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com",
        "https://example.substack.com"
    ],
    "maxPosts": 50,
    "includeContent": true,
    "contentFormat": "both",
    "sortBy": "newest"
}

📤 Output

Each post is stored as a JSON object with 25 fields:

{
    "title": "Saudi Arabia's Ordeal",
    "subtitle": "Between the Sandworm and the Quicksand",
    "author": "Tomas Pueyo",
    "authorHandle": "tomaspueyo",
    "authorImageUrl": "https://substackcdn.com/image/...",
    "publishedAt": "2026-02-25T21:09:19.695Z",
    "updatedAt": "2026-02-25T21:10:47.394Z",
    "url": "https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/saudi-arabias-ordeal",
    "slug": "saudi-arabias-ordeal",
    "coverImageUrl": "https://substackcdn.com/image/...",
    "contentHtml": "<p>This man has the hardest job in the world...</p>",
    "contentText": "This man has the hardest job in the world...",
    "wordCount": 3325,
    "audienceType": "everyone",
    "isPaywalled": false,
    "reactionCount": 170,
    "commentCount": 43,
    "restackCount": 9,
    "tags": ["Energy", "Asia", "GeoHistory"],
    "type": "newsletter",
    "hasAudio": true,
    "audioUrl": "https://substack-video.s3.amazonaws.com/...",
    "newsletter": {
        "name": "Uncharted Territories",
        "description": "Understand the world of today to prepare for the world of tomorrow",
        "url": "https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com"
    }
}

You can download results in JSON, CSV, Excel, or connect via API.

💡 Tips and notes

• 🌐 Custom domains work: Both https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com and https://example.substack.com formats are supported.
• 🔓 Paid/paywalled posts: The scraper extracts available content from paywalled posts (preview or full content depending on the newsletter's RSS settings). The isPaywalled field tells you which posts are behind the paywall.
• ⚡ Speed: No browser overhead. A typical run of 50 posts takes under 10 seconds.
• 📚 Full archives: Set maxPosts to 0 to fetch every post a newsletter has ever published.
• 🏃 Metadata-only mode: Set includeContent to false for fast runs that skip article body extraction — useful when you only need titles, dates, and engagement stats.
• 🔗 Non-Substack newsletters: The scraper may also work with other platforms that provide RSS feeds (Ghost, WordPress), though engagement metrics will only be available for Substack newsletters.
• 📦 Bulk scraping: Pass multiple newsletter URLs in a single run to scrape several newsletters at once.