Substack Scraper: Export Newsletter Posts

A Substack scraper to export newsletter posts from any publication, including custom domains. You get the title, URL, date, free or paid flag, authors, tags, likes, comments, restacks, word count and, optionally, the full plain text of free posts.

No Substack account or API key. Paywalled bodies are never accessed.

What can this Substack scraper do?

• 📰 Many newsletters in one run. Use a subdomain (lenny), a hostname (lenny.substack.com), a custom domain (https://www.lennysnewsletter.com) or any post URL.
• 📅 Monitor new posts. Set Posts since and the run stops as soon as it reaches older posts. Schedule it daily for cheap monitoring.
• 💸 Free vs paid filter. Find out how much of a newsletter is paywalled, or keep only free posts.
• 📈 Engagement metrics. Likes, comments, restacks and word count for every post.
• 🧠 Full text of free posts as clean plain text, ready for LLM summaries, RAG, topic modelling and research.
• 🤖 AI-agent ready. Flat JSON that works with the Apify MCP server, LangChain, n8n, Make and Zapier.

What data can I extract from Substack?

Field	Example
publicationUrl	https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
title / subtitle	State of the tech job market: late 2026
url	https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/state-of-the-tech-job-market-late
publishedAt	2026-11-10T15:04:03.497Z
type	newsletter, podcast, thread
audience	free or paid
authors	[{ "name": "Lenny Rachitsky", "handle": "lenny" }]
tags, section	["Career"]
likes, comments, restacks	323, 33, 30
wordCount	2183
description, previewText	public teaser text
contentText	full plain text, free posts only, when enabled
coverImage, podcastUrl	media links

How to scrape Substack posts

1. Click Try for free.
2. Add one or more newsletters to Publications.
3. Set Max posts per publication and, optionally, Posts since.
4. Choose an Audience filter and whether to Include full text of free posts.
5. Click Start, then download JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read the results through the Apify API.

Run it from the API

You can start this Actor from any language with the official Apify API client. Replace YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN with a token from Apify Console > Integrations. Never put the token in a public repo.

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("veenkes/veenkes-substack-posts").call(run_input={
    "publications": [
        "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com"
    ],
    "maxPostsPerPublication": 50,
    "includeContent": False
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('veenkes/veenkes-substack-posts').call({
    "publications": [
        "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com"
    ],
    "maxPostsPerPublication": 50,
    "includeContent": false
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Schedule the Actor, send results to a webhook, or connect it in Zapier, Make or n8n. Store page: https://apify.com/veenkes/veenkes-substack-posts.

Use from AI agents (Apify MCP)

AI agents can run this Actor through the Apify MCP server. Connect Claude, Cursor or any MCP-compatible client to Apify, then ask the agent to call veenkes/veenkes-substack-posts with an input like the example above. The agent discovers the tool from the Actor title and description.

How much does it cost?

Pay per result, with platform usage included. The price depends on your Apify plan tier:

Event	FREE tier	BRONZE	SILVER	GOLD and above
Post scraped (metadata), per 1,000	$1.50	$1.00	$0.90	$0.80
Full text of a free post (only when enabled), per 1,000	$1.00	$0.80	$0.70	$0.60
Actor start, per run (per GB of memory, 1 at default memory)	$0.00005	$0.00005	$0.00005	$0.00005

For example, a full archive of 300 posts costs about $0.30 at the BRONZE tier, or about $0.54 if every post is free and you include full text. On the FREE tier the same run costs about $0.45, or $0.75 with full text. Set Maximum cost per run and the Actor stops cleanly at your budget.

Input example

{
    "publications": ["https://www.lennysnewsletter.com", "astralcodexten"],
    "maxPostsPerPublication": 100,
    "since": "2026-01-01",
    "audience": "all",
    "includeContent": true
}

Output example

{
    "publicationUrl": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com",
    "postId": 224206488,
    "title": "State of the tech job market: late 2026",
    "subtitle": "PMs are winning, engineers are plateauing, designers are hurting…",
    "url": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/state-of-the-tech-job-market-late",
    "publishedAt": "2026-11-10T15:04:03.497Z",
    "type": "newsletter",
    "audience": "paid",
    "authors": [{ "name": "Lenny Rachitsky", "handle": "lenny" }],
    "tags": ["Career"],
    "section": null,
    "wordCount": 2183,
    "likes": 323,
    "comments": 33,
    "restacks": 30,
    "previewText": "👋 Hey there, I’m Lenny…",
    "coverImage": "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/…",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-11-12T20:30:00.000Z"
}

A run summary (posts saved per publication and errors) is stored in the key-value store under SUMMARY.

Use cases

• Sponsorship prospecting: rank newsletters in a niche by likes, comments and posting frequency before you buy an ad slot.
• Competitor and content research: see which topics and formats get the most engagement.
• Trend tracking: monitor dozens of newsletters daily with Posts since.
• AI and RAG: feed free posts into a vector database or summarise them with an LLM.
• Investor and market research: follow analysts and industry newsletters in one dataset.

Why this one?

One Actor covers both *.substack.com sites and custom domains, and returns engagement (likes, comments, restacks) in a single schema. Full text is optional and charged only for free posts you choose to include, so you can inventory a newsletter cheaply and pull content only when you need it.

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape Substack? The Actor reads only publicly available post metadata and posts that authors made free. It never bypasses paywalls. Post texts are copyrighted by their authors, so don't republish them without permission, and follow the laws that apply to you.

Does it work with custom domains? Yes. Paste the newsletter's homepage or any post URL.

Can I get paid posts' full text? No. For paid posts you get only the public metadata and preview.

Something broke? Open an issue on the Issues tab. Fixes usually ship within 1–2 days.

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This Actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Substack Inc.

Integrations

• Apify API — Python and JavaScript clients (examples above), plus a REST API.
• AI agents — run it via the Apify MCP server.
• Automation tools — Zapier, Make, n8n, or an Apify webhook when a run finishes.
• Export — download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or load it from a scheduled run.

Open the Actor in Apify Store.