Substack Scraper

Scrape Substack newsletters: subscriber counts, paid tiers and prices, author socials and posts with likes and comments. No login, no API key. Runs on Apify.

What you get

• Subscriber counts: the public figure Substack shows, as a number and as the label (1.2M+).
• Paid tiers: whether paid is on, monthly and yearly price, currency, and the paid-subscriber label.
• Author: name, bio, X/Twitter link and Substack profile.
• Posts: title, date, paid or free, word count, likes, comments, restacks, authors and tags.
• Full text: optional includePostContent for free posts.
• Discovery: pull the top newsletters of a category such as technology or finance.

Run it

Open the Substack Scraper on Apify, fill in the form and click Start. Or call it from code with your Apify token:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/smoldesk~substack-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "publications": ["lenny", "https://www.platformer.news"],
    "categories": ["technology"],
    "maxPublicationsPerCategory": 50,
    "maxPostsPerPublication": 20,
    "postsSince": "2026-10-01"
  }'

Sample output

{
  "type": "publication",
  "name": "Lenny's Newsletter",
  "url": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com",
  "freeSubscriberCount": 1200000,
  "subscriberCountLabel": "1.2M+",
  "paidEnabled": true,
  "monthlyPrice": 20,
  "yearlyPrice": 200,
  "priceCurrency": "USD",
  "authorName": "Lenny Rachitsky",
  "authorTwitter": "https://x.com/lennysan",
  "firstPostDate": "2019-06-14T15:00:48.833Z"
}

{
  "type": "post",
  "publicationName": "Lenny's Newsletter",
  "title": "How to tell if a startup has a moat",
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-13T12:45:41.160Z",
  "isPaid": true,
  "wordCount": 4153,
  "likes": 240,
  "restacks": 5,
  "tags": ["Career"]
}

Export as JSON, CSV or Excel, or pipe it into Google Sheets, Make, Zapier or n8n.

Pricing

Pay per result. No monthly fee.

Result	Per 1,000
Newsletter	$3
Post	$1

Limits

• Subscriber counts are what Substack shows publicly. Some newsletters hide them.
• Paid posts return only the free preview text.
• Public data only. No emails and no private subscriber lists.

FAQ

Does Substack have an API? Not an official public one. This reads the pages and endpoints any visitor's browser loads and returns structured JSON.

How do I see how many subscribers a Substack has? Add the newsletter to publications and keep enrichPublications on. You get freeSubscriberCount and subscriberCountLabel.

Can I get subscriber emails? No. Subscriber lists are private. You get the public count and the author's public profile.

How do I find newsletters in a niche? Set categories to a Substack category such as finance and maxPublicationsPerCategory to how many you want.

How much does a newsletter charge for paid? monthlyPrice and yearlyPrice with priceCurrency on every newsletter record.

More scrapers

Substack is one of 20 no-login scrapers by Smoldesk Studios. See the full list: smoldesk/apify-scrapers.