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Substack Newsletter Subscriber & Engagement Scraper

A comprehensive Apify Actor for extracting Substack publication details, subscriber counts (when visible), and author contact information. Perfect for B2B outreach to newsletter creators, market research, and competitive analysis.

🚀 Key Features

• 📊 Publication Metadata: Extract title, description, author info, author ID, categories, and subscriber counts (when publicly visible)
• 📧 Email Discovery: Automatically find author contact emails from About pages and other content
• 🔗 Social Media Links: Extract Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube profiles
• 📝 Flexible Post Scraping: Choose from 3 modes - no posts, post metadata only, or full article content
• 📈 Engagement Metrics: Extract likes, comments, and word counts for each post
• ⚡ Batch Processing: Process multiple newsletters in a single run
• 💰 Pay-per-Event: Charged per newsletter processed (successful or failed)

📋 Input Parameters

Required

• newsletterUrls (array): List of Substack newsletter URLs to scrape
  • Example: [{"url": "https://platformer.substack.com"}, {"url": "https://lennysnewsletter.com"}]
  • Supports both *.substack.com URLs and custom domains
  • Process multiple newsletters in a single run

Optional

• postScrapingMode (string, default: "information_and_content"): Controls what post data to extract

  • "none" - Newsletter metadata only (fastest, minimal data usage)
  • "information" - Newsletter metadata + post info (title, date, engagement, preview)
  • "information_and_content" - Newsletter metadata + post info + full article content

• maxPostsPerNewsletter (number, default: 12, max: 12): Number of recent posts to scrape per newsletter (only applies when postScrapingMode is not "none")

• delayBetweenRequests (number, default: 3000, range: 500-10000): Delay in milliseconds between HTTP requests to avoid rate limiting

💡 Example Input

{
"newsletterUrls":[
{"url":"https://platformer.substack.com"},
{"url":"https://lennysnewsletter.com"},
{"url":"https://andrewsullivan.substack.com"}
],
"postScrapingMode":"information_and_content",
"maxPostsPerNewsletter":12,
"delayBetweenRequests":3000
}

📊 Output Structure

The output structure varies based on the postScrapingMode setting:

Mode 1: "none" - Newsletter Metadata Only

{
"author_id":241262,
"author_name":"Casey Newton",
"author_handle":"platformer",
"author_bio":"Casey Newton is the founder and editor of Platformer...",
"author_photo_url":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/...",
"author_follower_count":209469,
"email":"casey@platformer.news",
"author_twitter_url":"https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton",
"author_linkedin_url":null,
"author_facebook_url":"https://www.facebook.com/...",
"author_instagram_url":"https://instagram.com/crumbler",
"website_url":"https://www.platformer.news",
"publication_id":7976,
"publication_name":"Platformer",
"publication_subdomain":"platformer",
"publication_url":"https://www.platformer.news",
"publication_description":"News at the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy...",
"publication_logo_url":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984...",
"publication_custom_domain":"www.platformer.news",
"publication_created_at":"2019-03-29T13:28:21.009Z",
"publication_subscriber_count":176000,
"publication_subscriber_count_string":"176K+",
"publication_subscriber_count_visible":true,
"publication_is_paid":false,
"publication_payments_enabled":false,
"publication_founding_plan_name":"Mystery Tier",
"publication_has_posts":true,
"author_is_active":true,
"author_has_likes":true,
"author_profile_set_up_at":"2021-04-22T18:51:48.648Z",
"author_profile_disabled":false,
"author_is_verified":false,
"scraped_at":"2025-11-07T19:19:13.110957+00:00"
}

Mode 2: "information" - Newsletter + Post Information

Includes all fields from Mode 1, plus a posts array:

{
// ... all newsletter metadata from Mode 1 ...
"posts":[
{
"url":"https://www.platformer.news/trump-won-heres-what-comes-next/",
"title":"Trump won. Here's what comes next.",
"subtitle":"What a second Trump administration could mean for the internet",
"date":"2024-11-07",
"author":"Casey Newton",
"likes":13,
"comments_count":43,
"content_preview":"Good morning, and wow. Donald Trump won a second term as president...",
"word_count":2051
}
// ... up to maxPostsPerNewsletter posts ...
]
}

Mode 3: "information_and_content" - Full Article Content

Includes all fields from Mode 2, plus full content for each post:

{
// ... all newsletter metadata ...
"posts":[
{
"url":"https://www.platformer.news/trump-won-heres-what-comes-next/",
"title":"Trump won. Here's what comes next.",
"subtitle":"What a second Trump administration could mean for the internet",
"date":"2024-11-07",
"author":"Casey Newton",
"likes":13,
"comments_count":43,
"content_preview":"Good morning, and wow. Donald Trump won a second term as president...",
"word_count":2051,
"content":"Good morning, and wow. Donald Trump won a second term as president...\n\n[Full 2000+ word article text extracted here]\n\n..."
}
// ... up to maxPostsPerNewsletter posts with full content ...
]
}

🔧 Use Cases

• B2B Outreach: Build targeted lists of newsletter creators with contact information for partnership opportunities
• Market Research: Analyze newsletter subscriber counts, engagement metrics, and publishing frequency
• Competitive Analysis: Track competitor newsletters, their growth, and content strategies
• Content Analysis: Extract full article content for competitive research, trend analysis, or content strategy insights
• Lead Generation: Find potential customers or partners in specific niches based on newsletter topics and engagement
• Training Data Collection: Gather high-quality written content for AI/ML applications (respect copyright and usage rights)
• Publishing Patterns: Analyze posting frequency, optimal publishing times, and content length strategies
• Engagement Research: Study which topics, titles, and content formats drive the most likes and comments

💰 Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing:

• You're charged per newsletter URL processed, whether extraction succeeds or fails
• Failed attempts (invalid URLs, inaccessible newsletters, parsing errors) are charged the same rate — compute is consumed regardless of outcome
• Validate your URLs before submitting to avoid charges on dead or invalid newsletters
• Transparent usage-based billing

🏷️ Tags

Newsletter scraping, Substack, B2B outreach, lead generation, market research, email discovery, social media extraction