Substack Leaderboard Scraper

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Substack Leaderboard Scraper

Scrape Substack leaderboard rankings across 30 categories. Extract top bestseller and rising publications with subscriber counts, pricing, author details, badge tiers, and publication URLs.

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Copy this block into ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, or any LLM to start using this actor.

parsebird/substack-leaderboard-scraper on Apify. Call:ApifyClient("TOKEN").actor("parsebird/substack-leaderboard-scraper").call(run_input={...}), then client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items for results. Key inputs:categories(array of strings,default["bestseller"], multi-select from 31 category slugs),boardTypes(array of strings,default["paid"],options:"paid"/"rising"),maxResults(integer,default100). Full actor spec: fetch build via GEThttps://api.apify.com/v2/acts/parsebird~substack-leaderboard-scraper(Bearer TOKEN). Get token: https://console.apify.com/account/integrations

What does Substack Leaderboard Scraper do?

This Actor scrapes Substack's leaderboard API, which ranks the highest-earning and fastest-growing paid publications across 30 categories. For each publication on the leaderboard, it extracts:

• Rank — position on the leaderboard (1-100 per board)
• Publication name — the newsletter's display name
• Author name, handle, and bio — the writer behind the publication
• Subscriber count — total (free + paid) subscriber count (e.g. "257,000")
• Subscriber count magnitude — abbreviated form (e.g. "257K+")
• Paid subscriber detail — paid subscriber tier description (e.g. "Thousands of paid subscribers")
• Total subscriber detail — full subscriber text (e.g. "Over 257,000 subscribers")
• Subscription pricing — monthly and annual price in USD
• Badge tier — bestseller badge color indicating paid subscriber count:
  • Purple = 10,000+ paid subscribers
  • Orange = 1,000+ paid subscribers
  • White = 100+ paid subscribers
• Publication URL — the actual website/domain of the newsletter
• Profile URL — Substack profile page link
• Subscribe URL — direct link to the subscription page
• Description — publication tagline/hero text
• Author photo/logo — avatar and logo image URLs

How the leaderboards work

Substack has two types of leaderboards per category:

• Top Bestsellers (paid) — ranked by estimated annual recurring revenue (ARR) from paid subscriptions. Updated daily.
• Rising (rising) — ranked by recent paid subscriber growth velocity. Updated every few hours and highly volatile.

Each board shows up to 100 publications. There are 30 categories plus a cross-category "All Categories" board (note: "All Categories" only has a Rising board).

You can select multiple categories and both board types in a single run.

Input parameters

Available categories

Output example

{
"rank":1,
"publicationName":"SemiAnalysis",
"publicationUrl":"https://newsletter.semianalysis.com",
"authorName":"Dylan Patel",
"authorHandle":"semianalysis",
"authorBio":"Bridging the gap between business and the worlds most important industry.",
"authorPhotoUrl":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/...",
"logoUrl":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/...",
"description":"Bridging the gap between the world's most important industry, semiconductors, and business.",
"bestsellerBadgeTier":"orange",
"subscriberCount":"257,000",
"subscriberCountMagnitude":"257K+",
"paidSubscriberDetail":"Thousands of paid subscribers",
"totalSubscriberDetail":"Over 257,000 subscribers",
"monthlyPrice":50.0,
"annualPrice":500.0,
"currency":"USD",
"profileUrl":"https://substack.com/@semianalysis",
"subscribeUrl":"https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/subscribe",
"category":"technology",
"boardType":"paid",
"scrapedAt":"2026-04-21T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Use cases

• Newsletter market research — See which publications dominate each category by revenue and subscriber count
• Competitive analysis — Track competitors' leaderboard positions and growth over time
• Content strategy — Identify underserved categories with fewer top publications
• Pricing intelligence — Compare subscription pricing across categories to find market rates
• Trend monitoring — Use the Rising board to spot newsletters gaining traction fast
• Lead generation — Build targeted lists of newsletter authors for partnerships or outreach
• Investment research — Track the newsletter creator economy's top performers with subscriber metrics

How it works

1. Fetches data from Substack's internal leaderboard API for each selected category and board type
2. Paginates through results (25 per page, up to 100 per board)
3. Extracts publication metadata including subscriber counts, pricing, and badge tiers
4. Returns structured data for each publication with all available fields

Pricing

This actor uses a pay-per-event model. Each leaderboard entry extracted counts as one event.

A full category board (100 publications) costs approximately $0.40. Selecting 2 categories with both board types (up to 400 entries) costs approximately $1.60.

Legal and compliance

This actor accesses publicly available leaderboard data from Substack's API. No authentication is required. The data represents publicly visible rankings and publication metadata. Always review and comply with the website's Terms of Service before use.