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Best Substack Scrapers in 2026: Comparing Every Apify Actor

#webdev #python #tutorial #dataengineering

Substack has become the default platform for independent writers, with thousands of newsletters covering everything from AI to geopolitics. If you need to monitor competitors, research trends, or build lead lists from Substack data — you need a scraper.

I tested every Substack scraper on the Apify Store in March 2026. Here's what actually works.

Why Scrape Substack?

Three main use cases keep coming up:

  • Newsletter research: Track what topics are trending, which writers are growing, what formats get engagement.
  • Lead generation: Extract author profiles, subscriber counts, and contact info for B2B outreach.
  • Content monitoring: Watch specific publications for new posts matching your keywords.

Substack doesn't offer a public API, so scrapers are the only option for bulk data extraction.

Every Substack Scraper on Apify: Compared

I found 20+ actors on the Apify Store. Many are broken, abandoned, or overpriced. Here are the ones worth considering:

General-Purpose Scrapers

Actor Users Rating 30-Day Success Price Key Features
QPS Substack Scraper 403 No reviews 39% $20/mo Posts from authors
Digispruce Newsletter Scraper 45 4.0 99.7% ~$0.003/newsletter Author profiles, subscriber counts, B2B data
Fatih Tahta Scraper 48 5.0 95% ~$5/1k results Articles, profiles, search
Automation Lab Scraper 24 No reviews 99.5% ~$0.001-0.002/post Posts + comments, nested replies
CryptoSignals Scraper 7 New 100% $4.99/mo (from Apr 3) Posts, authors, date filter, keyword filter, recommendations, subscriber counts
Da Coder Scraper 37 1.0 99% $24/mo Posts, profiles
AutomateLab Scraper 47 1.0 84% $19/mo Newsletter content, analytics

Specialized Scrapers

EasyApi Suite (5 separate actors at $19.99/mo each): Posts, People, Publications, Notes, Leaderboard. Two of five are currently broken (0% success rate). You'd pay $100/mo for the full suite.

ScapeStorm Suite (4 actors at $19.49/mo each): Leaderboard, People, Posts, Notes. All working but you need four subscriptions ($78/mo) for full coverage.

ContactMinerLabs Email Scraper ($9.99/mo): Focused specifically on extracting verified emails from profiles. Good for outreach, not for content.

Notable Absence

epctex/substack-scraper — frequently referenced in older guides — returns a 404. It's been removed from the store.

What Stands Out

A few things became obvious during testing:

The most popular scraper is unreliable. QPS (qpayre) has 403 users and 49K+ total runs, but its 30-day success rate is 39%. Over 60% of runs fail. It hasn't been meaningfully updated since 2023.

Pay-per-event pricing adds up fast. Actors charging $0.003-$0.005 per result look cheap until you're scraping thousands of posts. At 10K posts, you're paying $30-$50 per run.

Suite-based scrapers are expensive. If you need posts, authors, AND leaderboard data, the EasyApi or ScapeStorm suites cost $60-$100/mo — and some components are broken.

CryptoSignals Substack Scraper: What's Different

Full disclosure: this is our actor. Here's what it does that others don't:

  1. All-in-one: Posts, author profiles, subscriber counts, and recommendation networks in a single actor. No need to buy 4-5 separate scrapers.
  2. Date filtering: Scrape only posts from a specific date range. Most scrapers dump everything or nothing.
  3. Keyword filtering: Filter posts by keyword at scrape time, not in post-processing.
  4. Recommendation network mapping: See which newsletters recommend each other — useful for finding related publications.
  5. Flat $4.99/mo: Predictable pricing. No per-result charges that spike on large jobs.

Current limitations: it's new (launched March 2026), so the user base is small. But the 100% success rate across all runs so far is a good sign.

Code Example

Here's how to use it with the Apify Python client:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("cryptosignals/substack-scraper").call(run_input={
    "urls": ["https://www.lennysnewsletter.com"],
    "scrapeType": "posts",
    "maxPosts": 50,
    "dateFrom": "2026-01-01",
    "keywordFilter": "product management",
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(f"{item['title']} - {item['date']} - {item.get('likes', 0)} likes")
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Or use the Apify API directly:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cryptosignals~substack-scraper/runs" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "urls": ["https://www.platformer.news"],
    "scrapeType": "author",
    "maxPosts": 100
  }'
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Which Scraper Should You Use?

It depends on your use case:

  • Occasional small jobs: Automation Lab or Digispruce with pay-per-event pricing. You pay only for what you use.
  • Regular bulk scraping: CryptoSignals at $4.99/mo flat. Unlimited runs, predictable cost.
  • Email extraction only: ContactMinerLabs at $9.99/mo.
  • Leaderboard/ranking data: EasyApi or ScapeStorm leaderboard actors.

Avoid the QPS scraper despite its popularity — a 61% failure rate means you're wasting compute credits on retries.

Try the CryptoSignals Substack Scraper — currently free, $4.99/mo starting April 3, 2026.

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