Substack Leaderboard Scraper

Overview

This actor scrapes detailed subscription and author data from Substack leaderboards at scale. It's built for market research, newsletter analytics, and competitive intelligence.

Key Features

• Author & Newsletter Data: Collects author name, handle, bio, photo, newsletter name, URL, category, language, and type (newsletter, podcast, etc.).
• Subscription Plans: Extracts plan details including ID, nickname, currency, interval (monthly/yearly), amount, founding/premium tiers, free trials, and paywall settings.
• Subscriber Metrics: Retrieves paid and free subscriber counts, global/language rankings, and subscriber estimate magnitudes.
• Podcast & Content Info: Captures podcast flags, feed URLs, episode availability, community features, post settings, and moderation details.
• Technical & Tracking Data: Gathers Stripe account info, theme variables, cover/hero images, and optional tracking pixels (GA, Twitter, Facebook).

How to Use

1. Configure the actor's run settings in the Apify console or via API.
2. Input the target Substack leaderboard URL(s) or search parameters.
3. The actor will navigate the pages, extract the structured data, and handle pagination automatically.
4. Retrieve the results in JSON format from the actor's dataset.

Input/Output

Input: Typically a Substack leaderboard URL (e.g., https://substack.com/leaderboard). Configuration options may include search filters or category selections.

Output: A structured JSON dataset containing an array of newsletter objects. Each object includes the comprehensive fields shown in the example below.

{
  "author_id": 105393068,
  "name": "RocaNews",
  "language": "en",
  "paid_subscription_benefits": ["Subscriber-only posts and full archive", "Post comments and join the community"],
  "free_subscription_benefits": ["Occasional public posts"],
  "paywall_free_trial_enabled": true,
  "podcast_enabled": false,
  "community_enabled": true,
  "cover_photo_url": "https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8576b80d-19ea-407a-a9b7-a4ccb853a672_300x300.png"
}