Substack Scraper MCP Server

An MCP server for the Mamba Labs Substack Newsletter and Posts Scraper actor on Apify. Give it Substack publications or keywords. It returns publication profiles and posts as flat rows.

What's Inside

What it does
Quick start
Prerequisites
Example prompts
Tool
Inputs
Pricing
Your keys
Full actor documentation
License

What it does

Publications: name, author, tagline, subscriber count as Substack shows it (subscriber_count_text, and subscriber_count_min as a number), subscriber tier text, and monthly, yearly, and founding plan prices.
Posts: title, URL, date, audience (free, paid, or founding), likes, comments, restacks, word count, bylines, and tags. Optional post text with include_body.
Search: keyword search across Substack posts, returned as posts or as the publications behind them.

All of the work runs on Apify. This package is a thin client that starts the actor run, waits for it, and hands back the dataset rows.

Quick start

You need Node.js 18 or newer and an Apify account with an API token.

Add this to your Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json), Cursor, or any MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mamba-substack-scraper": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@mambalabsdev/mcp-substack-scraper"
      ],
      "env": {
        "APIFY_TOKEN": "your-apify-token"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart the client. The scrape_substack tool appears.

Prerequisites

Node.js 18 or newer.
An Apify API token from console.apify.com/account/integrations, set as APIFY_TOKEN. The server lists its tool without a token; a call needs one.

Example prompts

"How many subscribers does Lenny's Newsletter have, and what does a paid plan cost?"
"Find Substack newsletters that write about cold email and list their subscriber counts."
"What did notboring.co publish in the last 30 days, and which posts were paid only?"

Tool

scrape_substack. One tool. Example arguments:

{
  "publications": [
    "lenny.substack.com"
  ],
  "search_queries": [
    "cold email"
  ],
  "max_posts_per_publication": "5",
  "max_search_results": "5"
}

Inputs

Every buyer facing input of the actor, unchanged. Omitted inputs take the actor's own defaults. Numbers and booleans are sent as strings.

Input	Type	Description
`publications`	array	Substack publications, one per line, up to 100: a URL (https://www.lennysnewsletter.com), a domain (lenny.substack.com), a profile (substack.com/@lenny), or a bare Substack name (lenny). Each one returns a publication row and its newest posts
`search_queries`	array	Keywords to search across Substack posts, one per line, up to 20. Each query returns matching posts, or the publications behind them when Search output is publications
`search_output`	string	What a search query returns Default posts
`max_posts_per_publication`	string	Newest posts returned per publication, 0 to 1000. 0 returns only the publication row Default 20
`max_search_results`	string	Rows returned per search query, 1 to 1000 Default 50
`since_days`	string	Optional. Skip posts older than this many days. 0 or empty keeps every post up to the max Default 0
`include_publication_row`	string	true to return one publication row per listed publication (name, author, subscribers, paid plan prices), billed as a publication row. false returns only post rows Default true
`include_body`	string	true to add the post text (up to 20,000 characters) to each post row of a listed publication. A paid post gives its free preview. Reads one more page per post; no extra charge Default false
`max_charge_usd`	string	Optional. The run stops before it would charge more than this
`proxy_mode`	string	How pages are fetched Default auto

Pricing

Pay per event on Apify, billed to your Apify account. Prices in USD.

Event	Free plan	Bronze	Silver	Gold
`post-row`, one Substack post returned as a row: from a listed publication or from a search	$0.00115	$0.001093	$0.001035	$0.000977
`publication-row`, one Substack publication profile returned as a row: name, author, subscriber count as shown, and paid plan prices	$0.002	$0.0019	$0.0018	$0.0017
`apify-actor-start`, per run start	$0.001057	$0.001057	$0.001057	$0.001057

no_results and error rows are free, including the one row a refused input returns.

Your keys

The actor needs no key. It reads Substack's public pages and public JSON routes and holds no key of any kind. Proxy traffic adds nothing to your price: Mamba Labs pays the platform costs of the run.

Full actor documentation

apify.com/mambalabs/substack-scraper

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Substack Scraper MCP Server