/substack/posts

POST /api/substack/posts

Price: 5 credits

Get a Substack post by publication (subdomain or custom domain) and post slug (or URL): title, subtitle, description, text, audience, type, published_at, language, word_count, reaction_count and reactions, comment_count, restack_count, cover image, authors, tags, podcast fields, and the is_paywalled flag that marks a post whose text is served only as a free preview.

How to use it

is_paywalled marks a post the publication serves gated: text then carries only the free preview shown to non-subscribers — usually a fraction of the article, occasionally empty when the preview is images or audio only — while word_count counts the complete post, so text can be far shorter than it. When is_paywalled is false, text is the complete post. Gating does not follow audience: most only_paid and founding posts are gated, and a post with audience=everyone can be gated as well, so read is_paywalled rather than inferring it from audience.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• publication string required — Substack publication subdomain or custom domain (examples: "thefp.com", "newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com", "platformer"; minLength: 1)
• post string required — Post slug or a post URL (examples: "this-week-in-american-history-the-5ef", "https://www.thefp.com/p/this-week-in-american-history-the-5ef"; minLength: 1)

Response

• @type string (default: "SubstackPost")
• id integer required
• alias string nullable
• subtitle string nullable
• description string nullable
• text string nullable
• audience string nullable (one of: "only_paid", "only_free", "everyone", "founding")
• type string nullable (one of: "newsletter", "podcast", "thread", "video", "restack")
• published_at string nullable
• updated_at string nullable
• canonical_url string nullable
• publication_id integer nullable
• language string nullable
• word_count integer nullable
• reaction_count integer nullable
• reactions object (default: {})
  • * integer
• comment_count integer nullable
• child_comment_count integer nullable
• restack_count integer nullable
• image string nullable
• authors array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "SubstackPostAuthor")
  • id integer nullable
  • name string nullable
  • handle string nullable
  • bio string nullable
  • image string nullable
  • is_guest boolean nullable
• tags array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "SubstackPostTag")
  • id string nullable
  • name string nullable
  • alias string nullable
• has_voiceover boolean nullable
• podcast_url string nullable
• podcast_duration number nullable
• podcast_image string nullable
• podcast_episode_number integer nullable
• podcast_season_number integer nullable
• is_paywalled boolean nullable

Errors

• 422 — The request body did not validate Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.
• 408 — The request ran past its time limit Raise `timeout` in the request body, up to the maximum this endpoint documents. Lowering `count` or turning off the `with_*` flags also helps, because less work finishes sooner.
• 412 — Post not found, or the publication is not a valid Substack publication Retrying will not help: either the entity does not exist, or the input points at a different one.
• 429 — Too many requests: a rate limit or a usage window is exhausted When the response carries an X-Retry-After header, wait that many seconds and retry: the same number is in the body as `detail.retry_after`, and the limit clears once that window passes. The message in the body names the limit that was hit.
• 500 — Something broke on our side Retrying will not help. If it keeps happening, send us the X-Request-ID from the response headers.
• 529 — Rate limit reached, or the endpoint is overloaded Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

Response headers

• X-Error — Error message text (present only on error)
• X-Request-ID — Unique request identifier
• X-Execution-Time — Execution time in seconds
• X-Result-Count — How many records the body carries. 0 means an empty result, which is a normal answer and not by itself an error. A non-zero count can come back together with X-Error when the failure happened partway through — read this header and X-Error independently.
• X-Total-Available-Results — How many records exist for this query, when the endpoint can say. On a `dry_run` request this is the answer and the body is empty. It saturates: the endpoint's documented maximum means 'at least that many', any smaller number is exact.
• X-Warning — Present when the request body carried keys this endpoint does not document. They were ignored, so any filter you meant to apply through them did not apply. Check the spelling against this schema and retry.
• X-Retry-After — Seconds to wait before retrying. Present only on 429.